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Swine Flu and Online Learning
UPDATE: One more reason for establishing more online learning: kids with illnesses
Ever since I read Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns
Over the past several months we have also been dealing with an economic situation that has even threatened some school district budgets leading some districts to cut staff. And still, for the most part, we remain steadfastly married to our traditional structures.
One year ago I took steps to begin some part-time online teaching for two reasons: 1) to learn more about the pedagogy of the online classroom and 2) to diversify my skill set and expand my employment options. Fortunately I have a bachelor’s and master’s degree in a subject area outside of education which makes it easy for me to apply for many college-level online adjunct positions in that content area. This has been a very rewarding and productive endeavor.
What I have discovered however, is that colleges and universities — and many private or for-profit K-12 virtual schools — include free training as part of the interview and hiring process, while some of the public (state-run) virtual schools require potential teachers to pay for their own state-approved training program (usually in the neighborhood of $500 per course) before being hired. There is a very strong message in both of those approaches — one says “welcome, come on in and we will prepare you for this” and the other says “sure, you can do this, as long as we don’t have to invest in your development…”
As I watch the current news about the potential Swine Flu pandemic and I read recent blog posts regarding the need for practicing online teaching and learning so that one can shift online if a state of emergency is declared (I love Brit’s suggestion of doing once-per-year weeklong “online drills”) and “laptops as response to emergency”, I can’t help but reflect back on my earlier thoughts about how unprepared our system is for anything outside of the traditional approach to education. We don’t even consider it a priority to train teachers (for free) to be able to teach online. At the very least we could set up state-approved certifications based on an exam rather than one-size-fits-all fee-based training, and allow teachers to just take a certification exam.
There are many good reasons to begin making the shift to more online or blended learning experiences in our classrooms — including emergency situations such as a major flu outbreak, snow & ice storms, or a hurricane — but we are not making the investment in this as we should be. I pray that we don’t see a widespread outbreak of this flu, but if we do then we are extremely unprepared for ensuring that learning continues even if the schools are shut down for health & safety reasons. It may be too late to prepare in this particular situation, but it’s not too late to begin preparing for future emergencies — as well as to just innovate to ensure that we can meet the needs of many students who aren’t well served by our current traditional structures.
A few things we can start doing now:
- Make more of an effort to implement 1:1 across all schools and districts
- Ensure that ALL teachers are trained and have experience in facilitating online learning
- Let go of our belief that “seat time” is the only way to measure learning or productivity
- Enable employees — including teachers — to access the network remotely via VPN
- As a society, realize that schools are not babysitters — students should stay home if they are sick
What else would you add to this list?
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