Issue number 1
Students can't login.
No I will elaborate but essentially that's my point! Students struggle to login with almost everything. Various stages of enrolment and login set ups aside. There are still login issues. Mine are adults but I think they're universal issues. Some students fear pressing anything that might break anything. They are worried that my pressing a button nuclear war will be declared. Some students press all the buttons out of frustration when things are loading and login log out quick as a flash. They do the hokey kokey of logins. Some students zone out when you are speaking and miss the first set of instructions and forget to press the button. They miss the bus! There are some students who manage it and you can't even stop worrying about them either. Did they manage it first time or are they having anxiety issues and too scared to ask for help? Those students might not be able to replicate logging in when you're not live with them. Teaching online is hard.
In an effort to combat this I created a single website with numbered links. Each link took students to a step by step guide of screenshot after screenshot of what they needed to do. I shortened the link using bit.ly and named it the name of our community centre. Even this went wrong. I used capitals as it is a name of a building. English not my best but I thought I was right? Students forgot the capitals. Students spelt the building name wrong. Students spelt bit.ly wrong. All that effort of step by step instructions had a 40% success rate at best. In the end I ended up doing what was needed to get the learners online. Some now won't remember what we did and can't replicate logins and no doubt I will have to do it again with them at some point.
This isn't a tale of woe completely. My students are now all online. My students are happy, I have asked! I also know this because many have had the option to move to their preferred class time but have chosen to stay with me in the later time slot. This I think is partly to do with the community we built, quickly! Read how I did that here. Content was skipped for week 1 and actually week 2 for the main part. Week 2 we just looked at multiplication and short division. But because we were connected the flow was nice. And we had those aha moments that students could grow and develop with. What I didn't get right was my checking of learning. That is issue 2!
