This school year, the Greater Clark County School district in Kentucky decided that teachers would now be conducting e-learning days when school is closed for winter weather. Many instructors in the district found the virtual school day to be beneficial.
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Megan Roger, an ESL teacher in the district commented, “We want them to have that practice on a regular basis because, if you don’t use a language, you can easily forget it. Even the smallest pieces that they’ve gained, they can lose if they’re not here for several days.”
Also finding benefit to the program, Emily Carpenter noted that many times teachers need to cram material into the end of the year due to all of the missed days. She said, “Thankfully with e-learning, I get to still teach the things they’re learning right then and there rather than at the end of the year, just keep extending that stuff because, that’s not the information they missed.”
In Pennsylvania, this is the case as well. Governor Wolf and the Pennsylvania Senate passed Senate Bill 440 which allows schools to use 5 snow days as instructional days if the school uses technology on snow days.
Certainly every time we have snow days in my district, I find myself struggling to get myself and my students back on track and have to spend an extra day or two to re-teach what we had learned before the snow day, turning a one-day lesson into a three- or four-day lesson. I definitely see the value in continuing the learning on days where school is interrupted. My big hesitation is for the student who does not have the best home life, for the student who does not have internet at home, or for the student with learning disabilities who needs extra guidance to actually complete work in the first place.
This initiative seems like it has good intentions, but I think there is still some work to be done in perfecting it.
Sources:
This initiative seems like it has good intentions, but I think there is still some work to be done in perfecting it.
Sources:
Krause, R. (2019, November 11). "E-learning days keep GCCS kids learning, even in messy weather". WAVE 3 News. Retrieved from https://www.wave3.com/2019/11/11/e-learning-days-keep-gccs-kids-learning-even-messy-weather/
Seymour, K. (2019, July 3). "No more snow days in PA: Governor signs flexible instruction law". Patch News. Retrieved from https://patch.com/pennsylvania/newtown-pa/no-more-snow-days-pa-governor-signs-flexible-instruction-law
Seymour, K. (2019, July 3). "No more snow days in PA: Governor signs flexible instruction law". Patch News. Retrieved from https://patch.com/pennsylvania/newtown-pa/no-more-snow-days-pa-governor-signs-flexible-instruction-law
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ReplyDeleteI agree that e-learning on snow days helps maintain consistency with students and gives teachers a way to cover academic content that might be missed with a day off from school. Despite these benefits, one concern with mobile learning is the assumption that every student has access to technology and WIFI at home. Students who cannot access course content from home on a snow day will return to school without the knowledge base and skills their peers will have. Until districts can ensure that there is equal access to technology in every home, virtual learning on a snow day should not be required of students. Hopefully, districts survey families to ensure learning from home is possible before adopting virtual snow days.
ReplyDeleteI for one really like the idea of being able to set up eLearning for snow days. Our district has been a 1:1 district for at least 4 years now, that is, they purchased Chromebooks for each student. So students have the device, the possible roadboacks still are for students who may not have access to WiFi at home, or those who lack self discipline to stay on task at home without the structure of a classrom and set schedule for the day. Our past few winters have not been too terrible as far as snow days go, but I remember the winter of 2013-2014 was atrocious, and we had a high number of snow days. We had all ready delayed the start of school to allow contractors to finish up construction, and with the snow days, I think our last day of school was something around June 20. If eLearning can help cut down on loads of snow make up days in June, I'm all for them!
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