Maintaining Connections during Hybrid and Remote Learning

In a typical school year, 8th grade ELA teacher Lauren Berolini can be found meeting one-on-one with students for writers' conferences. Ms. Berolini uses this format to provide specific, authentic feedback in a private and personal setting and values the opportunity it provides to make personal connections with students. In an effort to maintain these personal connections as students develop their writing skills in this hybrid and remote setting, Ms. Berolini requested help from the Digital Learning Integrationists to identify digital tools for providing feedback to students. Together they explored Mote, a google extension that enables voice note feedback within Google Classroom, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. Though the

"conversation" takes place asynchronously, it allows for a more personal interaction between the teacher and student than simple text commenting alone. Ms. Berolini reported that with this time saving tool, she was able to provide detailed, authentic feedback and that students responded well to the verbal format. Mote is free, data privacy approved and easily installed by clicking on the image here.  Mote voice comments are also automatically transcribed to text which, in turn, can be translated to many languages, making this an exceptional resource for both Special Education and English Language Development teachers as well. The DLI team is available to support teachers interested in exploring this feedback tool. Watch this quick video (1:31) to learn more.