The east coast just survived a major storm. It certainly wasn't the first and won't be the last. Our schools have been closed for 2 days, so kids and many teachers are very happy. It is a wonderful feeling to not have to venture out of the house in dangerous conditions. Not everyone has that luxury; witnessed by the cars and trucks on the highways whenever the news would flash to a live picture of the interstates. But, must the closing of schools be a disruption to student learning?
As we, as a society, become more and more connected by the Internet, texting, etc., is there a way to put some sort of virtual learning in place so that our students don't really lose two days of school? My brain is coming up with many reasons why this isn't possible at this moment in time, but I'd rather think about how amazing this could be. The naysayers who read this can comment on the negative and list them, if they'd like to waste energy on that list.
Last night, even as each of my co-workers reported that they had lost power, they still had their smartphones and were able to continue to stay connected. Maybe our school systems need to begin to brainstorm ways to put some of these learning opportunities in place. This is such an exciting time. Putting virtual learning opportunities into place could be one more way that our school system could capitalize on days when the schoolhouse can't be open. Witness how quickly your own children become bored when the power goes out. But, as mentioned, my own son never lost his cellphone service. He was texting, etc throughout the storm. Could your students be Tweeting with you when school is closed? Could teachers have Facebook groups? Could you all come up with even better ideas?
Very exciting times!
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ReplyDeleteOddly enough (as I looked it up and "funnily" is not, in fact, a word), just after I read this, I looked at my own Facebook account and read the posting from BCPS about the schools that were closed. Although the prospect of keeping in touch with classes and students is an exciting one, the comments posted on Facebook lead me to realize that we, as teachers, would need to be serious about teaching the students how to appropriately respond to a school/class based social media account. A few students were posting their concerns about traveling to school through neighborhoods that were flooded and had no power. The comments were respectful and well thought out, even the students that suggested tweeting the superintendent to "respectfully express their concerns." A few of them made comments that did not make realistic sense, saying that they could not do homework with the power out. First of all, they were posting from somewhere somehow, so why couldn't they do homework. And secondly, this homework was from Friday that would have been due Monday, so shouldn't that have already been done before the storm? But my biggest concern about the postings was that the majority of them were riddled with curse words and misspellings. Postings that were long phrases bashing the school district and the superintendent were the norm. If this is what our students do on social media, we would have to be very careful to teach appropriate and responsible internet citizenship before opening that can of worms.
I attended a workshop on Wikispaces with a local teacher that has organized one for his Calculus students and wants to begin one for his Algebra 1 students as well. He is very careful to include the responsible internet citizen component in his set-up to make sure his students understand what is acceptable. This is a good thing because what I saw on the BCPS post is not something that I would want my own children to read and have free access to, or to think is acceptable.