A Different Way to Do School

I hope everyone had a safe Spring Break and found something enjoyable to do!  My Twitter feed and Facebook blew up with posts from teachers around the country that are now learning a new way to teach from their homes instead of face-to-face with their pupils.  There is a LOT of stuff out there!  One thing I am grateful for-- PTA let me attend a technology conference last February in San Antonio.  While there, I learned about an online platform called Seesaw.  I have the free version set up for my two classes and we have completed a couple of activities on there, so the children should have some working knowledge of how to use the tools available to them.  I might utilize this online platform to have students show me about their learning from home.

Speaking of learning from home, all of us will be in this together!  The district rolled out the digital backpack to parents on Sunday, March 22nd.  These are activities that should be fairly easy to implement, to help you get a sense of what kind of a schedule you need to set at home.  Please do not feel that you should be "doing school" from 8-3.  This week teachers are checking in with families and doing some online learning ourselves.  Once we get a feel for what the district expectations are, we'll get together as teaching teams to put together some distance learning plans for the students.  For now, use the resources from the district.  There are a lot of questions that I don't have answers to at this time, but feel free to email any that you have to me.  I will answer what I can!

Please download the app for Zoom.  We will possibly be using this app for a lot of our eLearning.  Here is a link for more information about Zoom (Click here).  You might want to go ahead and practice getting onto zoom by using this link:  zoom.us/test
Once we get more information about how we are using Zoom with students, I'll be able to send you an email with the date and time to log in using a link that I will include in the email.  Students will click on the link, and hopefully be able to join in fairly easily!