What to do on snow days…
5:12 pm on the 6th of January, 2010With the weather having been dreadful recently the schools in the Scottish Borders have been closed all yesterday and today, and are due to stay closed until at least Monday. What that has meant is staff working from home. Finding things to usefully do can be pretty difficult when resources are all in the closed school building. However I kept myself occupied today keeping in touch with my wonderful PLN on twitter, and listening to the tremendously local Radio Borders.
Two things that have kept creeping up on twitter is the mention of teachers delivering ‘lessons’ online, and the use of glow. So I’ve been wondering how I could try and do something useful for pupils – and let’s be honest they must be fed up of this snow, it’s not as though there’s anything fun you can do in it, is there?
Can I make a request – would it be possible to have some sort of online meet tonight to discuss how we can use ICT to keep education going when schools are closed. I’m thinking Glowmeet if most people have logins, or perhaps we can set up a flashmeeting?
Why tonight? Well, it needn’t be, but I’d like to attempt something tomorrow, while schools are still closed.
So, if you are interested in taking part or helping, can you either leave a comment here, or sent me a tweet to @stuartmeldrum – I’d really appreciate it.
Two examples of such snow lessons are @PrimaryPete_ ’s (post about lesson here) and the Year 6 online lesson at Heathfield by @deputymitchell.
Update:
Flashmeeting booked for tonight at 7.30. Feel free to join in. Join it here.
January 6th, 2010 at 5:26 pm on the 6th of January, 2010
What % of your students have internet at their / friends houses? Guess that’s going to be the real decider
January 6th, 2010 at 5:52 pm on the 6th of January, 2010
Hi Stuart
Been following the same sort of discussion today too…
I used a NING when I was teaching to keep lessons going when I was away (though not due to snow) – the actual NING has now been taken offline, but was used by 6th formers because of the intensive nature of their course and the need to make the most of all the available time.
This is the sort of thing that needs to be planned for in advance I suppose: “if the school should ever be closed, this is what you need to do…”
In Geography, I would probably produce some activities based around watching iPlayer content (which many households would have access to – but perhaps not all ??)
e.g. last night’s Story of the Noughties
or Mark Ollis’ resources based around Top Gear’s Bolivian adventure…
http://www.slideshare.net/ollismark/bolivia-top-gear
The snowy weather itself lends itself to local enquiry work e.g. how deep is the snow in x locations around your house / listen to 3 radio news reports and count the different impacts of the weather / wordle the front page of local newspapers etc.
Not free to have a Flashmeeting but interested in the results.
Best wishes
GeoBlogs
January 6th, 2010 at 6:28 pm on the 6th of January, 2010
Thanks for your comments both.
Emma, I don’t know the details but it’s not a huge proportion. My main problem would be getting the message out – as Alan points out it needs forward planning.
Alan, I had similar thoughts, though I hadn’t considered iPlayer. Loads of tech stuff on the Noughties programe last night possibly? I didn’t see it myself, however there are loads of clips on BBC Learning zone that could form basis for some discussion, or questions.
I had also though that some questions about the terminology that pupils need to know, perhaps some sort of challenge to see who can answer past paper questions which are available online, in Scotland at least.
January 6th, 2010 at 6:59 pm on the 6th of January, 2010
Indeed….
Past paper banks could be published using Scribd or such presumably
January 7th, 2010 at 3:35 pm on the 7th of January, 2010
I’m sure they could, so long as there are no copyright etc issues
January 8th, 2010 at 8:43 pm on the 8th of January, 2010
on our Moodle VLE Ive just set up a folder structure into which staff can upload files with work for students, as we expect snow may close us again on monday if the forcasts are accurate.
Ive put a link on the front page of the VLE which when clicked displays the contents of the folder (and sub folders nested in it, and files dropped in the folders) in a new window. Ive also done a Captivate demo (and seperate printable instruction sheet) that staff can watch to see how to add files, and hopefully they will stick to a naming convention Ive suggested. Its yet to be tested in anger but staff started adding work within 10 minutes – and thats after we finished on a snowy Friday afternoon! We are all expected to add work for our classes if we shut and the idea went down surprisingly well.
January 8th, 2010 at 8:46 pm on the 8th of January, 2010
Impressive take up from staff by the sounds of it. You will be using Moodle as a resource with the pupils normally anyway though, won’t you? That makes the battle that bit easier perhaps?
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