Written by: Nicole Weiler - K-5 Online Learning Academy Principal
I am not excited about how COVID-19 continues to disrupt daily life and has impacted society over the past few months, and maybe even years to come. I am, however, excited by the opportunity to put online learning to the test. The DPS Online Learning Academy is open to all students in kindergarten - 5th grade. It is a 100% distance learning option. This learning option operates independently from our in-person, hybrid model within each elementary school building.
Our online team of educators continues to look for ways to transform how we provide education to our DPS families. Our classrooms today are more complicated than the classrooms of decades past. We have a lot of information at our fingertips, and this can be exhausting. In a sense, technology has made teaching harder simply by providing such a wealth of options. Just as technology has changed how we teach, it has also offered the solution to some challenges we have seen. Three of the biggest challenges are -- student engagement, differentiation, and evidence of student learning.
This journey in online learning is allowing us to look at the technology we have and how we can use it effectively to engage students in learning. It has helped us transform how students take ownership of their education and take an active role in the virtual classroom. Students are engaged in using different tools within Seesaw to demonstrate evidence of learning. Tools include video presentations, voice recordings, and slide presentations. Online learning allows us to move towards more personalized learning for our students. Online learning offers the best of all worlds to teachers, students, and families.
Despite how this came about, I’m hoping that this current push toward online learning might break some paradigms we have about education. I am hopeful we will realize that there are different paths to do school, and online learning becomes one of them.