Tēnā koutou kātoa!

What a month we've had - from the initial news of a Coronavirus outbreak signalled in the February newsletter, to the announcement of a global pandemic, to a four week total lockdown here in NZ and in other parts of the world.

COVID-19: Education Responds

With schools closed for the next four weeks, and the likelihood of this being continued beyond that timeframe, a lot of thought is going into what sort of response we need to ensure the continuity of learning for our young people. Around the world the response is similar - move things online! Everyone from Ministries of Education through to local groups of teachers are getting in on the act, compiling lists of online resources to help teachers and parents find appropriate things to engage their tamariki in learning activities online.

In the last issue of this newsletter I featured the work of Te Kura (the Correspondence School) and the Virtual Learning Network (VLN) which now seems very appropriate as the nation looks for ways to re-orient our thinking about schools and schooling in the wake of the pandemic. I've written more on this in one of my recent blog posts titled Online Learning: A Pandemic Response?

More blog reading

Over the month I have written a series of blog posts relating to the current situation...

• Where does our motivation come from - reflecting on the panic buying in supermarkets, and pondering on what motivates us to take action about the things that matter, and how can we use that knowledge, as educators, to design curriculum that gives our learners the opportunities to deeply and meaningfully engage – and act – on these big issues?
• Carpe Diem - thinking about the structures that dominate our thinking and behaviour re schools and schooling, and what might be possible when those structures are taken away - as we're experiencing during the lockdown.
• Virtual Concerns - a post about the things concerning me and other educators that need our attention and careful thought as we rush towards embracing online teaching and learning in response to the COVID-19 restrictions.
• Connectedness - now may be the best opportunity we’ll have to engage deeply with the affordances of the technology and these environments, to emerge with new and/or different understandings of just how powerful and effective they can be in helping us towards a more connected state of being.
• Be kind - as we’re coping with adjusting to the different ways of working, we must be mindful of the fact that our strength compliments another’s weakness and vice versa. In times of adversity we need to understand that more than ever. It will be our ability to work together that will help us overcome the current crisis and find solutions to the problems that face us, some of which we’re not even aware of yet.

I welcome your feedback on any of these posts - simply post your thoughts as a comment at the bottom of the post. 

Deepening our understanding of the situation

We are living at a pivotal time in the history of our planet. While I appreciate that for some this means a coping with feelings of anxiety and despair, there is also an opportunity here, through being better informed, to understand better the reasons we are in the position we are, and why the measures we are taking are so important. It is an opportunity also to understand the unintended consequences of the actions we are taking. So I have assembled a few links below that may be useful to read and consider how you might share these understandings with your learners - to help them consider the impact of actions they may take to build the future they deserve. As educators, let's not waste this opportunity to use the current situation as a context for learning - one that has real meaning in the lives of our learners.

• From Bats to Human Lungs, the Evolution of a Coronavirus - By Carolyn Kormann in the New Yorker. An excellent, factual, scientific background to the Coronavirus and how it impacts us as humans. Great for the science and the history buffs - plenty here to chew on. 

• Why lockdowns can halt the spread of COVID-19 - some great explanations and excellent graphs based on the data modelling done by the World Economic Forum. Great for the social scientists when thinking about changes in behaviour of whole populations. 

• Simulations used to demonstrate how to 'flatten the curve' - Washington Post - great for the maths or stats teachers :-)

• All the ways coronavirus is stopping climate change in its tracks - a Newshub report summarising a range of unintended consequences of the lockdown in other countries - all stories provide useful leads to research further. Should be of interest to everyone - loads of stimulus here for primary and secondary teachers across all curriculum areas.

As a footnote for this month's newsletter - I'm pleased to share a very new initiative from a friend and his team in Wellington, developed especially to support schools, teachers and students in response to the COVID-19 school closures. The learnfromhome.co.nz site provides a series of activities for different levels/ages using the online game builder software Gamefroot - an easy to use drag and drop environment for creating digital outcomes and products. If you're looking for a fun and future focused way to engage your students in coding their own interactive stories, coding their own 2D platform game or even a full-on role-playing game, all with a uniquely New Zealand perspective, then this is a great site to share with your learners. If you or your learners have little or no knowledge of coding, then this is the place to start - making it fun and engaging for all. 

That's it for this month - thanks for subscribing to my site - please feel free to pass the link to others in your network who you think may find it useful.

Planning for your COVID-19 response

If you would like some help with planning your school or cluster response to the COVID-19 situation, in particular how you can provide continuity of learning for your students that is meaningful, engaging and future focused please feel free to contact me at derek@futuremakers.nz. 

I specialise in providing online professional learning and consultancy services.