Sunday, September 21, 2008

Catching up

After completing my most recent class and hoping my instructor survived hurricane Ike, I took a break from blogging to catch up on reading blogs, tweets, and F2F issues. Attending the GA PTA State Advocacy Conference was on my F2F agenda. Quite a bit of history in the gold domed building.

I am enjoying the break from school as I continue to gather links to blogs, websites, and Second Life classrooms. As an Ed Techie in my professional and personal life...sometimes it is nice to shut down and disconnect.

With the passing of hurricane Ike, a discussion arose about what do online instructors and their students do in a state of emergency. Some of us have teachers and classmates that evacuated Houston, but our online courses continue, assignments need to be graded, and completed classes need to be closed out. I remember having this discussion after 9/11 when we lost online educators and students. While residential schools have policies governing substitutes, resignations, and emergencies, these policies are not always readily available in our online courses.

As an online student, I have always found some way to connect. After many hurricane evacuations from Florida, we just decided to move. With our military background, moving every couple of years is anticipated, so packing up and returning to an area where we pay property taxes for many years was not a problem.

For those involved with online schools, formal or informal, what are some of your policies that cover cases of emergency, acts of God, or times of war?

No comments: