“In an era of social distancing, we’re all searching for some form of social closeness right now,” says elementary teacher Paul France in this Edutopia article. When he previously worked with an ed tech company and a network of micro-schools, France learned that “many digital tools have dehumanizing effects: they chip away at human connection, limit opportunities for heterogeneous groupings and cross-ability collaboration, and have kids turning toward screens instead of their teachers and fellow learners.”

Now that he and most other teachers have no choice but to use digital pedagogy, he has three suggestions for overcoming some of its disadvantages:

• Embrace authentic tasks. The temptation now is to take advantage of the convenience of commercial curriculum products, says France. But he believes this is an excellent time “to leverage open-ended tasks, complex instruction, and journaling, allowing students to post pictures of their journal entries through Seesaw or Google Drive.” How about providing a math task with multiple solutions and challenging students to journal about their solutions, or respond to prompts in a reader’s notebook? After students have had time to work on their own, the teacher might host an online class for sharing and discussion.
• Create opportunities for dialogue and discourse. “True, deep learning happens not on a worksheet or through a series of decontextualized videos and closed-ended questions,” says France. “Learning is a conversation; it requires connection and interaction.” He urges regular video class meetings for this reason, as well as for social interaction and connection.
• Build in opportunities for self-reflection. “Sending home worksheet after worksheet is unlikely to result in fruitful learning that will stick,” says France. “The current crisis is allowing all of us – educators and parents included – to reflect on what it truly means to learn.” He’s asking his students to think about their learning, and sends them videos of him thinking aloud as he solves math problems and responds to readings. He asks students to make a video of their responses to questions like:
• What went well for you with that task?
• What will you do differently next time?
• How has your thinking changed?

“All of these remind students that learning neither starts nor ends with the activity they’ve completed,” he says. “It can – and will – be connected to future activities, and by taking them through the process of reflecting on the task, I create the expectation that they will need to apply new learnings to future tasks.”

“3 Tips for Humanizing Digital Pedagogy” by Paul France in Edutopia, April 1, 2020,

https://edut.to/2JYT183

“3 Tips for Humanizing Digital Pedagogy” by Paul France in Edutopia, April 1, 2020,

https://edut.to/2JYT183