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Advice for Excelling in Online Learning

Posted on by Ceilidh, IU High School Graduate

This is a companion piece to Pursuing Balance, Not Perfection written by Celidh, an IU High School 2020 graduate.
This piece is crossposted from Ceilidh’s Writing Place.

  • I found that focusing on 1-3 courses each day was more productive than working on all of my courses I was taking in a semester; this allowed more time to intently focus on a few assignments, rather than 5-6 assignments.
  • Use a planner to assign dates and times for your assignments, tests, and exams. Over the course of four years, I have used a paper planner, Todoist, Trello, iCloud calendar, and others to help me figure out the best way to plan out my days, weeks, and months. You will have to experiment to find out the method/s that work best for you, but having a planner and a to-do list will help you keep track of what needs to be done every day.
  • Find someone to help you stay on track. My mom has served this role for me. It can be simple, such as sharing your progress and plans with your accountability partner through a productivity platform like Trello. Or it can be something more complex like having a morning meeting every day to discuss what tasks need to be completed in order for you, the student, to stay on track. (more…)

Educational Eavesdropping: What To Do When Business As Usual Doesn’t Work: Rethinking Teaching Strategies In Response To The Pandemic

Posted on by Dr. Rebecca Itow, Principal

Educational Eavesdropping episodes offer webinar-style resources, guidance, and food for thought from experts in the field. Listen in on conversations about relevant topics between practitioners, researchers, and community members.

This presentation is sponsored by Indiana University’s Office of School Partnerships and IU High School.

In this episode of Educational Eavesdropping, David Pace, Emeritus Professor of History in the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington teaches us to Decode our Disciplines.

In the midst of a pandemic, teachers are being asked to make unprecedented changes to the way that they teach – changes that involve far more than the mastery of new technologies. In most situations, it will be impossible in the new environment to cover everything that was included in traditional courses. Teachers will need a strategic framework for deciding what is most essential to teach to their students and for creating the most effective environment for deep learning.

The Decoding the Disciplines approach to increasing student learning can provide such a framework. Created on the IU Bloomington campus in the late 1990s, this approach is now helping teachers increase student learning in at least fifteen countries. It begins by focusing attention on the most serious bottlenecks to learning in particular courses and then systematically explores what students need to be able to do get past those obstacles to success.

Participants in this webinar will be introduced to the decoding process and will have hands-on experience in identifying crucial bottlenecks to learning in their courses and in making explicit the steps that students must master to overcome these difficulties. The session will be led by David Pace, professor emeritus of the IU Bloomington History Department and co-creator of Decoding the Disciplines. Professor Pace has almost fifty years of teaching experience and is a recipient of the American Historical Association’s Eugene Asher Award for teaching excellence.

Those who are new to this approach can find more information at http://decodingthedisciplines.org/.

Please watch the video and then join the conversation below!

Educational Eavesdropping: Experiences and Expectations in Online Learning: How To Prepare Students, Families, And Ourselves for Learning in a Digital Space

Posted on by Dr. Rebecca Itow, Principal

Educational Eavesdropping episodes offer webinar-style resources, guidance, and food for thought from experts in the field. Listen in on conversations about relevant topics between practitioners, researchers, and community members.

This presentation is sponsored by Indiana University’s Office of School Partnerships and IU High School.

In this episode of Educational Eavesdropping, Rebecca Itow, IU High School Principal and Adjunct Professor in the School of Education at IU Bloomington facilitates an overview and discussion of what to expect in an online course setting and why learning in digital environments feels so foreign. We will examine four major areas of concern: (a) Is online learning as valuable as brick and mortar learning?; (b) How can teachers, students, and families build meaningful educational relationships and support systems if they cannot see each other?; (c) How do we know students are learning?; and (d) What does learning look like online and how does this differ from our conceptions of brick-and-mortar learning environments?

Please watch the video and then join the conversation below!