Week 13: Online School

Oley Valley School District started their official online schooling this past Monday. With all of the craziness around the world, students are able to maintain a somewhat normal schedule with their classes. Each day, Monday-Friday, students are given 15 minutes per class. During this time, teachers are available to answer questions, give suggestions, and hold Zoom meetings. With the positives of staying connected with each other, there were quite a few issues.

Schoology, the school district-wide online platform for students, crashed quite a few times. This caused many issues for students trying to access their assignments, communicate with teachers, and find the links for zoom meetings. With the drastic increase in users utilizing Schoology on a daily basis, it makes sense that the website crashed.

For this week, I was able to help post some information for the animal and plant biotech and 8th grade intro to agriculture classes. Starting next week, students in the agriculture business and food science classes will have some assignments from me. It is definitely an adjustment moving to an online platform, but it is something that I think teachers and students will need to be more comfortable with, even after the COVID-19 scare.

Along with the online instruction, I was able to work on the farm, take some of an online class, and go on many hikes! The stay at home ordered quarantine can seem very unfortunate, but my family is working to create positives! Every day, my sisters and I venture out to a new location for a hike. I never realized how many hiking trails border our property. We have also gotten to take a stab at our cooking skills! I made an orange chiffon cake and honey roasted salmon.

With anything in life, there are positives and negatives. I am working to seek out the positives in the coronavirus situation. Despite not getting to see my students, I am thankful for the opportunity to continue my engagement through an online platform. Just remember, it is okay to step away from the computer, step away from your phone, step away from the TV and just relax!