We’re almost two months into remote learning and you’re doing a great job! Classrooms across the country are transforming, and while we know that this new adaptation has been stressful, we’re right here with you. Below find a few tips from our Support Team to help you make the switch to using iCivics remotely a little easier.

• Creating Student Accounts: Helping students register for iCivics accounts when you can’t be right there beside them may be a little jarring. That’s why we put together the video below. It walks students through what they need to do to create a student account and join your class whether registering by email or class code. You can also import your rosters using our Google Classroom or Clever sync options, eliminating the need for students to create separate accounts altogether.

• Creating an Assignment: Did you know that you can create assignments through iCivics.org? Games, WebQuests, DBQuests, and Drafting Board modules are assignable, and you can also sync those assignments with your Google Classroom. To learn how see our Help Desk tutorial. 

• Assigning Lesson Plans: While iCivics lesson plans are not assignable through our site, you can share them with your students using your school compatible learning management system. It’s easy. Simply download the lesson you wish to assign to your desktop, load it to your learning management system (like Google Classroom or Schoology) as a PDF, and share as you normally would. 

• Fillable PDFs: Sharing a paper PDF probably isn’t very helpful right now. That’s why we’ve made the push to make the majority of our lessons fillable PDFs. This means that students can type their answers directly into the PDF. For a rundown on how fillable PDFs work, see our tutorial on fillables. We also published a Help Desk article on how to assign fillables if you’re using Google Classroom. If you run across a lesson that hasn’t been made fillable yet and you’d like to use it, let our Support Team know by emailing support@icivics.org. We’re a small staff, but we promise that we’ll see what we can do!

• Separate Student Documents: We heard from many of you that having the lesson plan, answer keys, and student documents all in one file was difficult. We took your advice, and we separated our lesson plans into two separate files: (1) Teacher Doc and (2) Student Doc. The Teacher Doc contains our step-by-step lesson plan, keys for all of the student activities, and any projection masters. Student Docs contain the student reading and activities only. Download a lesson today and share the Student Docs with your students using the methods above.

No matter where you teach from or how your classroom will transform in the coming months, we promise that iCivics will be adapting alongside you and providing the support you need to be there for your students. Visit our Remote Learning Toolkit for resources. And if you haven’t already, check out our Game Odyssey. It’s the perfect remote learning companion for your civics review of fun Friday!