There will be a small group of staff at Wellington College tomorrow to supervise kids who can't stay home. File photo / Anthony Phelps
There will be a small group of staff at Wellington College tomorrow to supervise kids who can't stay home. File photo / Anthony Phelps
A Wellington school will have its students and staff work and study from home tomorrow as a trial.
Boys' school Wellington College will ask students to log on to their student emails tomorrow from home and use various online tools to engage with teachers and other students and carry out their schoolwork.
Principal Gregor Fountain said the rapidly changing situation with coronavirus meant "you make a decision one day that feels like a sort of marginal decision - should this thing be on, should it not - and 24 hours later you think 'how could we ever have considered that that should happen?'
"The ground is just shifting so quickly on this, we've never really experienced anything like it."
Fountain said many of the tools teachers at his school used were now online, and students would be accessing those platforms from home tomorrow to see how well the system operated.
A small group of staff would still be at school tomorrow to supervise any students who could not stay home.
The trial was important so they could see how well the school would cope if it had to close due to infection, he said.
But Fountain recognised although his school was high decile and many students had access to devices and internet connections, other schools in the region might struggle to do the same.
Tomorrow students will be given work to do through the various platforms, and some classes will be livestreamed at the times they would normally have been taught.
But the school wanted to make sure it still struck the right balance for students to get exercise, fresh air, and not be on a screen all day.
Year 12 student William Chandler said it would not be "a completely foreign environment" for students because they were familiar with the platforms they'd be using.
In livestreamed classes they would still be able to ask questions and interact with other students, he said.
"I think that for us it's actually a really good solution to what could be a pretty big barrier in the way of our education."
Regardless, he was "pretty comfortable that our teachers are going to do all that they can to help equip us and get us ready to go through this year".
He said some students would likely struggle at first to stay motivated while studying from home.
"As people come to grips with the gravity of the situation, I think that yes, it will be more self-motivated learning, but perhaps that's more the society that we're moving towards."
One of the tools available to schools is a platform called MyPortfolio, which all schools in New Zealand can access for free.
It was introduced in 2007 and supported group work, remote learning, and record holding for teacher registration. It is run as a free resource by technologist company Catalyst.
