Note:  This post was originally published on April 8, 2020, but has been re-posted because of a design issue in WordPress.  

So, here we are. We are just a few months into 2020 and a global pandemic (COVID-19) has hit. Schools are closing everywhere, and entire regions of the world are shutting down to allow social distancing to slow the spread of the disease so as not to overwhelm medical systems. This sounds like something from a blockbuster action film, but this is reality right now, and it’s pretty surreal.

I live in Oakland, California, which is near some of the earliest hotspots of the outbreak. My district was slow to shut down, so we are just in the early stages of moving our instruction online, and we did very little preparation to make this happen. We have planned for a 3 week shutdown, but judging from the progression of the disease in other areas, I wonder if that will be long enough to provide safety for our students and school staff. Either way, our teachers are being thrown into the deep end of online instruction, and many have not used it or only use Google Classroom for announcements and reminders.

One interesting thing that the coronavirus school closures is illustrating is the importance of good training for teachers about how to create and use online learning environments. A lot of school systems hire IT people to build and run their school networks, but these people are often not trained to educate students or to train teachers how to use the Internet in teaching. Because of this, many school systems purchase one-size-fits-all digital products for teachers to use, rather than empowering teachers to create digital learning spaces for diverse learners. Because of this, teachers are getting left behind in digital literacy because there is nothing to create and share. And that means that students are also remaining digitally illiterate, even with phones and tablets everywhere, because they are locked into these systems rather than using the tools of the digital world that they will be launched into when they leave school.

I feel prepared, because my students and I have been using Hapara Workspaces to provide resources to my students and organize my own materials (slides, assessments, printables) and to create a nice workflow. My students are familiar with using both Hapara Workspaces and Google Classroom, so I am kind of looking forward to the challenge of teaching fully online for a little while. This has made me reimagine my in-class workspace and scaffold it differently for my students to learn from home.

I feel a little unprepared, though, to help my students who do not have internet access, though I have been trying to create paper packets from the resources on my workspace, and no-tech alternatives for the digital assignments. Flipgrid “Question of the Day” checkins will become journal/sketchbook prompts, our digital poster project will become a paper-and-marker project, and collaborative discussions will be writing prompts. Though this isn’t ideal, it has brought up the reality that — even in the shadow of Silicon Valley — many students still don’t have access to technology. Eventually I would like to create workspaces that can be downloaded at school and functional offline, but I’m not quite there, yet.

One thing I am very sure about is that it is crunch time, and my students will be logging in on Monday to learn. I’m ready with a workspace that is designed to help my students feel as connected as possible, even though we are not in the same room. I included video instruction so they can see and hear me, Flipgrid responses so students can see each others’ faces, collaborative discussions, fun activities, and announcements to help them through this challenging time. There are so many logistics issues but the problems will inform my future workspaces, so we will only improve as we go.