Morones, A. (2014). Snow Days Turn Into E-Learning Days for Some Schools. Education Week, 33(20), 6-7.
In this article school districts discuss the importance of instructional time versus safety of the students. It states in the article that children's safety is more important than missing a day of learning instruction. Different school districts talk about activities and lesson plans they could have students access in the Learning Management System from home. Even though lessons, videos and notes can be accessed through the system, students still need that human interaction from live teachers in person. The other statement I found to be interesting is that since all students don't have access to internet at home, they will have two weeks to complete those assignments. I feel as though allowing them to have extra time defeats the purpose of the lessons on the snow days.
In this article school districts discuss the importance of instructional time versus safety of the students. It states in the article that children's safety is more important than missing a day of learning instruction. Different school districts talk about activities and lesson plans they could have students access in the Learning Management System from home. Even though lessons, videos and notes can be accessed through the system, students still need that human interaction from live teachers in person. The other statement I found to be interesting is that since all students don't have access to internet at home, they will have two weeks to complete those assignments. I feel as though allowing them to have extra time defeats the purpose of the lessons on the snow days.
In my classroom, technology can be used to eliminate snow days by assigning activities and assignments through Canvas or GoMath and ReadyGen (Literacy program). Since all of our subjects and lessons are on line, we could easily assign a math video lesson along with homework problems to solve. They would even be able to view the whole literacy lesson, along with access to the pages to read in their textbook/story. Since we are creating google docs almost every day in their google drive, they would know how to access this feature at home and complete it for their Reading/Language Analysis piece. We could even do a TodaysMeet or an online discussion with students.
I think it would be a good thing for them to do it at home, because then they wouldn't lose any instruction time. Now not everyone has internet access at home, nor do they take home their chromebooks every night. So, that could be a problem for some students to be able to complete their work at home. However, once they know the protocol for snow days, they will be in the habit of making sure they bring their chromebooks home, if there is a possibility of being a snow day the next day.
