Information on Stage 2- transition to Remote learning

25-Mar-2020

Dear Edithvale Families

We are part of a strong and special community. We are here to support you and your family to navigate through these unchartered waters.

Yesterday I am very proud to say that we had every single staff member volunteer their time to attend school so that we can take greater steps in our quest to deliver flexible and remote learning options for our students. We are striving to give all of our students’ opportunities to become more skilful and knowledgeable, albeit through a very different methodology.

We are expecting to be working remotely for an extended period of time after the school holidays and we are trying to prepare our community for this reality.

Our plan continues to evolve and is agile enough to adapt to the ever changing educational landscape that we find ourselves in. The key to plan is connectedness and the more our students connect with the learning and the digital platform, the greater the success we are all more likely to have. The more that our families can connect with us and connect with students’ learning, the greater educational continuity we can achieve together.

Our stage one plan has already been released and Learning Grids at each Year Level remain accessible on our school’s website- https://www.edithvaleps.vic.edu.au/Students/Homelearning/

To help transition to the inevitable flexible and remote learning environment, we will be using SEESAW as our digital platform. Our Leadership team arrived at this decision through discussions and visits to other Network schools and we have taken into consideration the feedback and data that we collected through last week’s ‘Family Digital Survey’. We believe that SEESAW is the most accessible platform, as the minimum requirement is having a Smart phone with Internet Capabilities.

Without a 1:1 iPad or BYOD program in place at school, students will need to access SEESAW through devices available at home and with parental assistance and guidance in many cases. We understand that these will not always be available and our staff have the ability to work with flexibility to try and adapt to the schedules of our families.

The complexities of education ensure that this will not necessarily be perfect, and our students and staff will be relying on parent support and help to embed this learning style. SEESAW is the most intuitive and simplest platform that we feel ALL of our students from Foundation to Year 6 can access and stay connected with our staff. It is the platform we believe gets us as close as possible to providing educational equity and consistency as possible.

Please check for an email from COMPASS later today and an attachment contained within that email that has ALL passwords and log in details for the ‘online’ learning we will be providing in the coming weeks and months.

We will continue to invest time, effort and energy into building our capacity to deliver engaging learning opportunities for our students over the next few days. Please consider the information provided in the attachment to help prepare for the start of Term 2 and the remote learning that will be required. There are NO learning tasks available at the moment.

As students and families log in to SEESAW next term they will start to see how the learning looks and who knows, there may even be a welcome message posted by their teachers already J

We will provide the information and support necessary to help our families and students access this new learning and we will be sure to provide further information about our Stage 2 roll out when the time comes.

Please contact our school if you are unable to connect to SEESAW and we can make other arrangements to provide learning opportunities for your child – noting the DET expectations and Government advice around movement and contact.

The wellbeing of our students, families and staff remains of paramount importance and we urge you to contact the school email- edithvale.ps@edumail.vic.gov.au if you have any wellbeing concerns for your child.

“People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.” — Edmund Hillary

Sincerely
James Whitla

Information about EPS Home Learning with SEESAW (121 KB)