With high waters closing roads and making travel potentially dangerous, Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. kept its school buses parked and allowed teachers and students to test out technology with lessons conducted remotely on district-supplied computing devices.
With the weather emergencies coming after spring break and with no makeup days built into the remaining two months of the school year, Superintendent Jim Roberts felt that eLearning was the best option available.
The district’s first-ever eLearning days, held April 4 to 6, were deemed successful by administrators, although the district learned a few things of its own during that stretch.
Nearly 76 percent of BCSC students logged into the district’s learning management system during the three eLearning days that were held, said Nick Williams, BCSC coordinator of instructional technology. That percentage represents nearly 9,000 of the district’s 11,500 students.
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More than 200 calls were placed to the eLearning help line, most of them from parents requesting their child’s password to log onto the eLearning system.
To help both students and parents be better prepared for the next eLearning day, BCSC is considering holding parent-training nights and sending home user names and passwords with students.
And if practice indeed makes perfect, more practice on eLearning tools may just be in the works.
That includes more sessions during regular school days, as well as take-home practices with devices at all grade levels, Williams said.
The district technology staff dealt with technology issues of their own during the three-day eLearning run.
Errors occurred with the district’s email system due to the number of users that resulted in adding services to resolve the issue.
In addition, a mobile content filter on high school laptops required a server reboot the first afternoon of eLearning to help fix access problems, Williams said.
“Most of the comments I’ve seen on social media and other places have been positive,” said Mike Jamerson, BCSC technology director. “We would rather have our kids in school, but we think this is the best alternative.”
While the eLearning plan calls for three schools in different geographical parts of the city being open for students without internet access at home, that option was skipped considering 15 different roads were closed across Bartholomew County because of flooding.
The designated eLearning centers are Columbus East High School, Northside Middle School and Southside Elementary School.
Williams said BCSC will look at the possibilities of having sites open for one-on-one help, in addition to Wi-Fi and food access. The eLearning take-aways included especially having more Wi-Fi access points in Taylorsville and Elizabethtown, he said.
If students were feeling stress from trying out eLearning for the first time, several building principals introduced levity into the school-at-home days.
Brett Findley, principal at Columbus Signature Academy Lincoln Campus, posted a video on YouTube on the final eLearning day, challenging individuals to an eLearning day dance-off.
The three-minute video, which received more than 780 views and shows Findley dancing, was posted to CSA Lincoln’s Facebook page and on the school’s Twitter account, he said.
“It went a lot bigger than I was thinking,” Findley said.
A second video posted by Findley used Face Swap, which incorporates someone else’s face on a person’s body, Findley said.
CSA Lincoln teachers sent home Chromebooks with the first- to sixth-grade classrooms, suspecting they might be needed, Findley said.
“I thought the parents and the kids did a job of making the most of the situation,” Findley said.
A GoPro camera was used at Schmitt Elementary School to show students that adults can have fun as well, said Brett Boezeman, principal at the school. The video, which was also posted on YouTube, was shot by Boezeman and featured several staff members at Schmitt heading outside to the playground.
The GoPro devices were recently used on kindergarten students to show visitors during Schmitt’s kindergarten roundup night about school from the perspective of students, Boezeman said.
“We try to do fun things every once in a while to keep things in focus and in shape,” he said.
Boezeman also said he was pleased with how eLearning went.
“All things considered, I thought it was very successful,” he said.
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75.8: Percentage of students who logged into itslearning over three days of eLearning
200-plus: Number of phone calls and e-mails received by eLearning helpline
69.4: Percentage of stakeholders who filled out a public survey that rated the eLearning experience as 3 out of 4 with 4 being outstanding and 1 being frustrating
1,520: Number of professional development courses completed by support staff to make up paid days
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