Remote Learning in the time of pandemic
Firstly, we hope that you, your family and friends are doing the best you can in this terrible time of Pandemic.
Schools around the world have been amazing in their creative responses to supporting students and families.
At school, students feel safe, have stability/structure & are surrounded by friends & teachers who care about them.
The challenge for schools is to focus on the best ways to remotely & creatively replicate their normal systems of support & learning to continue and engage students/families at a distance.
Simple put - during Covid-19 lockdowns we are now physically distant, but we need to be emotionally close.
Schools are implementing a variety of apps and platforms to engage students - in our mind the app or platform utilised is not the key thing. Teachers need to reach out each day to their students and provide them with engaging, enjoyable activities whilst catering to the students emotional needs and well-being.
We believe that aspects of remote, flexible learning done well can reflect many facets of our S.O.L.E. philosophy.
Students who are experienced with S.O.L.E. are able to self organise many aspects of their learning. This will be a very big benefit when they have to make their own decisions and think their way through different challenges.
Our hope is that the Covid-19 disaster may promote more progressive paradigms of learning. Systems and teachers need to embrace future learning possibilities which empower students. That's what we are hoping for.
Remote online learning reveals many things and one is social inequity - students from vulnerable families who don’t have a suitable device or WiFi will fall further behind. For those students who may already be disengaged or at risk the outcomes may be irreparable.
It is so obvious each day... Teachers & Schools make the difference... relationships and emotions are the most critical things in learning.
We have been blown away with the variety of student responses using online platforms - creativity & lateral thinking is obvious in student choices of learning evidence through video, photos, writing, online interactive tasks, sound bites, journals etc. Students are Self Organising many of their responses... self organising learning provides choice.
Choice = Engagement = Learning.
Variability in teacher attitudes & capacity to develop warm, trusting relationships with students are highlighted even more in remote learning - no surprises that students who have been encouraged & supported by positive teachers are adjusting well & taking risks as they embrace change.
Translating term planners created for face to face learning into engaging experiences delivered remotely to students is challenging on many levels; so too, the urgency to develop new skills to enable this - that’s what teachers around the world are achieving. Kudos to our great "chalkies".
In order to advance you have to be creative, otherwise you just repeat the things that have already been created or commonly adhere to - your thinking is the same as everyone else.
Q/ How many Principals & teachers will revert to the same teacher centered processes they’ve always used?
How many will use the learnings from this Pandemic experience to move closer to empowering students and implementing aspects of self organising?
Let's hope there are lessons learned which will drive positive changes in schools. We can go back to "normal and tradition".... or we can...???
Schools around the world have been amazing in their creative responses to supporting students and families.
At school, students feel safe, have stability/structure & are surrounded by friends & teachers who care about them.
The challenge for schools is to focus on the best ways to remotely & creatively replicate their normal systems of support & learning to continue and engage students/families at a distance.
Simple put - during Covid-19 lockdowns we are now physically distant, but we need to be emotionally close.
Schools are implementing a variety of apps and platforms to engage students - in our mind the app or platform utilised is not the key thing. Teachers need to reach out each day to their students and provide them with engaging, enjoyable activities whilst catering to the students emotional needs and well-being.
We believe that aspects of remote, flexible learning done well can reflect many facets of our S.O.L.E. philosophy.
Students who are experienced with S.O.L.E. are able to self organise many aspects of their learning. This will be a very big benefit when they have to make their own decisions and think their way through different challenges.
Our hope is that the Covid-19 disaster may promote more progressive paradigms of learning. Systems and teachers need to embrace future learning possibilities which empower students. That's what we are hoping for.
Remote online learning reveals many things and one is social inequity - students from vulnerable families who don’t have a suitable device or WiFi will fall further behind. For those students who may already be disengaged or at risk the outcomes may be irreparable.
It is so obvious each day... Teachers & Schools make the difference... relationships and emotions are the most critical things in learning.
We have been blown away with the variety of student responses using online platforms - creativity & lateral thinking is obvious in student choices of learning evidence through video, photos, writing, online interactive tasks, sound bites, journals etc. Students are Self Organising many of their responses... self organising learning provides choice.
Choice = Engagement = Learning.
Variability in teacher attitudes & capacity to develop warm, trusting relationships with students are highlighted even more in remote learning - no surprises that students who have been encouraged & supported by positive teachers are adjusting well & taking risks as they embrace change.
Translating term planners created for face to face learning into engaging experiences delivered remotely to students is challenging on many levels; so too, the urgency to develop new skills to enable this - that’s what teachers around the world are achieving. Kudos to our great "chalkies".
In order to advance you have to be creative, otherwise you just repeat the things that have already been created or commonly adhere to - your thinking is the same as everyone else.
Q/ How many Principals & teachers will revert to the same teacher centered processes they’ve always used?
How many will use the learnings from this Pandemic experience to move closer to empowering students and implementing aspects of self organising?
Let's hope there are lessons learned which will drive positive changes in schools. We can go back to "normal and tradition".... or we can...???