Expected to teach live online lessons?

[FlowerAndBloom]

Hi all,

We have received an email yesterday asking all staff to prepare to teach live online lessons during potential school closure on a new platform nobody has used before. My concern is that I cannot teach live all day while my own kids are at home and need supervising in their schoolwork. Has anyone else been asked this? How do I approach this? Private school in London if it makes any difference!

This is what my children had - year 3, year 7, year 9 - plus a list of text book pages and some photocopied sheets.

The online platforms the secondary children are using is down and there's nothing on the primary one yet.

Just realised dc1 has embellished her plan with chores and sporting goals

Within days of the Italian lockdown all teachers were up and running carrying on giving live lessons as usual.

A quick google reveals this to be bollocks.

My DD has been doing school online today (in Ireland) Only one teacher so far did a live (no images, Just typed conversation) class. The others have been giving work and been available for questions so as far as I can gather it seems to be a chat group per subject. She's really busy but so far thinks it's much more productive.

Both mine and DH's businesses have been shut down so we're at home. We have no income as long as this continues. In that respect I would rather have your problems! Having said that the circumstances are unprecedented. One of DDs teachers is struggling to get to grips with the system but I think across the country people are being as understanding as possible with hiccups so I'm sure they wouldn't be expecting you not have some sort of issues

Many Italian teachers thought they were off the hook

Given the seriousness of the situation in Italy I think this is particularly callous.

What you meant to say, I hope, is that Italian teachers who thought they would be unable to remote teach effectively have managed to and have ensured their students are as supported as possible at this difficult time.

And we (parents) have to mark our own primary age children's work. The secondary children have some answer sheets to mark things themselves and have been told to give the rest in after Easter

We only have one means of DS accessing online work and that is my work laptop. He is old enough to be at home on his own and I work in NHS management so will need to be working as much as possible. Not sure how much school work he’ll be able to access unless it’s recorded or work set separately.

Noblegiraffe and Perfect Parrot.
I am a teacher in an Italian state school. I suggest your googling is not quite up to speed.
As for the callousness of my comment, those of us who spent last Monday night comforting our own classes when the national lockdown was announced also commented on how the kids need this normality of being expected to be "in class" at certain times.
It's certainly helping both teachers and students alike here. But yes, we have had the odd ones going "I'm on forced holiday, I'm not doing anything"

I don’t think it is noblegiraffe or Perfect Parrot that are having trouble Googling...

CanterbusyWhales, I apologise for my mistake, I had assumed you were in the UK.

Canterbury
Maybe you can offer some insight into how all teachers in Italian state schools are managing to care for their own children at the same time as planning, teaching and assessing 5 hours of lessons each day?
Where has all the additional IT equipment come from?
How are practical subjects being delivered?
How are teachers managing behaviour or 35 reluctant teenagers?

We're in the USA and our school has today implemented its distance learning plan (school closed). Kids have a week's work to do and need to upload it to the homework platform when it's done. They all have 2 appointments a week to check in with their form teacher (year 6) via conference call and discuss any issues / ask questions etc. There are 18 in the class so should be manageable (most kids will just need a couple of minutes).

Have heard that some schools have full-on conferencing for hours a day but unsure how that works with teachers who are parents.

ermmm I use an online school that does online livestream classes. it works really well. I do not understand why youve got your knickers in a twist to be honest!! the techs already out there.

online schools been doing this years!! and no one s had any problems.

And PSHE homework consists of chores at home (wash the car, clean your room ....)

adobe, zoom are the platforms. totally interactive whiteboards etc .

online schools been doing this years!! and no one s had any problems.

Until millions and millions use it at the same time and put too much pressure on the servers. Then....

selfisolate
Where will the extra hardware come from? Presumably your teachers have had training in how to use it? Who will train our teachers and when will this happen? How do you learn practical skills? How are these assessed?

selfisolate presumably you're joking? Online schools don't pop into existence at 3 qeeks notice with the people running them working in full time jobs during that 3 weeks notice and setting the online schools up during the night, after they put their children to bed and finish their marking for the day job.

They're also opt in set ups which parents only opt into if they have the required computers, printers, web cams and high speed internet.

Most online schools also use text books specifically chosen for the context because they provide a compact course of explanations with lots of independent working exercises, and other interactive, unstaffed online resources like recorded programmes and automated learning sites for maths and foreign language practice. Theyre rarely (or I suspect in fact never) "live" full class teacher directed lessons from 9- 15:30 5 days a week.

Mostly though, the servers are crashing and online school platforms are overloaded where we live because all the schools closed at once. No matter what the teachers are doing the kids can't access it.

We use Google Suite, Zoom, and the Italian ed ministry's platform which has been upgraded since the lockdown started.

No extra hardware as far as I know. Italian internet providers have given all clients extra free giga. The kids who don't have PCs are using phones. I have 300 students and all have access to smartphones. (I appreciate that may not be the case for everyone, everywhere, but here in Southern Italy that's not been an issue)

We have leeway as to when we do the lessons, like one of my classes this morning is usually 8am but we moved it to 10am when they would have had Phys ed.

I presume subjects with an elevated amount of practical work are concentrating on the theoretical side for now, but I don't know because it's not my area.

I also don't know who is looking after smaller non school age children- other parent, grandparents, babysitter I guess. Govt has funded extra money to pay for childcare via childminders and babysitters for those parents in essential jobs.

Not much training to be done tbh. You watch a few tutorials and then start.

Chloe- I don't know if that was addressed at me, but I didn't say Microsoft hadn't crashed. We don't use it so I wouldn't know. I know Google have offered free access to Suite for Italian schools.

No extra hardware? So do all Italian teachers have PCs at home? Does no one live rurally with slow internet in the whole of Italy?
You don’t know about practical subjects yet you know that all teachers in Italy are live streaming lessons?
You don’t know what teachers are doing for childcare?
It’s interesting that you have such selective knowledge.

I know what I, as a teacher in Italy am doing and what my employer is asking me to do.
You have rather an odd concept of Italy if you think we're still all on gaslamps and picking grapes for our survival.
And I hope you speak to your students in s nicer way than you're interrogating me.

I joined this thread thinking that as we've been in lockdown for a while now, and doing online lessons, I might be able to contribute don't useful. That's all.

I go back out to the fields and tread some grapes while waving my arms a lot, kissing random strangers and hollering Mamma Mia at intervals.

But before I do...what we as teachers in Italy are doing is helping kids who have suddenly been thrust into something they could never have imagined. The continuity, the normality of seeing us online is doing them (and us) good.

And that, frankly, is enough for me.

*something useful.

Erm gas lamps and grapes? Wtf are you on about? I hope you make more sense when you’re teaching!

Maybe the Ofsted inspectors will support all schools and do mass online lessons......

Chloe- I don't know if that was addressed at me, but I didn't say Microsoft hadn't crashed. We don't use it so I wouldn't know. I know Google have offered free access to Suite for Italian schools

After I said a lot of schools are using Microsoft Teams here, you then wrote Obviously the platforms being used are the affiliated to schools ones, or G Suite for schools etc. All coordinated by the form teachers, registers taken etc etc. and after I had pointed out again that this had crashed in Europe according to the news because both people working from home and schools were using them, you said:

^Afaik, all the online platforms are working flat out to give more juice (for want of a better word) to their ok interfaces as the global situation worsens.
I don't imagine Microsoft will be any different.^

You are being very disingenuous.