Materials in Online Classes

It’s important to plan out the materials you will be using such as PowerPoint’s, word documents, worksheets, books, or programs before you start up your class and have them all prepared in a side folder for the class. This makes it so that you can limit the things that your students will see on your computer and you can focus on just showing them the materials that they need to see for the class. Also, if the situation arises where you need to look at something unrelated to the class or to look online for something, you can press to stop sharing your screen and then quickly find what you need to show your class.

Also remember that when you are sharing materials with the class many programs have the feature to write over them, or if you can’t do that you can always look for an online website or program where you can edit documents or files and then use that and screen share together with each other. It is very important to remember that being able to make notes and edit documents can be very helpful for students so they can see how you solve problems and complete worksheets during class and then they can refer back to that themselves. Also remember that other participants are able to share their screen as well in most programs, so when you are doing work through screen share your students will be able to share their screens and progress on the work assigned in class. As a teacher it is your choice to have everyone sharing their screen or to have yourself as the teacher be the main person who shares their screen. Sharing your screen ensures that everyone is on the right part together, but it makes it a bit harder for them to do the work directly on their computer as you cannot check on them and their progress, while having everyone share their screen can show you everyone's work, but you will not be able to directly see your students faces so you cannot see their reactions and they will not be able to see your facial movements as well. As a teacher it is up to you to decide your style and how you prefer to handle the materials in class, whether you prefer to send the materials directly to your students in a document, to have them shared through a drive, or to put the materials on your screen directly and to work together with all of your students. Test each method out in your classes and find out what works best for you and your students.

Finally, when it comes to sharing the materials, check that they will display properly before starting class. For instance, you could have a full document, but it may only show a small part of it, or possibly cut off parts of it preventing your students from seeing it. Screen share should circumvent most problems when it comes to displaying materials on your computer, but it is always best to check that everything works before scrambling to find substitutions or to make up time in the middle of the lesson if you ever suddenly have a technical issue with the materials that you prepared and assigned.