Getting back into your life

One of the many things that became very apparent in over one hundred days of media-saturated lockdown is just how much attention I have given to it. I know the ‘experts all say’ and it turns out, I defeinately secummed to the toxi-media-cycle. Lockdown has been aweful for millions of people. I have the good fortune of not living in a unit or an appartment, so while I could not leave the property, the experience has not been all together clostraphopic.

The last four months has made be critically aware of just how far the mind can drift from the what you believe to be the safe harbour of your life. The place which is familiar, comfortable and full of hidden agenda items that we all push into the background. The plain fact is that I have indulged my thoughts to such a degree that any action I might believe I should or could take was easily backgrounded by my own BS. This is quite a wake up call, but I’m okay with it because I now know how to navigate out of the marina and into the world. No expectations and not paying attention to ‘thoughts’ …

Ghosts in the machine –

If you are in ‘lockdown’ as I am, then you’re now involved in Distance Education. For some, this means attempting to replicate the school meta, in a medium designed to supersede it. Online VCs tied to time-tables, content ported from paper to PDF all serve to replicate school and overcome the issues of a failed vaccine roll out and quarantine program in this country. School is a key motif of a successful nation, a symbol of normality and stability and so it makes sense to ignore children’s-heath, lack of ventilation or that work-sites are prime sites of transmission leading to entire households contracting the dammed ‘rona.

As the months roll on, students become acutely aware that ‘home learning’ is procedural for the most part, lacking connection with friends and overly observable to parents who are bombarded with political messages. The result seems to be ghosting in VCs. Logging on, no webcam, no engagement, just here to tick the box, get the next task and log-off. I have lost count of how many ‘ghosts’ are in VCs after the class (I try to keep VCs to 10 mins tops, and pre-record content-skill components for asynchronous viewing).

The solution seems to be to offer rewards for participation under the time-table VC model – a merit for webcams on or some other token. This doesn’t mean they are more engaged of course. The ghosts in the machine problem particularly effects those who struggle to participate in procedural VCs, have to share devices and connections or cannot connect with friends to nut-out the problem.

Dare I say it: some children thrive online, they follow the process and tick the boxes as well as they do at school. Offering them a merit for a webcam is simply a free trinket. To be motivated means to be moved to do something.

Students can perform extrinsically motivated actions with resentment, resistance, and disinterest or, alternatively, with an attitude of willingness that reflects an inner acceptance of the value or utility of a task.

It is therefore difficult to get self-reports from students in a VC for many reasons. The primary one is that children do no operate or are motivated in the same way a first year University student or Employee in a VC. Why would they? We get very limited self-reports of interest and enjoyment of the activity as teachers.

So here’s the challenge of “home learning”. A student’s feelings of competence will not enhance intrinsic motivation unless they are accompanied by a sense of autonomy. An extrinsic reward does not solve this problem – even if it re-assures adults.

The longer this lockdown runs, the deeper this problem becomes. The gap between those doing okay and those ghosting school becomes more obvious and alarming.

The lockdown classroom is different. There is limited value in pretending is a flip or a port.

The online spaces requires classroom conditions that allow satisfaction of these three basic human needs—that is
that support the innate needs to feel connected, effective, and agentic as one is exposed to new ideas and exercises new skills. Ghosting the class is a power students have and it’s clearly a growing problem.

Head in the sand isn’t a good policy.

The possibility of a lock-down looms over Sydney as the newest variant of Covid-19 evaded NSW quarantine aided by the various political failures of state and federal government. Like many people, I’ve come to live with and accept the reality that I have to live with a political class willing to experiment with a society in crisis. With 4% of Australian’s fully vaccinated, it would appear the July school holiday can’t come soon enough. Once again, teachers are excluded from any priority for vaccination, despite clear evidence that schools are major vectors for the Delta and Delta Plus variant of Covid-19. We might not die if we are vaccinated, but we are certainly at risk.

In early May, numerous public heath groups in the UK were expressing concern the UK Government was withholding data about growing infection rate in British schools. This is reminiscent of messaging by the UK government’s autumn and winter 2020 rhetoric where the mantra “schools are safe” was used repeatedly to rationalise the lack of mitigations in schools.

The summary being It is likely that lack of mitigations in schools played an important role in this highly transmissible, more virulent, escape variant gaining dominance rapidly across England.

In Australia, the media have not highlighted clear parallels with Australian education’s stance on keeping schools open. Recent news media has focused on the extra-ordinary wealth of private schools including keeping millions in JobKeeper payments, lack of staffing (note the on-going omission towards the number of casual and temp staff who can’t get permanency) and the ravings of Mark Latham which are not worth repeating.

Australia is not in a strong position to resist the growth of Delta and Delta plus variants at the national level and on-going issues with quarantine, mixed and selective political messaging in NSW has omitted the clear danger presented by schools and un-vaccinated staffing. Schools remain exempt from the rules applied to every other building in the state, with no social distancing going at whatsoever. While PPE (staff provided) is an option for some schools, the approach is to wash-hands and sanitize with no mention of the air-born nature of the current spread.

With thirty students in a room, or 600 at assembly, it is astonishing schools are ignoring WHO advice, where this deadly virus which is far more potent than previous variants can remain in the air for sixteen hours. The virus transmission does not need singing, coughing or sneezing to pass though the air, it simply lingers.

It’s fortunate that we are about to go on a two week break – but the reality is that schools have ‘snapped back’ to a point where they have again been isolated from reality and being a ‘good soldier’ means not questioning the lack of risk and duty of care being applied to a profession which for a brief moment, was clapped for moving online.

2021 Post Covid Year 7 E-Skills

Each year, I conduct a little piece of research with the year 7 digital technology class. This is some 180 students from a wide range of backgrounds. In this, I try to work on what skills and experience they have with online platforms, different operating systems, hardware and exposure to programming and robotics.

This year and last, I’ve been working in selective public high school. This year, students reported a significant bump in skills, confidence and a broadening of experiences in year 6.

In 2020, the new cohort reported that around 47% had used online platforms such as Google Classroom and felt confident in navigating and submitting work without help. This year, that number bumped to 98%. When asked if they had used Google Classroom last year, over 90% said they had. 100% of students from public primary schools said they had worked online in year 6 and can complete basic documents including images and hyperlinks.

As a computer teacher of many years, I’ve been a little concerned about a downward trend in terms of computer-skills when arriving in High School. There have been many reasons for this, too many to go into here, but this years survey showed a significant increase in skills and experience – which I’d argue is due to working from home.

The variables here are many: students over-estimating their skill, seeking to impress etc., however as we start 2021, it appears this year’s students have worked with various online ‘coding’ tools and platform with almost all have completed at least an hour or code at some point.

While Covid 19 has been devastating in terms of mental health and well being, causing stress, anxiety and new problems … it seems the 2021 Year 7 cohort have had a significant ‘buff’ in their skills and experience.

Whether or not teachers build on this and continue to up-skill and refine their practice is unknown and uncertain. While it’s clear the student’s have risen to the challenge, schools still have to deal with the long tail of patchy engagement that we’ve experience when teachers see online as an add on to their practice. Very little focus seems to be given to ‘online’ as we reach the one year mark. While teachers are highly likely to things like Google Classroom to upload content and make announcements as they did last year – it’s difficult to gain any evidence towards actual practices – and indeed, there seems little interest in finding out.

I run my entry research each year because it helps me tune my classroom routines and I have unique access to students to ask them about their e-skills experience. I’m not sure that this happens at a system level, and that’s really not my ‘thing’ anymore to find out. It’s good to know that this year’s new students are significantly more confident and skilled to take on my online classes.

More Girls Needed

It’s that point in the year, one which has been more crazy than any other year I can remember – where people ask – how can we improve?

In my case, it’s improving software design development results. The answer, given the data of the last decade available to me is remarkably simple – more girls in the course. The loss of a single girl has a noticeable impact on the cohort results. In a class of 15, we need at least 5 girls.

So this is a simple solution – but it isn’t as the issue of girls in software is complex and lengthy – and from what I can tell – isn’t being resolved year on year. The central issue of recruiting and keeping girls in applied computer science in school is not seen as a school-priority … aside from the podium speakers at EduCelebCon-Covid – as classroom teachers don’t seem to have the necessary voice to impact ‘more than a novelty’ change in cultural thinking.

Will students move out of lock-down to return to locked-down school culture?

This week, I was in a web conference listening to the speaker talk about the educational Covid-curve. I wondered just how much external non teachers could have possibly learning in six weeks to come up with that, but apparently it’s a thing. This then led to discussions about practice, or rather to apparent jump to hyperspace some teachers (who presumably did not use the Internet) – and the ‘new tools’ in play.

Obviously e-learning isn’t new or the preserve of an elite band of technocrats. I have zero interest in people who claim they have been too busy in the last decade to engage with it – even though they are on social media, use online banking etc.,

I’m sure this has been a conversation many classroom teachers have had this week – the pro’s and con’s of hyper-leap to online. Sure we’ve all been using Google Classrooms, VCs and other bits of software more – and that is harder and more time consuming – but trying to work out if it’s better or worse denies the fact it has been different and necessary.

We cannot begin from the premise of some universal expertise on non-digital learning or e-learning. We can’t honestly say that every child was engaged in school, or that every child even wanted a conversation with their teacher or peers.

The one thing I’ve learned over decades of being in e-learning is that FEEDBACK and CONNECTEDNESS is the killer-app. If you set a single thing online as a task and didn’t give kids feedback to clarify and improve – just close the door behind you. You know if you did this well because you will have had an exponential increase in learning conversations with students though whatever application you are using.

Imagine keeping that going and having IRL conversations. What could be more important – and more disruptive to ‘school culture’. If you’ve experienced that, then you’re part of the cyber future, where all the rules of ‘school’ can be questioned.

The next question people seem to have is the degree to which anyone needs to practice anything order to become an expert  – ground well covered a decade ago by Gladwell and Godin.

The upshot seems to be that teachers are being encouraged to ‘practice’ this as though it’s a new hyper-life and bring bits of into the ‘normal’ classroom. If you’ve had some wins of late – it’s because you have created hyper-feedback loops and not sat about moaning about the lack of physical classroom interaction – which as optimal for everyone.

I’ve also noticed that those students attending school in the last two weeks were largely governed by bells and room allocations and not on what they needed to de-code and clarify from their teachers in order to improve their work at home.

To cement the divide between physical and hyper,  it has been decided that schools now  ‘ban’ on online teaching and only deal with IRL classroom.  This means that any learning kids have done (massive new cognitive load) to be more independent, develop digital workflows will come to an abrupt holt – and if kids are not at school, its game over.

Normal means modernist, industrial age normal and the political agenda of what school is reverts to it’s old shape – and issues. The first signal of this will be the banning of YouTube and a return to people moaning that ‘kids spend too much time online’ and ‘banning phones’. This brief moment where digital proved itself more than worthy, will once again be resigned to the same old debates.

As children move out of lock-down, they are going to be returned to lock-down.

I transitioned to a blended learning approach years ago and there is nothing wrong with mixing the old and the new. What is important for me is shift in the physical space. I’ve ditched the computer room and booked the soft-space with lounges, because I’m more interested in putting in the cyberculture of ‘home learning’ than returning to the computer room. I think changing physical space is as important to the return to schools as Zoom was to leaving it. While people are wondering if there will be any future changes; this seems the wrong question – there is no doubt there will be future cultures, once which emerge from catastrophic events.

I don’t for a moment think the ‘return’ to normal will be made more real by ignoring realty. This might be what the government wants, but it isn’t what students need. The crisis isn’t over – so why not try an meet them in the middle.

Clarifying and Probing the Covid-Classroom

This post is about making the most of the one day a week with students. Given we’re not teaching ‘normally’ I see this as an opportunity to ask questions in what is going to be a very short window of opportunity. I know some teachers have moaned this is “baby-sitting’ etc., but I think that might be because of the ‘return to normal’ nonsense the media is pushing. So here’s what I’ve been doing this week and why.

Politicians make daily comments about the return to normal and the easing of restrictions. School is often used to signify safety and order, despite some schools working under the direction that recess and lunch doesn’t require distancing under ‘the advice’ along with classrooms. Most schools, I would assume are working this week and next on a 25% population, one year group at a time. It’s important to note that these guidelines are demanding any distancing, despite politicians insisting that there is an increase level of risk which requires citizens to be more aware of distancing than ever.

There’s little point is resisting this reality if you work in schools. What is obvious is that many students are not travelling to and from school on public transport. Many are being picked up and dropped off as parents attempt to reduce risk. Some students seem completely at ease with spending time with their friends, debating the usual important teen topics. Other groups are anxious and critically aware of the risks to themselves and their family – but this is not a topic classroom teachers are advised to address in classrooms.

The week has been interesting. Students appear to have spent most of it engaging in social groups; working on online activities, supervised by a roster of teachers. Aside from senior subjects, student have largely been left to choose what they want to do – but not where they are going to do it. I would think for many schools and teachers, this arrangement is quite a novel experience.

For me, this has been a opportunity to get some feedback on the ‘online’ I’ve been doing and to respectfully attempt to visualise the spectrum of methods and expectations they have experienced over the 2-3 weeks that ‘online’ has disrupted over a century of ‘how school is done’.

I didn’t see it as time to chase down the odd student who didn’t hand things in, but to try and find some patterns in what students were doing each day. Just observing what is happening in the room when the normal rules are disengaged. From that I’ve been trying to find a new balance for the forced return of everyone. I have absolutely no intention to discontinue the drum beat and patterns of what I’ve been doing for the last month or so, because it is WORKING. Right now, most students are not acting in their previous ‘student-mode’ or wearing their usual ‘masks’ around me. I’m not sure if that’s true in other classes or for other teachers … but I’ve found it quite refreshing to see them hang-out, set their own pace etc.,

There has been NO decline in learning or the quality of work. Many students have reported less ‘distractions’ and that social engagement (digital based) which is normally ‘banned’ at school – has flowed into their day via FaceTime etc., and they have stayed connected with friends. I’m also aware, some students with school-connections have been disconnected by ‘digital’ – often as parents believe that they need to put the phone away and keep away from friend-networks when ‘doing school work’.

I don’t think we’ve furthered the idea of students being a ‘community of practice’ just yet – and I don’t see politicians or educational leaders interested  in the idea. Students, as usual, have not been asked what they think. It’s mostly been about counting heads and checking up on students who have not ‘done the work’.

For me, the two weeks has been about finding out what works and didn’t – clarifying and probing … it’s easy when talking to students and online, I’ve been using FlipGrid because its so easy and slides into Classrooms and Teams. It’s a great opportunity to ask questions in order to see new patterns – which might be good or bad.

• Is this what you said…?
• What resources were used for the project?
• Did I hear you say…?
• Did I understand you when you said…?
• What criteria did you use to…?
• What’s another way you might…?
• Did I hear you correctly when you said…?
• Did I paraphrase what you said correctly?

and …

1. Why do you think this is the case?
2. What do you think would happen if…?
3. What sort of impact do you think…?
4. How did you decide…?
5. How did you determine…?
6. How did you conclude…?
7. What is the connection between… and…?
8. What if the opposite were true? Then what?

All of this is provocative and I’ve not seen all students because of the rooming and roster in place – however, I have talked to enough to get a good idea of what works – and what I will keep doing … not that I’ve ever been one for teacher-up-front type teaching anyway … but to me it’s been a good opportunity to understand more about how they learn, what they like and hate etc., that otherwise would be hidden behind the ‘student-mask’ and the un-changing modality of the school day.

The battle for time online

Australia’s media reports about the relative success and failure of what it describes incorrectly as ‘home schooling’. This almost always focuses on parental opinions. As news media is propelled by advertising revenue, it is unsurprising they amplify messages of a ‘return to normal’.

The corona virus pandemic has resulted in rapid, unprecedented changes in consumer behaviours and their preferences across Australia. Consumers are spending vastly more time online and watching TV. Brands are focused on showing images of how they are supporting customers and staff and messages intended to make people feel happy through funny and positive content that distracts them from what’s going on.

School is a problematic story. On one hand, parents are first hand experience as ‘home school’ has disrupted family life. On the other, political messages falsely accuse teachers of refusing to return to school and do their job. It’s no great surprise that TV media avoids any in-depth debate about schooling as it fails to create the kind of content that consumers want – and therefore impacts their advertising revenue. This revenue has changed in response to the pandemic. Almost half are not in a position to spend and the rest have had to adopt the messaging that the current broken-consumer wants.

At home, parents are causing disruption to their children’s learning. Most stories orbit the difficulty parents have in ‘being teachers’. I’m yet to see a story which asks children directly for their experiences and so ignores any possibility that children can create their own agency over time. Time is the issue, for most households ‘home schooling’ has been two or perhaps three weeks.

In that time, parents have been running the agenda. In high school at least, this has created in-equity in what they spend time working on. Maths, Science and English are widely seen as ‘the most important’ subjects, regardless of the quality of what children are asked to do with their time. Other subjects are allocated the remainder of available time, and appear to involve more child-choice. In high school, I’ve heard of Maths teachers pumping out time-tabled Zoom lessons, setting worksheets and even demanding homework (yes, at home). In schools, few appear to have considered the behaviour of some teachers who are simply looting time for their at the expense of other subjects.

It may be that the news stories are adding pressure for teachers to be seen doing something – perhaps amazing, perhaps not – towards easing parent anxiety. Even if this seeing some students working several hours a day more than usual. My own experience is that students are zoom-choosy: leaving a class for one they think is more important; not showing up at all; or pretending to be engaging. Within a few weeks it soon became apparent that synchronous learning was the domain of subject parents believe are most important – and in many ways, the re-assurance of Jimmy being in a Zoom Meet with Mr Fletcher’s Maths class meets that ‘comfort news’ story.

I adopted a simple methodology. It seemed obvious to me that any notion of flipping, pivoting or porting to ‘online’ could not be approached as if society wasn’t in the grip of a pandemic which is largely experienced through online and television news – which as I have said is distorted. More worryingly, information is hidden from the audience. In part, political interference, which even the ABC seems to have not escaped and the obvious change in content and themes to prop up a decaying advertising income. If the media messages don’t meet the needs of the consumer and brands, people simply binge streaming media services.

My argument is that it is currently impossible to put forward a binary argument about good/bad education online, as it cannot be based on previous incarnations of how learners engage with online learning. It can at best be looked at in terms of time and within that, what is the most purposeful use any remaining time parents give to subjects outside of the holy trinity of maths, science and english.

At a time of heated angst, political messaging is promoting the nonsense of a COVID SAFE society. Media messages orbit terms such as ‘out-breaks’ and ‘soft-spots’ to soften the truth that the LNP is pursuing the mythical ‘herd immunity’ goal and there is less safety when teachers and students are forced into full schools, shops re-open along side cafes and restaurants.

For the next two weeks, children will return one day a week. Schools will not remove bell-times. Instead, children will sit in a room with 10-12 others and supervised by a teacher (not their subject teacher) as they complete the same online work as they did at home. These teachers are also required to support online learning. This may ease the concerns of parents as they pack their children off to Covid-Safe schools, but it creates yet another paradigm for students – and doesn’t address the current issues of some subjects dominating others. The problem here is that some schools are going to measure every teacher and every subject equally. They will ignore the discrepancies being created though parent’s belief about what subjects matter (and the ongoing issues therein).

So if you are a teacher outside the big three; perhaps it’s absolutely fine to ask for an hour a week and to simply accept that the next two weeks will not happen outside the current media-frenzy and altered news messaging.

It’s a matter for parents to determine the health risk vs the ‘learning benefit’. The PM and the media it appears to direct have two arguments: open for learning and open for business. The benefit of schools being open for either seems marginal whether private or public.

Allowing more people to meet is problematic, but for children, meeting to play is always going to be better for their welfare than to sit in a supervised room for the day. Any notion of continuing education online, pivoted, ported or whatever is already corrupted by belief and competition around time … and ultimately, whats a few weeks going to matter …

Under Pressure

Photo by Startup Stock Photos on Pexels.com

The conflicted state of education is a power contest between compliance and leadership. It’s far too simplistic to see this as another home vs campus debate or a traditional vs digital skirmish. This a boss fight at the highest level between federal and state authorities in which ‘learning’ is little more than scenery. Decisions about closures and their timing and length involve a series of trade-offs between conflicting factors.

There is massive federal pressure on teachers to ‘get back to work’ which is widely distributed by government media sponsors and supporters .

Today, this manifested as the State admission it is using the federal ‘suppression’ plan and is aware and accepting of the known risk to staff and students

It’s not just a battle for online verses classroom learning but one in which federal politicians are unilaterally attempting to reshape public perceptions of schools, systems, teachers, unions. This has been framed in evocative war-time language for weeks in concert with faux admiration for ‘teachers’ while  ruthlessly demanding submission.

Over several weeks, the federal government has tested and re-tested unions, school leaders and staff on the thinnest of evidence. It has made outrageous allegations which challenge the authority of the States to run schools independently.

Only Victoria seems to have offered any lasting opposition which resulted in a the federal minister attacking the Premier in a TV interview,  largely unchallenged by the interviewer.

The NSW state premier stated that she fully expected there to be COVID-19 cases in schools and used the term ‘suppression‘ when asked about whether schools were safe. There is a desire to see all staff on site next week and all students the week after.

Weirdly, private schools seem to be in front here – asking students to return and discontinuing online education, which is apparently a reason public education should follow suit and a large part of the message being sent to teachers – this is the way.

Photo by Andrew Neel on Pexels.com

All teachers are working hard to create an effective way for classes to come together successfully though digital channels. No ones bothered to ask what is working and what is not. The focus is on kids in the classroom as a number rather than any other factor.

The evidence for the effectiveness of school closures and other school social distancing measures comes almost entirely from influenza outbreaks, for which transmission of the virus tends to be driven by children. It is unclear whether school measures are effective in coronavirus outbreaks—for example, due to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), or Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and, most specifically, COVID-19, for which transmission dynamics appear to be different.

The Lancet

Where is the expert education advice?

It’s clear that there has been no Chief Education Officer advising Federal or State Government with evidence based educational-updates on what is happening. Instead, puff pieces about how students might fall behind are published in the media.

It’s difficult to see how school systems are able to operate both independently and in the best interests of the community. It seems the only thing that matters is to force teachers and students into confined spaces and onto public transport NEXT WEEK.

The opportunity to improve educational practices and improve collaboration between schools and bureaucrats has never been a goal,. The last few weeks has seen political acts successfully reinforce authoritarianism though ‘temporary’ arrangements and while private schools are offered billions to ‘try’ and get 50% of students back – public education simply being send back – knowing that infections will occur.

They both willingly ignore the reality that there is no vaccine and that community transmission is low because people have stayed home. Under this new landscape, the virus is not a flooded road preventing parents taking kinds to school – but that is essentially how it is being managed – with day to do dipping of the water level – death/infection numbers.

Creating effective online work-flows requires some level of consistency. It is impossible to achieve this when politicians shift their discussions and language every few days. Despite every teachers efforts – we have seen 7 weeks of ongoing disruption which prevented anyone creating sustainable ways of working online. This doesn’t feel accidental – but intentional in order to create anxiety and uncertainty among parents.

It is parents who will ultimately decide whether schools are full. It would be nice if they were asked for consent and be informed of the significant risks.

The future is here. Please restart your classroom.

I’m about a week into ‘online’ classes officially. Working online isn’t new to me and much like riding a bike, it’s mind shift more than anything. I recent years, I’ve gone about my classrooms in my own way. I endure PD about the bleeding obvious and can’t remember the last time anyone checked what I can do already or what I might like to do.

It’s little wonder schools maintain limited skills sets,bounded by eduware policy. When a pandemic explodes in front of us, schools are no more ‘ready’ for online that the high-street was for the Internet itself. The result is a dogs-breakfast of well intentioned delivery though mega-brand agendas.

Example: Google Classrooms is not an Learning Management System. It is a storage service with apps loosely built upon Microsoft Office. It has poor workflows, it requires work arounds, it delivers zero learning analytics and a ‘stream’ scroll of death that even Backboard and Moodle can snigger at.

But this is now ‘the platform’ for kids aged K12.

The rationale is: at least we have this, what else do you want us to use?

My point is simple: it’s not an LMS and it’s not a classroom – so be critically aware of the TIME it takes for everyone to work-around its short comings. Work around solutions should not be the ‘norm’ in ‘quality education’.

I am not saying don’t use it. I suggest you use it within the time and functionality limits you and it have, especially around learning analytics. A central argument about physical vs virtual classrooms has been a lack of human experience and connection. It’s very hard to know you student if they are just an icon set to away.

If you have used Canvas, you’ll get what I mean. Canvas pivots because it was designed to. It also incorporates Google Suite along side many other third-party apps. In a time of isolation, learning analytics – even ‘who logged on today’ is essential, base line data.

Google Suite was designed to be a Microsoft Office rival. Classrooms is just a wrapper and allowed Google to compete in the educational space with a plus one offering. That is neither good or bad, it’s just not an LMS.

Canvas is the choice of many rich private schools and further highlights the gap. Canvas is simple better at online delivery, feedback analytics and integration. It gives private schools a significant advantage – and I’d argue private school staff have better laptops and sideline hardware.

No matter what you use online, it takes TWICE as long to prepare materials for online – so be aware of your contact hours.

This is a trap for the unwary. It’s easy to put in 12 hour days if you haven’t had time and help understanding how digital works. Replication is a time consuming chore – and has little to do with a ‘revolution’.

Distance learning is not neatly arranged into 50 minute slots. As this crumbled, so did all the other organisational apparatus used to mange location-based education. In fact, the whole purpose of having location-based places for children to go is in free-fall. This doesn’t mean everyone accepts this – so we’re seeing schools trying to replicate school.

For example, this week, I heard about a class where the kids signed a Google Form at the start of time-tabled lesson time. They then worked for 50 mins, handed it in and  issued homework for the next day. I assume at 3pm they also changed out of their school uniform. Not that the teacher used a VC.

This is terrible, but unlikely to be a unique experience. The vast majority of teachers do not engage with eduChitter etc., so the true picture of what is happening is about as transparent as the governments willingness to issue ‘virus modelling’ to explain themselves at the daily presser.

There is no way to tell what time students are being asked to spend ‘online’ but I suspect it’s more than the two hours recommended by the countries health experts.

Should an eager beaver decide to head online and then find that what they planned is torpedoed (policy or simple in-school power posturing), it will take 4 times longer to get back to square one. Now is not the time to rush in, just because ‘chitter-heads’ are talking about ‘a window of opportunity’ or ‘now is the time to reform’. Don’t be an idiot. The system is a) very resilient to change b) also uses events like this to double down and c) is over capacity.

Today, Morrison announced Free Childcare. What if he’d given every teacher $3k to buy the resources needed to work at home – doing a great job. The questions about working from home do not address quality: I can’t afford a fancy ergonomic chair, my house is small and I’m camping in a bedroom. I’m using extension chords and can’t have the window open as a truck driving past would drown out any VC. My provided laptop in unable to run the applications I need and with 5 people in the house, our rural internet is flat out.

So we might all have gone online: but plenty will be in a cycle of crash and restart for social, technological and economic factors. For the life of me I can’t work out why the Minister of Edumaction hasn’t already given teachers direct funding to support a necessary, but ambitious reaction to this terrible virus.