New opportunities for distance learning

While Learning Architects was born out of my experience as a principal, teacher, technology geek and leadership coach, sometimes the ideas for this support come from much closer to home. I have two daughters and both are currently learning at home due to the COVID-19 lockdown.

This has made for a busier time at our place, on top of a whirlwind couple of weeks on the work front as our team prepares to help schools across NZ get ready for new opportunities for distance learning. We understand it’s a mammoth task for principals, teachers and students to get to grips with this at such break neck speed, and fully appreciate some of the challenges – and opportunities – ahead.

Having the girls at home is already proving to be an excellent opportunity to observe and reflect on the whole experience both as a parent and as an educator, and consider how this situation might translate on the ground for all the people in the schools we work with… teachers, students and parents!

So here’s my first insight. Given what I do for a living – supporting leaders and teachers, it was a surprise to me how strongly my parental instincts kicked in when one of my girls was struggling a bit with the whole ‘learning at home’ scenario. And it was almost inevitable that I was going to end up being the ‘slightly curious’ parent who kind of knows a bit too much! 

My 13 year old, Isabella who’s at high school, had a full on week as Google Classroom was somewhat ‘filled up’ by her teachers. Given that it was the first week of this type of working, she was feeling the pressure, but responded admirably. As a parent, I could see how she is becoming responsible and self-managing, and as a parent, I was proud to see how she is balancing her workload from multiple teachers. 

I’m also feeling proud of my 9 year old Amelia who has had a number of notable experiences this week which have caused me to reflect on the potential this situation has for learning, as well as bringing me and my wife, Angela, great joy.

Another surprise as the ‘tech support’ Dad at our end, was that I found it somewhat stressful (there were over 40 students all presenting different musical items in this virtual meeting) but we were pleased that we managed to sync the backing music up and adjust the volume so that it didn’t drown Amelia out! 

And while this online performance experience might not seem like a huge achievement from a distance, for a young girl, riding the excitement, the disappointment and then successfully rising to the occasion was a big deal for her.  And for those of you who are parents, if you have ever had one of those moments that brought tears to your eyes – for me and Angela, this was one of those moments.

Some professional observations based on this personal experience.

Workload: As everyone gets used to scheduling activities in Google Classroom (or whatever other tool you might use such as Hāpara, for example) rather than a traditional timetable, teachers will need to be careful/mindful not to plan too much into the day. 

Enabling learner agency: When teachers give students agency over their learning, they can solve their own problems in creative ways. This is an amazing opportunity for students to take increased control over their learning. These girls would never had had the opportunity to problem solve and come to a creative solution that included everyone had they not been thrown into this situation. I wonder what other opportunities this will present as the weeks go by?

Digital citizenship: Managing side conversations between students that give rise to misunderstandings and conflict is something to think about when considering the social/emotional aspects of the programme. Solving problems via digital means isn’t always a good way to overcome challenges that students will inevitably encounter.

For instance, if one child sends another via a chat message, this can very easily be misinterpreted. With the absence of gesture, tone and body language, how might we create opportunities to ensure the social emotional aspects of learning can continue? The way it happened in this case was for parents and teacher and children to come together to talk it through using a video conference, which resulted in the girls coming up with a creative, inclusive solution to their problem.

So to summarise, there are many opportunities in distance learning, if we apply what we know about best practices for learning to this new situation, I am confident we’ll find innovative and workable ways through it that result in great outcomes for our young people.