RE@LBlog found this recent headline article on keeping an “open mind” in a local publication,” MINNPOST,” just as many local students went back to online school during their prolonged “Stay Home!”
Here’s the caption from an involved parent: “I’m just trying to keep an open mind: What the first day of distance learning looked like in Minnesota.”
The “Online Learning Cloud” out there is not like the school students once learned in. What’s now called “distance learning” is in fact distancing many students. Teachers wonder aloud, “How am I going to meet the needs of students who don’t know how to learn online when I’m not sure how to teach online.”
Can effective teaching and learning be accomplished on “The Cloud?” Here’s what happened at home to a first grader from the Cass Lake-Bena School District, and her mother, a student at Bemidji State University with only one laptop at home.
Click on the MINNPOST graphic below right to read the entire article.
“She definitely needed more support than her brothers did with their typical classes,” she said. “I was by her side the whole time she was learning and trying to access that education.”
But they still ran into some issues, in navigating the new online learning platforms together and in adjusting to longer communication wait times as her daughter waited to hear back from her teachers when she had questions about her assignments.“Luckily, she had a brother in the same grade who was able to help as well. Without him, I don’t think she would have gotten her assignments done today,” Haglund said. “It was certainly a team effort here today.”
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There are lessons to be learned for all of us who serve the many needs of learners. Here’s the closing quote at the end of the MINNPOST story:
“Luckily, she had a brother [at home] in the same grade who was able to help as well. Without him, I don’t think she would have gotten her assignments done today…It was certainly a team effort here today.”
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