Paine Intermediate School Trussville, Alabama
Monday, January 6, 2014
Weather Day Assignments
Assignments for today's weather day are accessible at trussville.edmodo.com. This information was sent out on Friday. Students have two weeks to complete the assignments. We do not have to make this day up by attending school on a Saturday or during Spring Break or after Memorial Day, so students are expected to complete school work today. It will take a new way of thinking, but today is not a "free day" or "play day." It is a school day at home. We can certainly look at changing this process if we can design a better one. Most students like doing their work on the computer, and they will certainly need these technology skills in the future. Therefore, we chose Edmodo as the platform for assignments. Please respond and let me know your thoughts.
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Maybe we should make better decisions about when to close school and when not to!
ReplyDeleteYou are absolutely right, they should invest in a crystal ball that can look into the future to tell if it is safe for our kids to go to school or not. Trussville was one of the last schools to announce closing dates and parents were up in arms because they worked and needed to make arrangements ahead of time for their children. It is easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, not so much when you have to make the decisions with only the information you have before the event. I hate when school is out when we could have gone to school. But I would hate it A LOT more if they sent us to school and a school bus wrecked due to black ice, hurting children. I think they made the best decision with the information they had.
DeleteMy children are new to the Trussville City School system. I think this online concept for easy access to assignments is awesome. Nobody likes making up weather days at the end of the year.
ReplyDeleteMrs. Bruno:
ReplyDeleteWe were confused because an original e-mail from Paine Intermediate included this link for the children's assignments which is not Edmodo. We ended up trying to enter this information again on Edmodo in order to get proper credit for doing the work. Why did we receive the first e-mail with the link below?
https://www.trussvillecityschools.com/CurriculumInstruction/PaineIntermediateStudentResources/PI/Weather%20Day%20Lessons.aspx
I really like the thought of e-learning, however, I have some feedback. I did not know about any of this until Monday at 7pm. I came across a post on Facebook where several parents were upset by the inconsistency in communication. Some parents got emails from teachers and others, including myself, received absolutely no communication. I did not even know about your blog until someone else told me about it around 7 on Monday . Then, I was even more upset when I read your post from Friday that stated my son's teacher would email more details if school was not in session. Maybe it would be helpful to add a link to the e-learning site with the message sent out from the " In the Loop" message, or even on the Home page for the whole schools site. I was trying to find the directions on the school main site but did not make it to the Intermediate site. Even though, an email directly from the teacher would have been most helpful. Maybe this feedback will help improve the process in the future.
ReplyDeleteSincerely, Sharee Green
shareedgreen2000@yahoo.com
Some kids are not around computers during the day... So by the time they do get home they have to eat dinner, bathe, and do already assigned homework for that day... I like the elearning concept but when you have multiple children in the system it makes it difficult to do over a 2 week period. Especially, with the amount that some teachers give.
ReplyDeleteOne centralized location for links to the website and updated information on the website would be appreciated. Waiting for a teacher to be able to e-mail information isn't a good plan especially if the impending weather could possibly mean power outages, etc. Also, all of the schools are not on the same sytem, this does create confusion when families have children in 2-3 different campuses. Please keep in mind when creating the lessons that a lot of families only have one computer. If the middle schooler has work that will take 3-4 hours over all when does the child at the intermediate school do the work? Most families want to get this work done while they are out of school due to the fact that even if the child has 14 days to get the work done that just adds to the work that the child will have to do for their regular curriculum. A lot of kids in Trussville are involved and are encouraged to be involved in extra-curricular activities. Also, while I appreciate the fact that the children aren't going to have to make up the weather day, the parents suffer from the e-learning. Many parents who work were still having to manage their children while working on their own work. I love Trussville City Schools and I have no doubt that this will be worked out and stream-lined to the benefit of all concerned.
ReplyDeleteAmy Blount
amyab100@hotmail.com
Thank you for your helpful insight. Our teachers will debrief on the first elearning experience and make adjustments.
ReplyDeleteI do not like it. My oldest son got on the computer to do the assignments and was kicked out. therefore my other two children were not able to sign in. Now i have three upset kids that are afraid they will get in trouble because they have failed to complete each assignment. I disagree with the whole process. I feel like the kids have too much homework as it is that should cover 'these assignments' that are giving to the kids when they are out for weather issues.
ReplyDeleteNot to sound like a "Pollyanna" but we did not experience any glitches. My child knows my expectations of completing school work and knew that
ReplyDeleteMonday was not a play day although we were able tocomplete all of her Edmodo assignments as well as spend down time. She spent a total of two hours doing all of her online asignments which is only a little more than a regular night of homework. She was proud of herself for finishing and was happy that she would not have it hanging over her. I do realize that it may be a challenge when having multiple kids .... The only thing I would change is if The Edmodo program would allow the students to do a little each night rather than not being able to log in and out to spread the work out over the two week period. I am grateful for the folks who, like we, are striving to be flexible. It is an important lesson for our youngsters to see in us as adults
I thought the e-learning day was great! Our teacher emailed us the info about edmodo. My son signed on and worked about an hour on the computer Monday morning completing his assignments. It was easy and he thought is was fun. I am really glad we could use this technology that was so easy and we don't have to make up the school day.
ReplyDeleteE-learning was great for my 5th grader - after the multiple emails from his teacher apologizing for different links and errant information on where to get the assignments and what was due when. However, the timer on Edmodo was a ridiculous thing to do if they have 10 school days to do the assignment. As far as HTMS and HTHS - huge cluster. The assignments for the electives were nothing more than busy work. The amount of work involved to make up less than one hour of missed class was not worth it. We are now on email number 4 from the HTMS math teacher about what the weather assignment actually is. We are tempted to go ahead with the zero. And for the high school - all of the teachers didn't even have assignments posted. The whole system needs to do it the same way with one central place for parents/students to look for their assignments. Somehow we managed to have weather make up days worked into the calendar last year; why not this year?
ReplyDeleteHello. I know that it is said that they have 2 weeks to complete the work, but the children really need to complete it the day school is out otherwise you are just adding to homework and activities that they already have on the following days. Additionally, there were timers on all our assignments that were not going to extend past a 24 hours period. The students also could not stop and come back to working on the lessons, so it had to be completed in one sitting. Our teachers were great at emailing the Edmodo directions to us and that is what we completed, but when the school mentioned the link to the required lessons on the school's website those did not match exactly what we completed (one of my children actually did far more so we were covered but that caused confusion). I receive and read all of your blog posts, but this one did not arrive in my inbox until the morning. The concept that this is a " school day at home" and the amount of time that was required should have been communicated to parents at the start of the school year so parents could be aware of the schedule adjustment to their work day that might be required. This is especially necessary for parents of multiple children in the school(s). I know some parents that needed/went to work had their children with a Grandparent and the work could not be completed as described above. I want to be clear-we spend alot of time educating our children at home and value that time together, but this is really a way to not go to school past Memorial Day or start earlier in the late-Summer/Fall. I asked my children yesterday-would you rather do the work at home that you completed today or go to school an extra day? They both answered go to school. Last Summer, the children were out of school for 12 whole weeks. In my opinion, that is an excessive amount of time to be out of school and between grade levels. I realize this is a State level issue as well as a system issue, but it certainly relates to the required elearning days. I love our schools and I value your leadership Mrs. Bruno. I just think this concept needs to be evaluated. Thank you for asking for input from the parents.
ReplyDeleteIn Partnership,
Cicily Mobley
Thank you for your feedback. You have brought up some points that we do need to examine and address. Our staff will meet on Thursday afternoon to debrief and make some adjustments to our plans for the next bad weather day.
DeleteThank you for opening the lines of communication. Have a great day.
DeleteMy son knew exactly what to do before I even asked him about it. On Friday afternoon we discussed the possiblity of being out and/or delayed on Monday and he told me his Elearning assignments were in Edmodo. So kuddos to his teachers for already discussing this with him.
DeleteI use Edmodo in the classroom as well and even though we posted our Elearning assignments on the school website, I also posted it in Edmodo and was able to post the actual date I wanted the assignment turned in to Edmodo. Maybe that is something the teachers can do for next year. He only had one hiccup and that was when he needed to watch a video and read from Storytown. He was trying to complete his work on his iPad and it did not support the video or Storytown but no worries as he completed the work on our PC. It took him over an hour or so to complete the assignments and he had plenty of free time for the rest of the day.
Being that my child lives in a 2 working parent home, inclement weather days already throw a wrench in our day. Adding the stress of finding out (on facebook) about this e-learning concept (Did I miss a letter coming home?) added a stress we didn't need. We had 2 different links to look at and I didn't know for a while which was correct. The parent that has to stay home has no chance of getting any work done since they are trying to help with the child's work. The teachers made the assignments bearable for my child (thank you!), I do appreciate what they do since I KNOW I could never homeschool my child without being commited for insanity, but I think there possibly needed to be a meeting for the parents about this before it was rolled out. (Did I miss that too?) I would rather have print outs that they can do and turn in. It sounds like a lot of the issues were with the middle and high school and hopefully by the time my child is there they will have this all worked out-or even better, they will give kids back the "snow days" I know we all remember fondly.
ReplyDeleteI got frustrated looking for assignments on Monday morning first thing. I wanted my boys to get started and finished so they could have free time the rest of the day. I found something from a previous year on the intermediate site. We did not here from teachers until 11.and 12 o'clock. This was very frustrating. Since school had been canceled so early it seemed like we should have gotten earlier. This would be my preference in the future. I am happy about not needing to make up the day later. My hope is to get the information earlier next time. Having website addresses and logins and passwords would be helpful also. I got very frustrated hunting for that information. I know others were having issues as well because I received multiple emails adding information that we needed to access sites and do the work. Thank you for all the effort put into this.
ReplyDeleteI have 4 kids at Paine that all needed to do work on the computer, and we only own one laptop. Thankfully we are blessed to also have Chromebooks which really helped. If not, it would take days to make up the work because each kid would need to wait their turn on the computer. Also, I think every teacher needs to be available to respond quickly to a child who may have a question about the work they were doing.
ReplyDeleteWe also did not like the timers, it really complicated things. I really appreciate having the 2 weeks to turn in the work, with 4 kids we really need it. Thanks so much for hearing our concerns, we are very happy with the school and staff and love TCS!!