9 Strategies for Thriving in the Pandemic and Beyond

The Digital Age allows us to bend our notions of space and time. 2020 has bent many aspects of society and our ability to teach and learn is near the top of that list. These systems of learning need not break if we understand that teaching is a function of a meeting of the minds and that classrooms and campuses are just one possible response to the challenges that that creates. Drilling down on the fundamentals of teaching and strategically applying Digital Age tools to the needs that emerge have been key to those who have successfully navigated sudden jolts to their educational environments. These same insights can be used by teachers in order to fundamentally reshape our educational futures. That is what Learn at Your Own Risk (Atbosh Media, 2020) seeks to distill for teachers of all stripes. How do we make teaching Antifragile?

Take Stock of Your Toolbox
  • Teaching Should Drive Technology
  • A Strategy for Pairing Technology with Teaching
Strategy 2: Help Your Students Understand What it Means to Learn
  • Learning is fundamentally conversational
  • Nurturing conversations is the key navigate shifts in technology and circumstance
Strategy 3: Overcome Transactional Teaching Using Formative Assessment
  • Education has become transactional
  • Changing assessment strategies is critical in transcending this barrier to learning
Strategy 4: Embed Support and Informal Space Within Your Course
  • Most learning happens outside the classroom
  • The STAC Model is a set of design principles to nurture and support informal learning, both online and in-person
Strategy 5: Use Disruption as an Opportunity to Take a Teaching Inventory
  • Digital gives us the opportunity to reimagine what a course looks like
  • See what a 2-year redesign process looks like as of today
Strategy 6: Use Disconnected Time and Space to Teach to the Student, Not the System
  • Systemic constraints limit what we can achieve in instruction
  • Digital tools have the power to bend those constraints
Strategy 7: Don't Settle for Tools that Undermine Your Teaching Strategies
  • Tools should be adapted to meet the needs of instruction, not the other way around
  • Teachers should advocate for tools that match their pedagogical strategies 
Strategy 8: Create Digital Roadmaps
  • Digital tools provide us with an infinite learning canvas
  • Teachers are natural navigators, mapmakers, and storytellers
Strategy 9: Create Communities of Learning
  • Hybrid Plus provides a framework for thinking about learning tasks critically
  • It is based on the need to create Communities of Practice