As a second year teacher returning to the classroom after a decade in public and academic libraries, I have been looking for new and different resources to enhance virtual instruction with my English 9, Research Skills, and Public Speaking classes at Frazier School District. Over the summer, I went swimming in the online deep end of free virtual professional development. While I was wading the waters of online videos, I came across a link in a chat window for an upcoming free experience with the Indiana Connected Educators. If you click on their Facebook page, some of the videos are still available on-demand. I found two workshops particularly valuable.
The first workshop, Remix that HyperDoc for Remote Learning- The HyperDocs Girls, highlighted a concise way to present information to students via hyperdocs. These experts curate, maintain, and encourage educators to use and embrace this format via their website. The presenters were looking at ways to revamp and make old hyperdocs more interactive and engaging. Meanwhile, being new to hyperdocs, I was simply impressed with the idea of creating a single access point via a document, slide presentation, or website of links focusing on one area of instruction. The idea seemed to spark in me a new vision of how students can engage with content in Google Classroom. I had a moment of clarity that I could create a streamlined way of presenting the neverending content stream under the Google Classroom classwork tab. Instead, via a hyperdoc, educators can link to the content in their Google Classrooms in addition to other resources like podcasts, youtube videos, non-fiction articles, and anything else with a link. After listening to this workshop, I signed up for the Facebook hyperdocs group, and created my first hyperdoc creation for the beginning of the school year using the modern teacher format.
The second presentation, “Creative and Meaningful Ways to Keep Students Connected to Learning, Reading, Opportunities, and Each Other,” with Shannon McClintock Miller, sent me down the path of how to make reading more authentic. Last school year, I implemented book groups or literature circles. I put students in small groups that meet each Friday to discuss the same book that they were reading. This school year, I wanted to make these activities more authentic and engaging for students. In addition to several other exciting ideas for engaging readers, Shannon mentioned a list of authors that were willing to speak with classes for free. First, I reviewed the list of authors and searched for copies of electronic or audiobooks online via the library Overdrive system. After about a half-hour of searching for the authors’ books to no avail, I decided to contact the authors of the books available via simultaneous user access on the library Overdrive system or via get epic. After several hours and numerous emails, I am excited to report that I have contacted 18 authors to engage with interviews this Fall. Finally, I have permission from all of the authors to record the interviews and I eventually will post these records on my website, creating a podcast for the class.
Overall, while I am still wearing water wings when it comes to some online resources, I am thrilled with the ideas that I have discovered in these two virtual workshops. The students will begin online next week, August 31, and by the time you read this blog post, they will have heard about the author interview opportunity and the classroom podcast. If anyone is interested in submerging with me and these ideas or would like to see an example of hyperdocs that I create, please email me at csirochman@fraziersd.org. Let’s all try to keep each other afloat!
Author’s Bio: Mrs. Casey Sirochman’s teaching experience spans over a decade working in public, academic, and special libraries across Pennsylvania. She has a Bachelor's of Science degree in English/ Communications from The Pennsylvania State University, a Masters in Teaching English from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and a Masters in Library Science from the University of Pittsburgh. She is in her second year as a ninth grade English teacher at Frazier School District.
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