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YouTube, Not Zoom, Is My Secret Weapon for Teaching
Why coronavirus has forced one Chicago teacher into vlogging
Shannon has been playing a lot of Stardew Valley, but she also just finished a historical novel — Rules of Civility — that she said transcends the genre. Sarah has been listening to the sci-fi podcast Wolf 359. Terrance is re-watching Gravity Falls, and recommends that his classmates read the comic book Bone. I know all of this not because I am their teacher (although I am), but because I have my own YouTube channel.
I also know about their specific anxieties. They want to know what’s going to become of prom. They’re worried about their family’s finances. They’re concerned about taking AP tests and about graduating. Also, only a week into stay-at-home classes, every last one of them is already sick of videoconferencing.
As an adult, I, too, am sick of videoconferencing — but I understand it to be a necessary evil. For high school students who aren’t 100% sure what is going to count toward a final grade and what isn’t, Google Hangouts and Zoom are tedious at best and anxiety-producing at worst.
In an era of unprecedented connectivity, each of my Chicago public high school students has a personal smartphone, where several reported not having a fully operational personal computer.
To start, not all students have access to the high-speed internet and camera-ready computers necessary to actively participate this way. But there is something they pretty much all do have access to: a phone.
In an era of unprecedented connectivity, each of my Chicago public high school students has a personal smartphone, where several reported not having a fully operational personal computer. A few weeks ago, in our journalism class, my students tallied school-wide student surveys about what platforms were most popular at our school. Instagram was far…
