Wow. Today started with 6” of heavy wet snow and no power and/or Internet for some of us. Not quite a snow day but close. And then the sun came out and the temperature rose to 50 degrees. “Unusual weather we’re havin’, ain’t it?” (C'mon, name that quote.)
It wasn’t weather that slowed the day down, though. It became apparent in mid-morning that something wasn’t right online. Students didn’t seem to be receiving or replying to teacher emails. Sure enough, after some investigating we found out that Gaggle, the email filtering system that protects student email communication, was either down or at least struggling with the load. By shortly after noon things were back together and students were completing activities and checking in. Hard to believe this could be the only glitch we run into.
At the state level, Governor Mills announced mandatory closing of non-essential businesses for 2 weeks. In Portland, an order was given to stay in homes with very limited exceptions for the next 5 days. We are doing our best to control the spread of COVID-19, and we are committed to keeping our school going for every one of our students. For next week, we are planning to record attendance, such as it is, and introducing new learning units and lessons. We will be running some synchronous PD around apps that will help us best deliver new content. Of course, all of this is new learning for everyone to some degree. It’s good that so many of us have been on the receiving end of this style of learning, having taken online courses over the past decade and more. Will this impact how we all do school forever once this phase is over? Just another question....
9 days down.
spk
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It wasn’t weather that slowed the day down, though. It became apparent in mid-morning that something wasn’t right online. Students didn’t seem to be receiving or replying to teacher emails. Sure enough, after some investigating we found out that Gaggle, the email filtering system that protects student email communication, was either down or at least struggling with the load. By shortly after noon things were back together and students were completing activities and checking in. Hard to believe this could be the only glitch we run into.
At the state level, Governor Mills announced mandatory closing of non-essential businesses for 2 weeks. In Portland, an order was given to stay in homes with very limited exceptions for the next 5 days. We are doing our best to control the spread of COVID-19, and we are committed to keeping our school going for every one of our students. For next week, we are planning to record attendance, such as it is, and introducing new learning units and lessons. We will be running some synchronous PD around apps that will help us best deliver new content. Of course, all of this is new learning for everyone to some degree. It’s good that so many of us have been on the receiving end of this style of learning, having taken online courses over the past decade and more. Will this impact how we all do school forever once this phase is over? Just another question....
9 days down.
spk
><>
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