Having an unplanned day off school can be very enjoyable for those who were able to spend the day relaxing, sledging, throwing snowballs and so on, it can also be quite disruptive. There will be many of our parents and carers who will have had to make child care arrangements at short notice and this is something which we consider when making a decision to close the school.
The day off also meant that our year 11 and sixth form pupils who are preparing for exams missed crucial learning time. This is a very short half term and, as is usual at this time of the year, every single lesson is extremely important.
How could we have made better use of technology to make up for the lost time? Even on a simple level, we could ensure that all pupils have contact with their teachers during such days. The school has a Twitter account, and it seems to be incredibly popular with our pupils at the moment - we need to bring the two together. All it would have required is for some simple instructions from the class teachers to ensure that at least some learning could have taken place last Friday. Of course, there are many other applications we could have used (for example, Edmodo). The facilities are there, it just takes a little bit of organisation and thinking in a different way.
Once again, this has proved just how powerful digital learning can be. It is up to us all to ensure it works for all learners.
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