We wanted to offer a few tips for using Exploros for remote instruction. Exploros does require an internet connection, but if students have internet and a Chromebook or other suitable device, they can log on and participate in a learning experience from home. If you are used to teaching with Exploros and your student are used to learning with Exploros, the process is straightforward. And unlike most technologies, Exploros is built to easily go back and forth between the live 1:1 classroom and the remote classroom — in both cases, the learning is social and guided by a teacher.

Exploros is offering a free 30-day trial to our Social Studies, ELA, and Digital Citizenship Bundles on a campus or district basis. If your campus or district would like a trial, please fill out this form and we'll be in touch.
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Exploros is designed for the face-to-face classroom, and uses the same approach in the flipped or remote classroom. The system is expecting classes and class sizes to be around 20-30 students maximum, consistent with your face-to-face instruction. 

DO NOT create large classes (30+) in Exploros. The experience will not be as good, and in some cases interactions may be limited. Also, if your remote classes do not match physical classes, your classroom data will not be accurate, which lowers the value of the analytics when reviewing your class progress.
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When teaching an experience, you first need to decide if it will be:

Each method has its own strengths. We recommend mixing it up and doing some self-paced and some synchronous.  The tips vary according to the method you are going to use.
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In this mode, you typically assign an experience for a couple of days, and students log in to Exploros and complete the experience at their own pace. One advantage is that there are no real scheduling challenges. This may be important if student schedules vary, or if students need to share devices with others at home and therefore need flexibility. A disadvantage is that you lose some of the classroom cohesion and opportunity to discuss the lesson as it is happening.

Tip 1: Check Self-Paced. When you assign an experience for this mode, check the "Self-paced" box on step 3 of the Assign process. This does two things.

Tip 2: Periodically Check to See Who is Online and Check Progress. The progress dashboard shows you when a student is using Exploros, and where in the learning experience each student is. Periodically log in and see who is working on the assignment. You can then watch for student open response posts and respond to students to increase student engagement. If you have Exploros In-App Streaming, you can turn it on and connect to students with video or audio directly. Monitor overall student progress so that you can see if you are losing certain students — the dashboard can help a lot with this. 

Tip 3: Follow-up with Students
​With respect to Exploros Social Studies, ELA, and Digital Citizenship Bundles, the learning experiences are not meant to self-paced assignments with no teacher guidance. It is much better if you can follow up. In the flipped classroom, this means you can follow-up the next day in class. If you are teaching remotely and you get together virtually via in-app streaming, Zoom or Google Hangout, then take a few minutes of the video conference time to discuss any Exploros Experiences that students have participated in. Make sure to address any embedded assessments that the class may have struggled with. 

Tip 4: Small Group Experiences
Be aware that some of the experiences (labeled Small Groups) ask students to work in small groups for part of the lesson. In the asynchronous mode, it may be difficult for students to coordinate working together, but the first student through can post a response and all other small group students can see the post and edit it to extend their groups response.
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Another way you can guide an experience remotely is to schedule a time that everyone can join. This mode is much like the 1:1 device-enabled classroom mode of instruction in Exploros. (See this webinar video for tips on live classroom instruction — it uses the social studies program as context, but many of the principles apply to any content.) 

In general, students will work through a scene and you can review student input and hold a discussion at the end of each scene, prior to unlocking the gate for students to proceed. An advantage of this mode is that you have a social experience and can react to student posts in real-time. This increases engagement, and you can emphasize key points or reteach on the spot. A disadvantage is that it can be difficult to schedule a time, and it can be trickier to orchestrate the discussion in a remote setting.

Tip 1. Schedule Your Lesson Time. Obviously if you are going to guide an experience live, students need to know when to join. Exploros will automatically email an invitation to all students who have email-based usernames, but you will likely want to announce the event through Google Classroom, your LMS, or some other method that your students are accustomed to. Note that if some students cannot make it, that is fine. They can always do it asynchronously. But if you can get a group of students to come together, it can enrich the experience for those that can attend.

Tip 2. Set up Video or Audio Streaming. Exploros has audio and video streaming services in the app for certain subscriptions, with specialized features to support social classroom instruction (see the video at the top of this article). But if you do not have this feature set, you can use a service like Zoom or Google Hangouts/Meet. Here are some educational tips from Zoom. Since applications like Zoom do not minimize well, we recommend just streaming audio while students are working on the experience. That way students can listen to your commentary while focusing on the lesson, their responses, and input being posted by peers.

Tip 3: Small Group Experiences
Be aware that some of the experiences (labeled Small Groups) ask students to work in small groups for part of the lesson. In the synchronous mode students likely won't have a good way to communicate within their small group. Designate someone within each group to post a response for the group. Other small group members can edit the response, but let them know that if they all edit at once, they will overwrite one another's contributions. 

This isn't really a tip as much as it is an important benefit. Typically, remote instruction is a whole new experience for both teachers and students, and therefore it can be complicated to figure out how to make the switch. The great thing about teaching synchronously and remotely with Exploros is that all the best practices of teaching in the 1:1 classroom are the same in the remote classroom. Everyone is participating a in student-centered social learning experience, benefiting from peer input, under guidance of the teacher. Exploros data makes it possible for teachers to easily keep an eye on individual student progress and achievement (which can be very hard in the remote classroom). Once you are comfortable with this approach, you can flip and blend the classroom anytime. You can have students who are absent or at home still be able to participate with their classmates (co-located instruction).  You and your students can rest assured that regardless of circumstance, you have learning continuity.