Here’s an ancillary benefit of building a robust online learning system to promote safe, socially distanced learning during the pandemic: we can also get rid of snow days! The Rapid City school district says that now that its teachers and students are getting into the groove of doing school online, there’s no need to call school off for bad weather:
Now that students and teachers are comfortable with E-learning, if there is a snow day, Rapid City Area Schools would be able to send their students home with their computers to have a day of distance learning instead of taking the day off.
…“They won’t have to make them up in the Spring, and neither will our staff,” said Katy Urban, the Public Information Officer for RCAS. “We’re hoping that is a good solution for something that has kind of been a stressor for our school district, you know, trying to figure out when to make up those days, and that’s typically something that’s tough to plan around for our staff and families, so this is one nice advantage to everyone having a computer” [Anderley Penwell, “Snow Days No More for RCAS,” KOTA-TV, 2020.10.23].
Aberdeen called off school last week Thursday for snow that never became impassable and, unlike coronavirus, killed no one. If Aberdeen and every other school district would build a viable hybrid learning model that allows the delivery of all lessons online at any time, they could put an end to those 5-a.m. cancellations and the disruption of the school calendar.
Fight coronavirus now, end snow days forever: build your online learning skills!
As a teacher, I liked snow days because I enjoyed the break as well as the students. I never had a school year that went into June.
This comes from Walt Hickey’s Numlock News. (I concur with his concluding sentence.)
Back To School
A new survey of U.S. adults finds a serious split in the country as to whether colleges and universities made a good decision bringing kids back on campus for in-person instruction this fall, with 48 percent contending this was the wrong decision while 50 percent said it was the right one. Fully 68 percent of respondents said that a course taken only online doesn’t offer equal educational value, while 30 percent said it provided equal value. I mean, listen, in defense of the distance stuff even during normal times there are a lot of impediments to college courses providing optimal value and as a person who drank and smoked most of those impediments, it’s really not the end of the world.
Kim Parker, Amanda Barroso and Richard Fry, Pew Research Center