Now that we’re in the swing of things with on-campus learning, I’m excited to share what my setup looks like for concurrent teaching!
Concurrent Teaching
In case you’re all turned around by the lingo (like I constantly am…), concurrent teaching is when a teacher has on-campus students and distance learning students watching lessons at the same time. Now, I’m not 100% concurrent. I have my distance learners with me for part of the day, and then the other part of the day they’re doing pre-recorded lessons and activities on Seesaw. Apparently that’s a part synchronous, part asynchronous program, or a hyflex hyrbid… honestly, the lingo is too much for me! All you need to know is that sometimes, I have distance learners on Zoom live in the classroom with me.
My Setup
I’ve tried to keep my set-up as simple as possible, because honestly I need to keep my attention on my students. If the technology takes too much focus, it’s just too hard to stay with my learners.
Laptop Setup
My main tool is my 3-tier cart from Michaels. I love that I can put my laptop on top and then roll the cart around so that my Zoom students can see whatever they need to be able to see. I’m still working on getting it at just the right angle and position to not block the view of my kids on the carpet. But I’m finding that if I position things higher on the whiteboard, everyone can see better.
TV Setup
Sometimes I need to be able to show things on the TV, like when I want the children in the classroom to be able to interact with the children at home on Zoom. Other times, I need to show a video lesson to my on-campus students–our science lessons are prepared by another first grade teacher, and our enrichment classes (specials) are all video lessons.
For this setup, I recently switched to using my iPad. I was originally using my laptop, but I needed to be able to do other work on it, so it was very inconvenient to always be using it for screen sharing to the TV. Making the switch to the iPad was so much better, because my laptop is now freed up.
When I’m using the TV, I keep this setup on my desk, so that I can have all the tech stuff safely in one place. So far, this works really well.
Document Camera
I also have the option of showing a document camera during a lesson. To do this, I use my laptop hooked up to the TV. My on-campus students watch the document camera on the TV. My online students see the document camera on my shared screen over Zoom.
Future Plans
There are still some additions I am hoping to add on to my setup as time goes on.
The first thing on my wish list is a headset mic that can work with a Bluetooth speaker. My voice is getting really worn out talking through my mask (thanks to Covid), over the air conditioner (thanks to 100 degree weather), and over air purifiers (thanks to wildfires). I’ve seen some teachers trying out a headset, and I think I’m going to have to give it a go! I will definitely share if I find a good one!
What does your setup look like?
xoxo
Laura
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