WE'VE CURATED THIS LIST TO HELP YOUR SCHOOL MOVE ONLINE
Updated: March 31, 2020
Schools aren't closed. Only the buildings are closed. - Tom Rooney, Superintendent, Lindsay Unified
First, here's some inspiration from a S. Cal. charter network that had their online school up and running in 3 days. See their 60 second video about their rapid prototype for innovation in education.
Transcend Education offers tons of useful resources for school and district administrators.
Khan Academy offers full day pre-planned schedule options for K_12 online learning and recorded webinars for teachers.
The New Teacher Project offers simple, but excellent advice for schools, as well as many resources.
Heather Staker, who wrote the book on Blended Learning, advises us to #mindthegap and make sure we are meeting students physical, social and emotional needs before simply putting assignments online. Her network of trained educators also offers coaching for schools and parents.
Addressing the digital divide will require action by policy-makers, philanthropists and district leaders. To provide wifi and compatible devices to students who do not have access, most cable providers are providing free hot spots or wifi access to households right now. Call your local provider for instructions.
Free computers are available to low income students from The On It Foundation and Computers with Causes.
Resources for undocumented immigrants here from Immigrants Rising.
For those of you wondering, "What Would Finland Do?" here are a few resources from Finland, Estonia (first on PISA last year) and other Nordic Countries. They seem to offer more links for K-2 than US lists. Here's a spreadsheet tracking what's happening with school systems in countries around the world.
Finally, unrelated to education, this predictive tool estimates COVID-19's peak and predicts hospital bed and ventilator shortfalls. John Hopkins' COVID-19 tracking maps are addictive.
For teachers or families looking for good online resources and activities:
Excellent how-to-manual from Google for teachers moving classes online.
Great Minds is offering new Knowledge on the Go lessons daily in math for K-12, ELA for K-8 and science for grades 3-5.
Education Reimagined has a long list of distance learning tools for teachers and parents.
PBL Works offers advice for taking project-based learning online and a list of their favorite tech tools to support different learning goals.
HundrED offers global resources to connect kids to learning.
Free online pre-school is being offered by Atlanta Speech Schoo.
To keep us all sane, Ikaria has some inspired virtual gatherings for adults and students.
To let your little ones "hang out" online with their friends, try these apps: Airtime, Squad or glimpse.
And, finally, this amazing new passion project, Women, War and the Battle for Peace on stories from women in war from our lead researcher, Amy Madsen.
If you have resources to share or thoughts on this, please let us know at FSL@futureschoollab.com.