Hannah Emmanuele
Across the country, a record number of weather related school closures have occurred with possibly more on the way — school districts and families are feeling the pain. While some schools are cancelling vacation days or extending the school year, others are implementing a forward thinking strategy of creating virtual school days– moving the classroom online.
The real obstacle to progress appears to be state mandates on “seat time” and what constitutes a school day which were written before our society became networked and connected and before technology was widely available in schools. Some states are moving assertively into modern times and focusing on learning, like Ohio where 300 schools thus far have been approved for cyber school days with many more expected soon.
While Illinois and most other states are struggling with the concept, that’s not stopping forward thinking superintendents like New Jersey’s Erik Gundersen who is confident that even if the New Jersey Department of Education does not approve his waiver request to count a virtual class day, his teachers are getting invaluable experience creating innovative online lesson plans for the day it does become a reality.
Some teachers are seizing the opportunity to not just replicate a normal school day online but to use technology to create more innovative learning experiences for students through forums, online physics labs, game-based learning, discussion boards, podcasts, various social media and video chats. These learning opportunities are good training for the real world and students who ordinarily are not active in classrooms seem to more fully participate in virtual environments.
Of course virtual school days have great potential beyond just weather closures. Some schools have adopted calamity plans for virtual learning in cases of widespread flu and other illnesses, as well as for other unexpected emergencies such as water main breaks or the like.
Following are excerpts of articles about schools in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Oregon, Georgia, and Maine leading the way using virtual classrooms in lieu of snow days.
Via Chicago Tribune:
At Prospect High School in Mount Prospect many teachers and students improvised classes on the nonattendance days, uploading digital lessons and holding virtual classroom discussions.
Deerfield School District 109 teachers and staff took to Twitter during the snow days using the hashtag #engage109. They shared links to educational websites and apps. A physical education teacher posted a seven-minute workout.
In Park Ridge, two Maine East High School AP biology teachers video-streamed presentations one day, then had students sign up for video chats on Google Hangouts the next, said David Beery, spokesman for Maine Township High School District 207.
Via New York Times:
As classrooms become more electronically connected, public schools around the country are exploring whether they can use virtual learning as a practical solution to unpredictable weather, effectively transforming the traditional snow day into a day of instruction.
Superintendent P. Erik Gundersen petitioned [New Jersey]’s Education Department to have it treat the day as a traditional school day…State officials said they would take a look, gathering evidence that the experiment worked and involved student-teacher engagement throughout the day, and that it was not just a glorified homework assignment.
In this New Jersey enclave, each of the 2,000 students in the district’s two high schools, as well as their teachers, have laptops that cost $1 million in total and are replaced every two years. Few students do not have a Wi-Fi Internet connection at home.
“I think some students got more out of it than being in a traditional classroom setting.” In a usual 48-minute period, it is difficult for every student to express every thought on a given topic. But online, Ms. Marchiano said, the students’ postings became “individual stages” to fully relay ideas.
Via NorthJersey.com
Pascack Valley Regional High School District on Thursday pioneered the virtual snow day in New Jersey, but similar experiments are under way across the country as this year’s extreme winter weather wreaks havoc with traditional school schedules.
Tina Marchiano, who teaches English and theater arts, said that her students appeared to be more involved than usual and communicated with her and each other above and beyond the requirement.
Marchiano had her students watch two YouTube videos of slam poets and parse them on a discussion board. The online format seemed to widen the discussion beyond the students who usually participate and, at times, allow for greater depth. “Here, I’m literally able to have every kid participate and have them give their own thoughts,” Marchiano said.
“We have some creative individuals [in educational leadership] who are going to be able to figure out how to engage students with devices they have at home already,” Gundersen said.
Via NJ.com:
Teachers have gone about the process of instructing remotely in many creative ways. While the Moodle homepage is always the starting point.. teachers utilize a multitude of platforms to ensure students receive the most extensive, subject-specific instruction. Faculty members have hosted live discussions through Moodle. They have initiated online forums and blogs where students can post responses to their teachers and to each other. Others have created podcasts and narrated animated PowerPoints. Some use Google Apps with its document-sharing ability to allow students to collaborate on projects.
“The benefit of a one-to-one environment is that students have all the tools they need to complete projects and continue to receive instruction,” said Director of Technology Carolynn Parisi, “even though they are physically away from school.”
Bonner-Prendie High School starts Cyber Snow Days. Obviously there have been so many snow days for students across our area.
So, in order to make up for the lost time and not take away from summer vacation, Monsignor Bonner and Archbishop Prendergast High School is taking its first cyber snow day Thursday.
- Assignments will be posted for each class by the 9 a.m. on the school’s internal system
- Assignments will be self-contained and are to be turned in electronically;
- Teachers will be available for cyber office hours, almost like any other cyber school, to answer questions from the students
Via WHDH.com
The Coyle Cassidy Memorial High School decided to try something different last week; students grabbed their iPads and logged into virtual classrooms at home.
“I thought it was great. I thought it was great. I was amazed they could do that,” said Paul Vasal, parent of freshman.
“It was a really good beginning to look at how we can pilot virtual learning when we don’t have students right in front of us because the learning continued,” said Kathleen St. Laurent, Vice Principal.
Via HuffingtonPost:
Josie Holford, head of the Poughkeepsie school, which had six snow days and four late starts this past winter, said it’s possible to enjoy the outdoors and keep learning. Students in one class were told to draw a picture in the snow for a lesson on angles and to take a picture of their creation.
At St. Therese School in the Kansas City suburb of Parkville, students recently did a virtual make-up day after classes were canceled six times because of weather.
The first experiments with virtual snow days began a few years ago as individual teachers started logging on during poor weather to drill older students. Since then, entire schools and districts have joined in, using websites such as Skype and YouTube to keep students as young as kindergarten studying during storms.
The Mississinawa Valley district on the Indiana-Ohio state line has led Ohio’s push for virtual snow days. Since Mississinawa got permission last fall to make up two snow days electronically, four other Ohio districts joined the pilot program. Superintendent Lisa Wendel has received calls from other states interested in virtual make-up days.
Via Philly.com
Principal Bill Brannick and the school’s academic board yesterday rolled out Cyber Snow Days, a pilot program aimed at offsetting missed instruction days by having students complete assignments electronically at home. The program will help the Drexel Hill school make up for past snow days in order to meet the state mandate of 180 instruction days, Brannick said.
Bonner-Prendie has to make up four snow days, and this Monday, President’s Day, which was supposed to be a holiday, is now scheduled to be a Cyber Day. School officials will look at the participation rate, “the level and quality of assignments and how the interaction between students and staff worked out during the cyber office hours,” Brannick said, adding that teachers and academic chairs gave positive feedback to the idea.
At Trinity Hall, we don’t let things like winter weather get in the way of our academic lessons. If our school is closed for snow, classes are conducted in an online environment during normal school day hours. Students meet in a virtual classroom for all of their subjects and have access to teachers throughout the day, turning in assignments using the Google cloud. By using technology, the curriculum stays on track – and we stay ahead of all other schools in the area.
Via KJRH.com:
The district’s superintendent says it ensures snow days aren’t a day off. “It’s extremely important for the academics, but it’s also pushing more into the future of learning … I think it vital and our teachers think it’s vital,” Fort Gibson Public Schools Superintendent Derald Glover said.
Fort Gibson High School teachers are able to record lessons and upload them to the school’s learning management system, called My Big Campus. Students can then access the digital assignment and complete course work.
Feb. 2011: In Chicago‘s suburbs, Lake Forest College professor Holly Swyers uploaded videos of her anthropology lecture last week on YouTube and kept an e-mail line open while Chicago absorbed 20 inches of snow and its public schools had their first snow day since 1999. University of New Hampshire professor Kent Chamberlin gave an electromagnetics lecture live — audio only — while still in pajamas.
Meanwhile, an Ohio pilot study that allows Cincinnati’s McAuley High School to hold virtual classes on what the state calls a “calamity day” was put to the test for the first time Jan. 20.
In St. Louis, where blizzards have closed public schools for six days already this year, math, English, Chinese and history classes met via the Internet as usual Wednesday at the Mary Institute Country Day School.
Sixth-graders at Claymont Intermediate School in Dennison, Ohio, for instance, are following news out of Egypt closely after having befriended peers last fall at a Cairo school via Skype, a free Internet-based service that provides messaging, voice and video.
Lakeview Academy in Gainesville, Ga., last year developed a Web-based contingency plan in case the flu epidemic hit. It didn’t, but officials deployed the plan last month when snow forced Atlanta-area schools to close for five straight days.
We can take cues from 4th Grade teacher Alison Eber of Georgia who shares her experiences Building a Virtual Classroom–Her entire post is worth a closer read.
- Choose a mix of activities that can be shared with parents.
- Take advantage of online instructional videos
- Stay accessible through your Learning Management System.
- Take advantage of the (online) resources students have at home. Law Craft – (S)tudents work to craft a law and take it through the legislative process. They have to build support by making concessions, work out the details through committees, and ultimately get the president to sign it. Edheads Weather – Students work through different weather maps to report the weather and predict future weather events.
- Be flexible
