Thursday, 26 March 2020

Online Learning is Here!

What a week this has been!
The announcement on Monday that we were going into a nation-wide lock down at midnight on Wednesday sent many into a spin.
There was panic buying nation-wide and widespread anxiety from parents about their children's educational future if they miss 4 weeks of school - which is actually 2 weeks because there are 2 weeks of holidays in the 4 week. But who knows if it will only be 4 weeks. It could be longer and we need to prepare for it to be longer.

Our Manaiakalani team were onto it a week before this announcement and delivered a doc title "Limit the Links" to all our schools.

We were preparing all that week before the Level 4 announcement was made. We connected with Principals to ensure they had read the "Limit the Links" doc and shared it to staff and that they realised what a lockdown could mean for their school.

Schools were closed effectively on Monday and teachers were to be at school preparing and teaching remotely. We supported schools on Tuesday and Wednesday face to face as much as we could. Most of the support I provided was about using Google Hangout Meet with learners. Lots of the sites just  needed a bit of tweaking in the schools I supported.

Our Manaiakalani Schools are well poised to deliver #remotelearning. Some schools could tick most items off the list immediately and in particular having a school site with links to class sites and blogs.
Take a look at some of the local schools and their set up for this...


This means there is one portal to all sites and blogs in the school. Whānau would only need to Google their child's school and can get to the learning that their child can do remotely easily.

Click here to view all the schools in our local cluster.