In-Person, Virtual, or Hybrid for 2021-2022?

[LarryBrumback]

As we near the close of the 2020-2021 school year, a year in which a lot of us wondered how we were ever going to do our jobs as teachers, I've been thinking about how next year will look. Will we be back to normal? Will we still see the results of a global pandemic? Or will we be somewhere in the middle. No matter which, can we use Canvas as the LMS for whatever model next school year finds us in? I think we can, and here's why.

This year I taught in a hybrid model for most of the year having a combination of students in-person and virtual. We conducted our classes live on Zoom with both in-person and virtual students in attendance. I used Canvas exclusively to manage my classes and all of the assignments for those classes and it worked great! Once you become familiar with the basics of Canvas (you can watch my Canvas 101 presentation here), with a little bit of planning, you can easily update your Canvas pages to keep your students on-track. More importantly, you can make your course and assignments engaging and exciting, include multiple forms of media, and even give students assignment options to demonstrate differentiation. I made a couple of posts on using infographics, pictures, and videos in your Canvas pages to help maybe make them a little less boring!

Whatever the next school year has in store for us, it can't be worse than this year (can it?). Honestly I feel prepared for whatever comes my way. While 2020-2021 has been, by far, the most challenging year of my professional life as a teacher, it's also been the year of greatest growth. They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and maybe that's true. I know that of necessity, a lot of us have revolutionized the way we teach and learn, the way we manage our classes, and the way we assess for learning. And that, my friends, can't be a bad thing.