Back to level 4 and distance learning this week

 With the discovery of one case of the Delta strain of Covid, Aotearoa went back into Level 4 at midnight last Tuesday. To date, there have been 71 cases, all are in Auckland with 6 cases in Wellington. The government will broadcast their decision as to what happens from this week as level 4 was only put in place for a week across NZ. The general consensus is that level 4 will continue for at least another week before a reassessment of risks (based on cases being identified). If there are no cases in the South Island and no evidence of the virus from waste water testing, then the South Island may move to Level 3. So fingers crossed that we do not have to remain at Level 4 for too long.

The move to Level 4 was swift, within 6 hours of the first case showing up. Derek Wenmouth recorded how the entire education sector was caught by surprise although at Ara, our CE was continually reminding our teaching departments to be ready.

At the beginning of this year, departments were tasked with reporting on readiness and learners were prepared with inductions to zoom and Moodle (our LMS). However, these were not repeated in semester two when a small cohort of new students begin their studies. In hindsight, we should have repeated the exercise from the beginning of the year, thereby assisting our teachers with one item to not have to worry about. That is, inducting students new to distance learning to the digital tools. We also had a cohort of new teachers starting at the beginning of the semester. Most of these teachers will have only been teaching for about a month, before having to shift to distance learning.

The thing to learn from all of this is that prepareness is an ever moving target. There is never an end point as there will be new students/teachers having to be introduced to distance learning tools and approaches. 

Thankfully, most of our resources have been updated since last year and my colleagues and I could draw on these to support our teachers. The second 1/2 of last week was busy with workshops to update and orientate our teachers to the shift back to distance learning. This week, mostly drop-in type sessions to triage those who need support. 

Hopefully, this time around, the distance learning and Level 4 will be short. We are likely to also be in distance teaching mode at Level 3 which may be more drawn out. We will need to work on how we move forward after this event as Covid will still around for the immediate future :(