Week 3 – March 30 to April 3 (and spring break, April 6 to April 10)
School Closure Planning
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
Chimacum is a small, rural town in Washington state. As rural towns go, it’s small and the nice thing is that it’s close to more city-like places. Within 15 to 20 minutes of driving north, you’re in Port Townsend, which is a small city-like town. Driving 35 to 45 minutes or so in the other direction, south, brings you to Silverdale with a mall! So we’re not so remote that we can’t get somewhere city-like rather quickly but for all intents and purposes, Chimacum is rural. Pictured here above is a Google Map image of the Chimacum Valley where a bunch of wonderful, organic farms raise cows, sheep, pigs, goats, and grow all kinds of great produce. There is a lot of green our tiny peninsula with woods all over the place in addition to the farms in the valley. I enjoy going for a run down the road next to my house and this is something I see when I run over 4 miles out (that’s only when I do my middle distance runs, which become longs runs when I’m not training for a half marathon or more):
So we’re pretty rural but NOT isolated. Still, living in a small town with plenty of room to physically distance ourselves is really great, especially when I can still go out for runs and finish my marathon training! As I mentioned in my last post, so far we have had eight of our 67 sixth graders communicate to us that they have no Internet at home and need paper packets. That’s not bad considering we’ve heard from 45 or so of our 67 families on a district needs survey! I have all 67 families connected on Bloomz and only 10 of them have not fully signed up for the service so they do not see the messages I send in their entirety. They only read the first sentence, if it’s not too long! So 10 of my 67 families are not getting all my communications when I use Bloomz.
I only had 47 out of the 67 families respond to me when I asked for a response during the second week of the closure. I was sharing report cards with them and letting them know how their child can redo their test to improve their final 3rd quarter grade. Forty-seven responded and I have no idea why the other 20 did not. I mean, I don’t know if it’s because they are too busy and concerned with the quarantine to answer or if they didn’t get or read my message. Either way, I’m not going to push it because I know these are tough times, the toughest I’ve ever been through in my 53 years.
Then there are my 67 students. Only 35 of the 67 check in with me on Classcraft or Google Classroom. I can only wonder what the other 32 are doing. At least when they are in class I can see them socializing or goofing around with my own two eyes if they are not working. For those of us, yeah it was me, who often wished I could teach from home – I take it back! This sucks!! And I spent all day every day my first two weeks of teaching online responding to students and parents and teachers at my school, which would take me hours and at the end of each day just didn’t seem like I did much at all. I mean, I responded to a few people here and there instead of dealing with 67 kids in seven hours. I know I have to give grace not only to my students and their families but myself as well. Remember that.
So after two weeks online for me, and working on my third, and three weeks online for my students working on their fourth, 21 of 67 responded to my Flipgrid, 14 of 67 played the Gimkit game, 16 of 67 played the Kahoot game, and only two played some of my Legends of Learning games (see my last post). AND THOSE ARE THE FUN ACTIVITIES!! I’ve gotten no responses from any of the students who got paper packets, only five total have completed the Hydro Dynamics work and only four have completed their final blog posts. In class, I have a few things to compete with, such as the desire to socialize and the desire to avoid work, but when they are at home I have MUCH MORE to compete with, not the least of which is whatever they must be going through. I hope they are all okay.
So online learning is starting off very slow – which is totally okay considering what’s happening in our world (I have to keep reminding myself of that because I do believe in online, self-paced, choice-based learning!). I also have to remind myself that in this rural valley, there are locations, some farms for example, where they get NO service whatsoever. No cable, no satellite, and cell service is weak at best. And that is if they even have a computer at home so even though only eight families have requested paper packets, even those families with a computer at home may not have strong enough Internet connections PLUS the fact that many of them are having to share their computers and Internet with parents working from home and multiple kids trying to work online!
A group of kids who I’ve also been engaging during this online learning time is my Minecraft eSports Club. We even connected and tried to play together during spring break! The club was a smashing success in school. We had 24 kids showing up before school regularly twice a week to play Minecraft together. From home, 11 said they would and could play because they had Minecraft Java Edition and they were able to download Minecraft Education Edition. That was cool because with 11 we could make two teams of five and they could play great games and even compete! Sadly, finding time for all 11 of them to play together has been near impossible. I’m also finding all sorts of problems Zooming, Streaming, and hosting games from home.
At home, which is across the street from my school where I work btw, I have CenturyLink – Download speed for me is 7 to 9 Mbps, Upload .7 Mbps!! Yes, that is 7/10’s of a Megabit per second. Streaming is not consistent or successful with that low upload speed and when I finally got through to CenturyLink to ask for help now that I’m stuck working from home I found out that’s the fastest speed we get out here! That’s hi-speed for me out here in Chimacum!
So I called AT&T and I upgraded my family plan to unlimited data, which somehow turned out to be cheaper than our shared 30 GB plan with rollover so that I could use my iPhone as a hotspot (btw, unlimited data plan only goes as high 30 GB per month when used as a hotspot!!). AT&T – Download speed is 23 to 35 Mbps via wifi and connected via USB over 100 Mbps, Upload 7 Mbps. Okay, I can work with 7 Megabits per second upload speed. Yay! I can stream and host games! In comparison, if I was able to go to School – Download speed is in the 100’s of Mbps, Upload 25 Mbps but I go so very infrequently because I just can’t risk catching this virus and bringing it home to my family. Reality is tough.
So I tried hosting a Minecraft Education Edition world that one of my students created and they couldn’t connect. What? I had a faster connection suing my hotspot! And I couldn’t connect to worlds they hosted. So I reached out to Minecraft:EE and tried everything they recommended until I noticed that I COULD connect with my home Wifi (CenturyLink) and not when I was using my iPhone as a hotspot! I reached out to AT&T and no one knows how to host Minecraft:EE games over an AT&T iPhone hotspot. That sucks! Now I just need to be able to connect with Minecraft Java so I can stream on Twitch! I’ll be trying that out later.
So I’m still learning but even though we are able to get around the tech problems that pop up, getting five of my eSports kids on at any given time, much less during competition times, is proving to be impossible. Right now we are working to see if we can get five to compete in the CompMC’s April Ambush starting Friday, April 17! I hope we can get a team together because I already went through all the steps to register our team, The Beach Chickens, to play and I’d hate to have to forfeit!! Wish us luck!
