chicot60
02-08-2011, 12:32 PM
By Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY
So much for snow days.
Despite winter storms that forced schools and colleges across the nation to cancel classes, tech-savvy educators are turning to Facebook, podcasts and other Web tools to keep students on track.
In Chicago's suburbs, Lake Forest College professor Holly Swyers uploaded videos of her anthropology lecture last week on YouTube and kept an e-mail line open while Chicago absorbed 20 inches of snow and its public schools had their first snow day since 1999. University of New Hampshire professor Kent Chamberlin gave an electromagnetics lecture live — audio only — while still in pajamas.
Meanwhile, an Ohio pilot study that allows Cincinnati's McAuley High School to hold virtual classes on what the state calls a "calamity day" was put to the test for the first time Jan. 20.
In St. Louis, where blizzards have closed public schools for six days already this year, math, English, Chinese and history classes met via the Internet as usual Wednesday at the Mary Institute Country Day School.
"We've got exams coming up in three weeks. Everyone was like, 'We can't be missing (any more classes),' " says Elizabeth Helfant, the school's technology director.
The demise of what is often a welcome mid-winter break for students is mostly a byproduct of growing efforts to connect classrooms with the outside world. Sixth-graders at Claymont Intermediate School in Dennison, Ohio, for instance, are following news out of Egypt closely after having befriended peers last fall at a Cairo school via Skype, a free Internet-based service that provides messaging, voice and video.
Skype's Jacqueline Botterill says it's becoming "increasingly popular" for schools to link students who are sick at home or in the hospital to classes.
Lakeview Academy in Gainesville, Ga., last year developed a Web-based contingency plan in case the flu epidemic hit. It didn't, but officials deployed the plan last month when snow forced Atlanta-area schools to close for five straight days.
Of course, offering a virtual class doesn't guarantee attendance. Just six of 106 students in engineering professor Nancy Kinner's class at the University of New Hampshire checked in online Wednesday. Kinner wasn't surprised; the class meets at 8 a.m.
"It's a snow day. These are college students," she says. "What would you do?"
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-02-08-1Asnowdays08_ST_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
So much for snow days.
Despite winter storms that forced schools and colleges across the nation to cancel classes, tech-savvy educators are turning to Facebook, podcasts and other Web tools to keep students on track.
In Chicago's suburbs, Lake Forest College professor Holly Swyers uploaded videos of her anthropology lecture last week on YouTube and kept an e-mail line open while Chicago absorbed 20 inches of snow and its public schools had their first snow day since 1999. University of New Hampshire professor Kent Chamberlin gave an electromagnetics lecture live — audio only — while still in pajamas.
Meanwhile, an Ohio pilot study that allows Cincinnati's McAuley High School to hold virtual classes on what the state calls a "calamity day" was put to the test for the first time Jan. 20.
In St. Louis, where blizzards have closed public schools for six days already this year, math, English, Chinese and history classes met via the Internet as usual Wednesday at the Mary Institute Country Day School.
"We've got exams coming up in three weeks. Everyone was like, 'We can't be missing (any more classes),' " says Elizabeth Helfant, the school's technology director.
The demise of what is often a welcome mid-winter break for students is mostly a byproduct of growing efforts to connect classrooms with the outside world. Sixth-graders at Claymont Intermediate School in Dennison, Ohio, for instance, are following news out of Egypt closely after having befriended peers last fall at a Cairo school via Skype, a free Internet-based service that provides messaging, voice and video.
Skype's Jacqueline Botterill says it's becoming "increasingly popular" for schools to link students who are sick at home or in the hospital to classes.
Lakeview Academy in Gainesville, Ga., last year developed a Web-based contingency plan in case the flu epidemic hit. It didn't, but officials deployed the plan last month when snow forced Atlanta-area schools to close for five straight days.
Of course, offering a virtual class doesn't guarantee attendance. Just six of 106 students in engineering professor Nancy Kinner's class at the University of New Hampshire checked in online Wednesday. Kinner wasn't surprised; the class meets at 8 a.m.
"It's a snow day. These are college students," she says. "What would you do?"
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-02-08-1Asnowdays08_ST_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip