Week 3 Lockdown

Week 3 of lockdown nearly over we head into week 4. Will it be the last week or will lockdown level 4 be extended?? The daily case numbers are down but our death rates are on the increase as it has spread to a couple of elderly homes and the elderly are not strong enough to fight the virus.

With a nice break with Easter just finished it was good to watch some movies, get out in the garden and do some cooking.

But today is a day that will also go down in history as New Zealand schools start teaching from home or distance learning while the country is in lockdown. I have had emails, phone calls and texts from teachers all weekend with the common title "HELP".

• How do I embed a video?
• The sound is not working in the video?
• I can not get the video embedded in the site.
• My site links are not working.

With the panic and stress coming from teachers I, of course, made how-to videos and shared them with teachers and also sent instructions. I wanted to support and release some of the stress they were having.

I have set up myself in the backroom as our weather has turned very cold and wet my two men at home are now inside a lot more and are very noisy and distracting. 

I have had to move the desk around from under the window as I had a clear view over my shoulder of the pathway to the toilet and while in a hangout my 18year old son wandered through in his boxes.. A good lesson for teachers and students at home in Hangouts to make sure you have a wall behind you. 

This week is a short week but we have support hangouts today and tomorrow for teachers in the Te Hiku and Kaikohekohe clusters on Google hangout Meet and Hapara and DFI on Friday. I am also creating videos for teachers to add to their sites. Some are how-to videos for rewindable learning and others are just to say Hi and connect with students. I thought I might do some of me reading stories for the junior classes. I will also remind the students to be cyber smart while on their devices and online. It is frustrating when you hear on the news that we can not trust students. We should just block everything. That will not teach students to be cyber smart. I notice my email box starting to fill up so I had better go. Good luck to all teachers, students, and Whanau with online learning.