Home About Gallery Blog Fab Academy Contact # 5 tips to survive covid 19 as an extracurricular educator It is very challenging to keep learners of all ages but especially kids engaged and interested. I teach STEAM and digital fabrication after school programs at Fab Lab Bahrain. A huge part of the appeal of those programs is that learners get to be in a different environment and interact with the machines and tools by themselves. Every learner that entered the fab lab looked at the machines with a sense of wonder, watched the 3D printers running and slowly creating objects and had freedom to make and create. When classes moved online classes nothing was really the same. Learners were in front of their computers all day. Joining the after school activity just meant switching to a different online meeting. It lost that sense of wonder and felt as tedious as every other class. After several months of online learning here are my top 5 tips to all extracurricular STEAM and makerspace educators ### Give very specific instructions before class, but prepare as if no one followed them. STEAM activities almost always involve a special software of some sort. It could be for 3D design, 2D design, coding and much more. Give your students very specific instructions on what to download beforehand and how to prepare for class, down to the type of device they need to use (some softwares wont work on a tablet or a chromebook). You still need to prepare for what happens if someone didn't follow the instructions provided. There is always a last minute problem or it could simply be that the instructions never made it to the student if it was passed on to a parent. Always have a plan B for this kind of situation. ### Set some ground rules  Kids are very smart. They might be new to the whole online learning concept but let's be real, so is everyone else! It was challenging to move to online school but most kids were very quick to adapt. To keep things from turning into chaos set some ground rules at the beginning of class. Those rules can include who can unmute and when and how to participate in class. I had the best results with a “feel free to unmute and talk when no one else is speaking, but you must stay muted otherwise” policy. ### Show your face and encourage the students to do the same.  There is nothing more boring and unengaging than staring at a video conference screen of black boxes and a presentation. Always show your face and interact with the students. Encourage everyone in the class to do the same thing and turn on their cameras. It will help you monitor their behavior but most importantly it will keep them engaged. Make sure they can see your facial expressions when you ask a question or listen to them respond, clap if they have an achievement and let them know they are heard and that you are paying attention to them. It makes a huge difference. ### Keep them moving  Age does not matter here. While this does work best with younger students, students of all ages need to keep moving after a full day of staring at a screen. Incorporate activities and icebreakers that encourage students to move around. One of the hits was asking the students to wander around their home, grab their favorite item and show it to the rest of the class. It quickly turned into a small show and tell session but the element of surprising them with that request got the students to get up and search around the house. ### Get the tools to the students   This tip is a lot more logistically challenging and not every educator will have the resources to do this. When you can't get the students to the tools, get the tools to the students! We created small kits containing the necessary components for specific programs such as robotics programming and interactive electronics art (paper circuits) and sent them to the students homes! Being able to work with their hands and create things was such a huge change of pace for the students and everyone was super excited to try it. Conducting this kind of session is extra challenging without physically being in the same room but the results were worth it! one of my student's parents even got her a robotic kit and a registration to a robotics remote class as a birthday gift which was such a wonderful idea!