Identity is one of the central classroom lessons during the pandemic this semester for SMASH Educators Sarah Daunis and Christian Carter.
Christian mentioned this also solves communication difficulties because when you know yourself more, your strengths and what needs improvement, you think "I should be speaking right now because this something I care about".
Kids have many personalities, some outgoing, some shy, many a mixture of both, with a whole range of emotion at any given moment. Many personalties were present in the classroom before the pandemic, but how do we let each personality a chance to to be seen within the virtual classroom? Some kids would rather use the chat window to respond to a question, some will want to speak first or second, some will want to draw an image of their response. Building in options for kids to respond to questions in a variety of ways in real time will hopefully only expand in virtual education. In asynchronous time when kids upload homework and have time to respond to questions posed during class, this break can allow for a variety of types of responses.
What if there were characters children could occupy that made zoom more engaging for them like a characters or avatars inside a virtual classroom game? Would this distract or make zoom more effective? What other ways can you express yourself during class time that would show you're an active participant? Some teachers are already using Bitmoji Classrooms to create a virtual version of their physical classroom and perhaps the students can alter the experience of this virtual landscape to allow their personality to shine through.
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