Assignment Spotlight: Tour of Where You Are

One of my favorite activities to do is an icebreaker activity. If I could, I would do one every week! I came across a really fun one this week that I'm so excited about trying in my online class. It's called Tour of Where You Are and it's from an amazing site that highlights community building activities, most of which can be adapted to the online classroom.

We know that community building in an online classroom is important for student success. Icebreakers are a great way to help build community in an online classroom because it helps to engage students around a common ground.

The main objective of the Tour of Where You Are activity is for students to share a picture or representation of where they are or where they will be studying from. Students can choose to give a walking tour using live video or just highlight their background. Alternatively, students may choose to share a picture of their favorite place or an ideal place they would like to study. Students would then explain why they selected this place or what they like most about this location as a study space. An additional benefit of this activity is to help students begin to plan and think about an appropriate environment to complete their classwork. I think this could work really well as a VoiceThread activity in a fully online class or as a Zoom activity in an online synchronous class.

The full description of this activity can be found HERE.

As a good role model, if I were doing this activity I would share my own favorite space for grading or course prep as the beach in Barbados or a cruise ship! What about you? What is your ideal workspace?

Can you see yourself using an activity such as this? Share your thoughts, experiences and ideas in The Online Educator Facebook Group by clicking the link HERE. Also, as a treat don’t forget to GRAB YOUR FREE GUIDE to the 3 Secrets to Teaching Online Successfully.