Link from Barbara Oakley:
We would like to point school administrators toward this masterful pre-print , compiled by Harvard’s Justin Reich and his colleagues, about what the 50 different states are doing to try to best address the unprecedented demands of educating while social distancing. Interestingly, synchronous approaches to teaching (e.g. Zoom and Google Classroom), are discouraged by some states, “since coordinating the meeting times of students, parents/caregivers, and teachers (who are often addressing the needs of their own children) makes this approach very difficult and perhaps unsustainable.” Vermont explicitly warns against more than 2 hours of synchronous instruction per day. Asynchronous can be better in reaching out to teach, and best practices for agencies often seem to involve providing the personal touch by communicating via videos–which implies this approach might be worthwhile for teachers as well. Some innovative outreach, for example, in the state of Arkansas, is being done by a partnership between schools and public broadcasting stations like PBS to provide scheduled programming on television for students.