Online learning

Leaders and teachers moved swiftly to ensure continuity of children’s learning during the COVID pandemic, and parents and carers in Australia certainly appreciated their efforts, with a new survey showing high levels of satisfaction with how schools adapted.

Teacher recently caught up with Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills at the OECD, to talk about how schools have coped with the challenges of 2020. In this video, he reflects on how the role of teaching has fundamentally changed.

Andreas Schleicher – Director for Education and Skills at the OECD and long-time Teacher columnist – joins us from Paris for this episode to give his take on all things 2020, talk about the longer term impacts of the school shutdowns and share how different education systems have responded to the pandemic restrictions.

To assess student access to remote learning during school closures due to COVID-19, UNICEF collected data about broadcast (television and radio) and digital (internet-based) instruction policies from more than 100 ministries of education around the world. Today’s infographic shares some of the findings.

In this episode of our Teaching Methods series we talk to Maura Manning, Director of Learning at the Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta, about the blended learning model at School of Now – what it means for teachers and teaching, the focus on equity of access, and how students are supported in their learning.

‘While this crisis has exposed the many inadequacies and inequities in our education systems, this moment also holds the possibility that we won’t return to the status quo when things return to “normal”,’ Andreas Schleicher writes in his latest Teacher column.

‘While it will take us some time before we understand the full effect of temporary school closures on student learning long term, we’ve (in the meantime) learnt some important things to inform our teaching practices going forward.’

During the period of remote learning in New South Wales, Mathematics teacher Holly Millican from South Grafton High School used several activities to keep her students engaged and accountable, and in today’s video, she shares them with Teacher readers.

Worrying analysis shows at least one-third of the world’s schoolchildren have been unable to access remote learning programs put in place to provide continuity of education as schools close their doors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘In the new normal, specialist teachers have adapted to different ways of delivery and interaction …’ Music teacher David Pullen shares how he used existing resources to create a virtual excursion to Queensland Symphony Orchestra for his Prep to Year 6 students.