Hyflex Check-In: Classroom Technology

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As we get deeper into the semester, it’s the perfect time to pause and review the tech options available as we navigate the strange waters of the hyflex format. Today, we’re going to briefly talk about the classroom technology options, Zoom, Ensemble, and how they all fit together. 

Classroom technology

There’s more technology than ever before available in your classrooms including document cameras, iPads, and Meeting Owls. If you’re running into issues with any of the tech pieces, check out the instructions and notes in our Fall 2020 Tech Instruction folder (note: you’ll need to be signed into your Cedarville Google account to access it). Some of these pieces can be used in conjunction with Zoom, so let’s take a look at that next. 

Zoom

There’s two big use cases for Zoom: bringing students remotely into class and remotely offering office hours or meetings.

Bringing students remotely into class will operate similarly to show you ran your classes in the spring – just this time, you have all the classroom tech mentioned above at your disposal. For information about adding Zoom into your Canvas course or and scheduling meetings, check out the Zoom How Tos in our Flexible Learning at CU course in Canvas. 

For office hours, you could create a Zoom meeting in your Canvas course and host a drop-in session where students could just click the invite link to stop by and ask their questions. If you want to make sure that a student can’t just appear while you’re talking to another student, make sure you have a waiting room enabled for your meeting. You can also schedule individual meetings with students easily using Zoom through Google Calendar. 

Ensemble

Once you’ve completed your lecture and ended the recording in Zoom, the process of transferring the recording to Ensemble will begin. Once the recording is in Ensemble,  you can add it to your Canvas course by following the Adding External Tools to Your Course instructions. If you created your Zoom meeting in Canvas, Canvas will automatically notify your students when Zoom creates the recording. However, that recording link in Zoom is deleted when your video is transferred to Ensemble. Remind your students to use the link in the course and not the one from the Zoom inbox message. 

Ensemble also provides Anthem, which allows you to easily record videos and have them instantly appear in your Ensemble library. Consider using Anthem if you have content you want to convey to your students in asynchronous video format – further instructions or clarifications on an assignment, lecture information for a day that you’re all unable to meet in class, etc. Check out our posts on Ensemble for more information on using Anthem, especially our “Screen Capture and Webcam Recording” and “Video Annotation, Editing, and Uploading” posts. 

For more information on all of these topics, make sure you check out the Flexible Learning at CU course in Canvas. 

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