Mark Jensen addresses the Board of Education about the NESD online learning environment and how it has been revamped for 2020-2021. (Mat Barrett/northeastNOW Staff)

By Mat Barrett

NESD Online Learning

NESD online learning environments revamped

Sep 16, 2020 | 12:23 PM

The North East School Division (NESD) Board of Education received a an update on how online learning looks and is progressing for the 2020-2021school year.

On March 13, students and teachers were sent home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and just two weeks later, teachers had to move online to teach the students who chose to continue with remote learning. As a result, it was noted that a revamp was needed by the NESD for their online classroom abilities, and that’s exactly what they did.

At the NESD board meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 15, coordinator of continuous improvement and reporting Mark Jensen gave a presentation on recent upgrades to online learning.

One upgrade included adding resources from the Western Canadian Learning Network. Jensen said the resource saved a significant amount of working hours to develop similar online teaching materials. NESD added 45 new courses from Grades 5 through 12 and have 1,111 courses shared so far.

Jensen said in March students, teachers, and families weren’t prepared to remote learn or teach and now they can transition much more quickly if needed.

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Right now, there are 125 students learning completely online. Jensen said if needed, more could transition to an online format if the pandemic worsens.

“It’s not going to be easy if that happens, but I know we can get it done,” he said. “We have tremendous staffs throughout our division, and collectively we can do it.”

Jensen said most classes are registered online right now for an easy transition and the ability for blended learning as well.

Four new staff members were hired to help with online learning, and they are partially online and partially in the classroom as well. Jensen said right now, they are full when it comes to complete online students, and if more were to join, which is expected, a few more staff would be needed.

Jensen said an additional benefit of the online service is to help students continue learning if a teacher is forced to isolate.

“We don’t have an abundance of teachers on a sub list,” he said. “So, if some teachers do get ill, we are worried about the availability of classroom teachers. So, we wanted to build a resource that would support substitute teachers, or teachers that had to work from home as well.”

NESD is working with a couple of other school divisions as well and each are planning to share resources.

NESD Board Vice-Chair Marla Walton said it’s a huge sigh of relief to see the amped up online learning environment and that it took a lot of time and effort from staff and teachers who gave up some of their summer. She said the board and parents were wondering how it was going to look.

“After seeing the presentation today,” Walton said. “It’s good.”

Kindergarten to Grade 4 learning is still mainly supported through Google environments in the district.

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mat.barrett@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @matbarrett