“Even in a district that’s able to send every kid home with a laptop,” he said, “you’re still trying to adapt a model that’s been designed for a classroom situation.” Content aside, teachers in school can walk among their students and provide immediate feedback, spot frustration or flagging attention, and assign students to work for a time in small groups — all of which is extremely difficult to manage online.

Mr. Kossakoski’s advice: “Keep it simple and be consistent.” Some of his webinar attendees have noticed that teachers in their schools are using different tools to reach the same students. “One teacher uses Zoom, another uses Google Hangouts and a third uses something else,” he said. “It’s not anybody’s fault, but for the student it’s very confusing.”

Nevertheless, teachers should use whatever level of technology they’re comfortable with, said Michael Barbour, associate professor of instructional design at the College of Education and Health Services at California’s Touro University: “Let’s not get too clever. When it comes to distance learning, you don’t have to be high-tech to be effective.”

He suggested, for example, that teachers could email students a video link to a news report about a controversial issue, or a historical documentary, along with a few key questions and a post-viewing writing prompt.

“For a lot of parents, students and teachers, remote learning will be completely new, and where it’s new, it’s important to set realistic goals every day,” said Susan Patrick, C.E.O. of the Aurora Institute. The institute, an advocacy organization, promotes competency-based education, in which courses are broken into discrete skills and knowledge that students master at their own pace. These goals could include creating a schedule that sets aside time for reading a book or pursuing other projects that pry students away from their computers, including arts and crafts projects or learning a new skill, such as cooking.

Start Early

In the first weeks of shutdowns, many districts followed state guidelines and offered only optional learning resources — things like practice sheets, educational videos and recommended reading — without teacher-led instruction or feedback or the expectation that the work would “count” in any way. They hesitated partly out of digital-equity concerns and partly for fear of transgressing federal laws on things like tracking of student progress and accommodations for students with disabilities (such as accepting student work in a variety of formats and providing tutors and speech therapy sessions).

The government has since relaxed many of those regulations, offering waivers for educators scrambling to serve their communities. At the same time, many districts raised the bar for teaching and learning as it became clear that closures would stretch deep into the spring, and potentially for the rest of the academic year, as they now have in the majority of states.