http://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2014/06/turning-snow-days-e-learning-days
Schools are finding creative ways to beat mother nature. The Maconaquah School Corp., in Bunker Hill, Indiana has taken to using snow days as "e-learning" days. With the past couple winters being very harsh winters, the district closed for over 2 weeks, and so decided that since they "already had everything in place to do it," they would try it out. Digital content was already part of their regular curriculum, students were comfortable with logging in to their learning management system, and every student K-2 had already been issued a tablet, and 3-12th graders a Lenovo laptop.
This district had also been given a grant to experiment with online learning and scheduled 4 e-learning days. In preparation for this the IT department trained the teachers in developing lessons and e-learning tools. These e-learning days have been so successful that they are planning to ask the DOE if they could use them for all of their weather related cancellations the next year.
The article also mentioned the use of Skype in the classroom for children who are very ill and cannot be in the classroom, as well as flexible scheduling. Flexible scheduling was used to ease teacher's schedules for PD and back to school type nights. Instead of giving the students the day off completely, the were called "telelearn" days and had to log in to receive and complete their lessons for the day.
I was very intrigued by this concept when I read of it. Thinking of the torture of being in school through the first week of June last year, I felt like this would be a very interesting route to take. The problem is that, in our district, we don't have the infrastructure to support this. We are not 1:1 which is the first problem. Secondly, we would need to be training the teachers in more of a tech curriculum. Less than half of the teachers in our building have websites, let alone would I expect them to be able to create a lesson to be completed exclusively online.
The article states that reactions to these "e-learning" or "telelearn" days are mixed. Teachers feel that it is extra work on their end, and students feel like it is just a whole day of homework. I would imagine that there might be parents who aren't so fond either. My question is what do they do for the kids who don't have internet at home? I wonder if these are pretty wealthy communities and maybe that is not an issue. As a teacher, it does sound like a lot of extra work to plan online lessons for a whole day. Would PE teachers be required to do online lessons as well?
Altogether, I do think the this is a very interesting idea, but it did leave me with a lot of questions. I would love to read more on this topic!
I love the "in theory" aspect of this type of learning. I agree that those added emergency days were torture for all involved. It reminds me of the flipped classroom idea. You also have to wonder how much of the work would the students actually be doing? I know we've all experienced some families who were a little too involved with homework. I feel like this type of learning is very futuristic and I'm blown away that schools are actually trying it out. I guess from our current school perspective it's a bit far from reach. It also makes me wonder, how far behind is our district from where we're "supposed to be" in the technology aspect of education. I agree that I also would like to learn more about this.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the "theory" of telelearning days, but my students don't want to take responsibility for their learning in the classroom when I'm in the room with them. I have difficulty thinking they would log in to a website to do work on their days off from school. I think it's great that schools are trying it, and I hope they have success. I think this is something that would take a lot of patience and student encouragement to implement. I don't think it's impossible. I just don't see it having much success at this point at Dee-Mack.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of telelearning days. I agree with Tammy that they would require some encouragement to implement in the beginning, but I think if that was the established procedure for emergency days it would become the norm. There would definitely be a fair amount of grumbling in the beginning because then the unexpected days off are no longer days off. Part of the difficulty I see would be getting teachers to have online material ready on short notice when school is canceled at 6:00 in the morning. There would be an adjustment period there too. I know on one of the snow days last year when they were making the announcements on tv for Peoria Notre Dame, they mentioned that students were to log on and check their online system for assignments so it sounded like they do something like this but I am pretty sure they are 1:1.
ReplyDeleteNot to sound like a broken record, but what a good idea. Unfortunately, in my school it would take hours of training to get the staff on board with this. The vast majority of my staff would not be able to create an entire lesson online right now. If it was something the district wanted to try, then we could do it, but there would be a lot of front end work on behalf of the staff. Getting the kids on board would probably be a mixed bag of reactions. The students who have wifi access would be able to complete the assignments if they were willing to take responsibility for their learning. The students that do not have access, would most likely fall behind. There would have to be a good amount of community and school teamwork to make something like this work. I do think it is a good idea, but I am interested to know how it all worked out.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is a good idea in theory. As an administrator I would like the idea of using it on "snow days". As far as training the teachers...an on going task.
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