Jennings County School Corp. instituted e-learning for the 2016-17 school year as an alternative to having students make up at least three snow days.
Teachers provide students with online lessons, which can be downloaded at school in advance, so that students can do the lessons with or without wireless connections when school is closed.
Previously, any missed days were made up in the classroom.
Each snow day at the high school is considered a “red” day. Red days are another new addition to the schedule this year, as students attend all eight of their classes in one day.
“If we hadn’t done them as red days, then each teacher would have to have three full-length assignments posted to Google Classroom, and that just wouldn’t work. This was the only logical way to do it,” said Charlinda Evans, a social studies teacher at the high school.
The district finally got to test e-learning when two snow days occurred in the first week back to school after Christmas break.
Thankfully, all the school’s teachers spent the fall gearing up for possible e-learning days.
However, some students said they were upset about the process. Each e-learning day should take about six hours to complete because it is supposed to be equivalent to an actual school day. Some students said it took much longer than that in order for them to complete everything that was assigned to them — especially students taking more advanced classes with a heavier workload.
Now that the school district has completed its first e-learning days, all the schools and the various grade levels have the opportunity to review how e-learning worked and make any adjustments that could make the system better.
