Sr. Sandoval’s Opinion on Distance Learning and Zoom

By: Devynn Brown

Sr. Sandoval, a Spanish 1 and 2 teacher, has an interesting outlook on distance learning and zoom.

Sr. Sandoval enthusiastically says that he “loves” zoom. For him he enjoys using technology and other than the fact that he is using zoom to interact with the students, everything else that he uses is the same as the previous years. In fact, he has taken it up a notch.

Sr. Sandoval really likes zoom because it allows him to see all of the kids closely whereas in class it’s harder to see the students in the back. With zoom, everyone is right there and he feels like he has “more engagement this year than ever before.” He sees just about every student taking notes whereas sometimes in the classroom it seems impossible to get students to do that.

“Anytime you do something new, change is always difficult…We can use this time to adapt and make the best of it.”

Sr. Sandoval

The biggest issue that zoom brings is that some students don’t have great internet at home. The struggles with connection and glitching are really the only issue Sr. Sandoval sees.

Sr. Sandoval believes that the more he works with zoom and the more comfortable he is with it, it makes his students more comfortable too. Online teaching has really opened his eyes to see if being a full-time online teacher is something he would want to do.

One of the biggest benefits Sr. Sandoval believes that zoom gives is the private chatbox. It allows him to hear from kids that he thinks in the classroom wouldn’t normally ask questions. Students are “more comfortable asking questions” and letting him know if they have problems. He has seen “more benefits than negatives.”

As luck be it, Sr. Sandoval is one of the teachers teaching other teachers how to use the technology. He held an online training session through zoom on how to use different platforms. He also helps with tech development in the classroom.

His advice to teachers and students on using zoom and other technology platforms is to “play with it until you break it, once you break it figure out why you broke it and don’t make that mistake again.”

“You can’t start with the presidential suite, you have to start with the foundation first. I have been building that platform and I am excited to see what the presidential suite is going to look like.”

Sr. Sandoval

As adults, teachers can be nervous to fail and try new things. Sr. Sandoval, however, likes to try new things and if he fails he wants to show his students that it is okay to fail. It is unrealistic to think you will never fail. We just need to learn from it.

Sr. Sandoval is only limited by his own imagination and he has a pretty wild imagination. He is excited about what he is going to do from here as we get more and more comfortable. He tries to spend about a week with each program to learn it. Each new site or platform is like part of a puzzle and sooner or later he will start to bring in more pieces.

Tags: distance learning, redwood high school, zoom