Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

Zoom offers some limited canned virtual backgrounds for teachers to use and the ability to upload your own pictures. Last year, when I taught a sketchnoting class online , I changed my background out daily and the kids enjoyed seeing what the picture was going to be. I loved this personalized Zoom background a teacher posted on Twitter and shared it with staff, who instantly wanted to know how to make your own customized background. I made a very simple customized agenda background and put together a quick video to share with teachers who are working hard to get everything set up for the first day of school on Tuesday. If you have some customized virtual Zoom backgrounds you'd like to share, please comment below or post on Twitter and tag me at @techcoachlife . 

Last spring, the second week we were out for distance learning, a friend asked if I would teach some middle school students how to Sketchnote online. She said it would be voluntary and most likely be a small group. I agreed, because I wanted to see how difficult it would be to teach sketchnoting online...for a week. I had five engaged children...all girls...who didn't mind being "guinea pigs" for a daily "Lunch and Learn" session. Shortly afterward a teacher who had booked me to introduce sketchnoting to her class, prior to the pandemic, asked if I would consider doing it virtually (she taught 4th grade). I agreed, based on my earlier "success" and ended up with between 15-17 students. In order to get links and material to her students I had her added me as a co-teacher in Google Classroom. I used a 1 hour block of time and most sessions ended between 50-60 minutes. Monday - I did an introduction presentation with built in challenges ( copy o