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Internet Could Mean End of "Snow Days"
fangmcgee writes "Could the Internet mean the end of snow days? Some schools think so, and they are experimenting with ways for students to do lessons online during bad weather, potentially allowing classes to go on during even the worst blizzard." Alright folks, it's finally happened: The Internet has gone too far. It's time to blow it up and go back to papyrus scrolls and horseback couriers.
Unless the wired and wireless infrastructure for broadband is made better and tougher.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Yeah. Because blizzards and heavy snow never disrupt power or telecommunications. </sarcasm>
Maybe it can teach the difference between "to" and "too"? Then move on to advanced concepts like "their", "they're" and "there"; the proper use of commas and even that spawn of satan itself, the apostrophe.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
wouldn't be "to" bad an idea for some.
Your computer and internet still won't go if your power goes out. Or if your internet goes out separately. Also, this will only work in wealthy communities where everyone has broadband and a computer that meets the specifications for whatever terrible software the schools will foist on students.
Get prescribed amount of work done, then do whatever you want for the rest of the day. Alternatively, this could eventually lead to all learning being done from home, and telecommuting becoming a more acceptable work plan. I'd be happy with that too :) In fact, telecommuting makes a whole lot of sense for a business..
which is totally what she said
I think it's a good idea as long as students are not penalized for not participating. Unless the schools want to provide PCs and on-demand dial-up connections to students that don't have a computer or Internet, it would hardly be fair to expect students to go to the public library to get online if schools are closed due to weather. Believe it or not, there's plenty of students that would take advantage of this even if it was not mandatory, if only for a review/Q&A style class online.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
Snow days are healthy. By Saturday it'll be muck, or ice, and the kids will be stuck inside, yet again. And since it's May, let's not forget it's dark by dinner time in the winter. Let the kids play outside, for their own good. It's only a few times per year.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
As an adult, I fully support keeping kids learning as much as possible. In fact, cancel all holidays and summer vacation. It's for their own good! And it keeps them off my lawn.
Of course, if I were still a child, I suppose I'd see the massive injustice in all of this.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
Growing up, my friends and I would live for snow days. Why don't you also take away Mom, Dad and apple pie, too? Granted, with global warming, there seems to be fewer big blizzards, anyway. Now kids will have to pray for an increasingly unlikely confluence of events: a major blizzard, plus a major network outage. Sigh.
The schools thing they're getting one over the kids.
But hidden within the proposition that Internet learning is an acceptable substitute for school learning is the germ of the schools' own demise: what happens when someone proposes all-Internet education?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
"Sorry teacher, but I couldn't do my homework during the snowdays because:
The Snow knocked my Internet Down.
Too poor to have internet.
My Dog ate my computer.
My dog chewed on my ethernet cord.
My dad was too busy watching porn.
Nuke Duke'm was finally released and my dad spent the snow days playing it.
Um, Fuck off, it was a snow day, so i did what all kids do, went out and had fun.
Be seeing you...
Ah yes the all-powerful unions that have completely failed to stop any of the changes that all but destroyed them. The teachers' unions will talk shit but do what they're told. This isn't 1975.
No, no no, you missed it too. They actually forgot to capitalize - "The Internet has gone to Far" is what it should look like.
Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
I'm still trying to figure out how he managed to spell "papyrus" and "couriers" correctly.
Unfortunately, this wouldn't work in our household (and it would be a convenient excuse for kids in other households): each of my kids' accounts was set up with time based use restrictions (first in Vista/Win7 OS, then migrated to Windows Family Safety or whatever they're calling it). On school days, they can't log on and use the computers until after 4PM each day. I'm not going to change their settings each time we have a snow day.
Nope, my kids will just tell their teachers that their mean, nasty parents have the comptuers configured so that they can't use them during the day. Tough crap schoolmaster overlords.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I would instantly pretend my intarweb connection was dropping.
We checked your ISP's logs (no warrant required) and observed you posting annoying comments to Slashdot all day. Interspersed with repeated access to RedTube.com.
Have gnu, will travel.
Let them authorize classes through internet during snow days. Then question why it should be different on a sunny day.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
In my country(45 latitude) there are no such thing as "snow days". When there is snow (quite usual in the winter), kids simply go to school as usual.
You grammar Nazis can go two hell!
Have gnu, will travel.
Where is this place 'far'. And how do you get there.
Unless you meant gone 'too' far.
I can't remember ever hearing my parents (both teachers) being disappointed about snow days. They love the break away from baby sitting other people's kids too. I doubt this will happen any time soon... what about the poor kids who don't have internet or can't afford broadband? Maybe if the internet were a public utility....
You're obviously not in Washington state. The WEA owns the legislature here.
Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
"To" instead of "too" could have been a simple typo. I know full well the difference between them, but sometimes do it to. o.
Even if he doesn't know the difference, he's done pretty well creating Slashdot and doing it for a living :p
which is totally what she said
Well, it's a good thing that harsh weather never interferes with the transmission of electricity, or this plan might have a serious problem.
Spell check makes sure you spell the word correctly. It does not make sure you spell the correct word.
Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
Perhaps after "too" they should move on to make believe words like "Allright".
This works only if you don't live in a jurisdiction that requires a parent to have an accredited teaching degree. For example, homeschooling as we know it is a federal crime in Germany.
If only the submitter hadn't spent so many snow days at home instead of in school learning proper grammar! Oh, the humanity!
As a kid, I recall reading about how kids in Australia that lived a long way from the cities, attended class via radio. I bet they didn't get snow days either (or the Australian equivalent).
Wouldn't they get days off when the weather is so bad that the teachers can't make it to the radio station?
What is this "snow day" you speak of? We in Montana have never heard of such a thing. Snow happens all winter, most of the spring and fall, and hell sometimes in summer.
Too poor to have internet.
Children who qualify for taxpayer-subsidized lunches and taxpayer-subsidized rides to and from school would ideally qualify for taxpayer-subsidized Internet access and a taxpayer-subsidized budget subnotebook PC.
My dad was too busy watching porn.
Then prosecute the dad for aiding and abetting truancy.
Nuke Duke'm was finally released and my dad spent the snow days playing it.
Then prosecute the dad for aiding and abetting truancy.
it was a snow day, so i did what all kids do, went out and had fun.
Also truancy.
As for the other situations you mentioned, I'd have to see the full text of the proposal first.
Hey, these are kids we're talking about here. Stop talking about "penetration rate", you perv. :-P
I think we're still a bit ahead of the curve here. The problem being that those who are most often, though least reported, having issues with snow days are those folks who live in rural districts, which are in the last mile for high-speed. These schools are not going to be able to serve those children who are the reason they're calling the snow day, those who are out in the rural parts of the school district, who can't be reached by bus.
This may be a reasonable option for suburban districts, as a much larger portion of their students may have access to broadband at home. However, in current economic times, with local libraries and free wi-fi at McDonalds, it's easier and easier for a family to put Cable TV, Cable Internet and DLS on the chopping block when it comes to saving money in the monthy budget while one parent is out of work or under employed.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Instead of snow days, the kids will have "over my bandwidth cap days".... Please excuse Timmy from the online lecture, we used up our bandwidth using Netflix
It changes the definition of "Salary" when you don't get the days off you used to get for bad weather. But no bump in pay yet. Sure waiting for the boomers to retire and tighten up the labor market.
Should be about 20 million "extra" retirements over the next 10 years. Hoping that will help.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You have clearly never known true poverty.
RIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT.
Lemme get this straight:
You expect teachers to TEACH, from home, to students who can't even behave themselves in a normal classroom, while said students are effectively at home lounging around surrounded by stuff to distract them. It only takes one student being naked/topless/whatever for said teacher to suddenly be a felon. It only takes one student playing starcraft in the background to create enough of a distraction to negate the lecture. It only takes one absent student in the web conference to create a snowball effect.
GOOD LUCK!
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
First they came for recess. But I was a middle schooler and no longer had recess.
Then they came for pizza day. But I was a high schooler and bought my own food.
Next they came for off-campus lunch. But I had already graduated.
Last, they came for snow days. But I was an adult with kids and my employer said "get your ass to work anyway".
If it snows, you still work. You work from home. We generally don't allow tele-commuting, the only real exception is snow.
They should just change the definition of a snow day? Up here in Canadaland, where blizzards dumping 2-3ft of snow wasn't enough to shut down schools when I was a kid, the opposite is now true. 8" of snow? Shutdown, 5" of snow? Shutdown. I don't know what's worse, that kids aren't going to school(and I hated it, and was lazy) because of a light dusting of snow, or that they feel that kids shouldn't go to school for a light dusting of snow.
Om, nomnomnom...
Most people know the difference, but still screw it up occasionally. In the final draft of my dissertation, even I used "there" instead of the proper "their" in a sentence (only caught it years after the fact). There's something about homonyms that still throw us off, even if we're well aware of the distinctions (I've known the difference since grade school).
It's more akin to a typo than ignorance. Pompous grammar nazis, of course, don't understand that--what with their propensity to use any grammatical mistake as a chance to make up for their small dick sizes.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
One in a long line of recent changes:
You're not getting a snow day - you're following the infrastructure interruption business continuity plan!
other fun entries are:
You're no longer sick - you're working remotely!
You're no longer on vacation - you're off site with limited access!
You're no longer driving in your car/using the bathroom/eating a meal* - you're responsive to electronic communications!
You're no longer sleeping - you're managing cross-time-zone issues!
On the other hand, as soon as email goes down, you may as well skip out for the rest of the day.
* - not all at once, please.
I work for a Federal agency that shut down during the week-long snow-out around DC during the blizzards in 2010. I was able to work remote, though things were rather quiet, because most folks couldn't. Now, a year and a half on, they want everyone to have remote access in case it happens again. The funny thing is that they still are a little old-fashioned about routine telecommute, even with Congress pressuring them to get it going.
My sister is a teacher and they do this, but not in the fully interactive type of way people are thinking here. The teachers prepare lessons for the students ahead of time so that when there is a snow day the students already have their lesson with them. The teacher is available online to answer questions, that's the only component where the internet comes into play. It's difficult for the teachers because they have to prepare several standalone lessons that can be done at any time over the winter since of course they don't know when the snow days will be. But after some resistance from both the teachers and the parents after a couple of years it seems that most everyone has gotten on board with it.
I live in California. Global warming and climate change (yes I know half of /. doesn't believe in this, not saying it's true or not. Hold your horses.) hasn't taken hold fast enough to cause snow while I was in school :(
Many folks working out how education will evolve in a productive way (not the politicians and corporations who only look to break education in order to line their pockets during the crisis they create) see the coming of the virtual classroom as a done deal. It will happen and we will see it in our lifetime.
So to see the end of Snow Days (due to transportation problems) because students can be required to participate in lessons from home is a done deal. All the technical stuff students learn in school today, you know the stuff that they assess with standardized testing (another useless and damaging corporate weapon) can easily and quickly be learned in a virtual learning environment.
What will be interesting is how we deal with the aspects of schooling that aren't shown on report cards, socialization, mental and physical well being. Parents who home school their children tend to work very hard to include these very important components of development. I have talked to parents who go way out of their way to have their students participate in group activities educational, spiritual and recreational.
So I say good riddance to the Snow Days of old that more often than not rewarded the bus students and punished those who walked. Good bye to the nightmare of parents having to leave kids at home with only a moment of preparation time and having to rely on the TV and game console to guard over them. Welcome to the new reality of the web being used for more than just porn.
By the way, yes, I was never a bus student and I didn't get my fair share of snow days.
You could automate teaching and have a help chat that pops up to help kids that are struggling on a subject. Buddy up older students to help younger students, just like in the old K-8 one room school house. It could even be a work at your own pace 12 month a year school. You could bring the student to teacher ratio to 1000 to 1 and still give a better experience, more hands on and at the students pace.
So, basically home schooling with off-site support resources?
Except, now all families need a stay-at-home parent to supervise the kids in their learning.
But they still have to pay school taxes.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Working with working Internet and power from home. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I don't know who's having all these snow days.
Mostly places with weather that varies a lot throughout the year, like Indiana. There's occasionally enough snow to make roads impassable for standard tires, but not enough volume of snow throughout the winter to justify putting chains on parents' and school buses' tires. So school gets called off about three or four days a year.
Haven't read through all the comments (or the linked article), so not sure if this has been mentioned... Why does "everyone" assume everyone else has a computer and internet access? And knows how to use it? Granted, I know there are kids out there who could run rings around the adults they're surrounded by, and many households/ kids do have a connection they could do this with. What about the ones who don't?
They're eliminating make-up days. Trying to shave a few school days off of the calendar each year to save cost at the expense of the parents.
Nullius in verba
Having access to a computer doesn't always mean having one in the home, available to be used in the event that you cannot leave the home for whatever reason.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
I see a slow culture shift to Work, and Learn at home.
It has many advantages.
1. Distance is not a barrier, companies can hire the best people for the job no matter where they are at.
2. Saves on Fuel. If you look at you school budgets #2 almost matching teachers salaries is transportation costs. And for you employees $4.00+ a gallon for gas out of your pocket costs you money.
3. Lower Company operation costs.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
loaded with papyrus scrolls.
You have clearly never known true poverty.
Notice that the heading of the post is "In the developed world...". So where have you seen "true poverty" in the developed world?
In the United States, education is handled locally. So even through there are districts where internet access is a rare luxury, there are other communities where it is taken for granted. In those communities, arrangements might be made for the few households that currently lack access.
Those richer communities can work out the kinks and when the poorer communities catch up in terms of internet access, the best practices will be well known. That's one of the benefits of local control of government services.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
God-forsaken wasteland if they start taking away the few perks that come with growing up as a human icicle? Do this and California will fall to the sound of a 999,999 rubber boots (one got stuck in the mud on the trek through Oregon) marching down from Canada, packing heat. (no I mean literally: electric socks (why do you think Canadians make such good major league pitchers? Carrying those lead-acid car batteries around the playground under your left arm while your throw iceballs with your right makes you strong that's why)). After that we'll open illegal back-alley Timmies and say goodbye to your peace-love-eternal-groovieness California. Think this is a joke? Check the obscure fine print in your immigration laws there's a hoser clause put in there by our secret operative Lorne Greene decades ago. They don't call it a Greene Card for nothing, huh? It's easier when you realize the truth: there is no lumber cartel. So stop it. Thank you. The nurse is here!
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
I'll sell you some. I've got a bunch.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Where I live there is one high school in the county and its about a half hour drive from where I live and I'm about half way between the school and the county line so it's further for others. The only broadband we have access to is satelite. I also imagine there are quite a few children in this county that do not have a computer. Also I do not get cell service.
I have seen "true poverty" where I went to high school. Their are lots of children that only eat when they go to school and get a free lunch. I remember one kid in school who the teacher bought a pair of shoes and a coat for him. He came to school the next day wearing his old shoes and no coat. The teacher asked him about it and he said his father had taken them for himself. Maybe you grew up in a nice suburb but there are children in the US of motherfucking A that do live in poverty.
> It was -4F with 30 mph winds when they would have been walking to school. Most parents don't have good enough clothes to bundle their kids up for that weather, at least those that live in the lower 48 states.
With wind chill, that can be dangerous enough for people that aren't used to it to justify shutting school for a day. (If kids are walking.) Especially if there's a snowstorm.
There is also the point that kids are often *working* on days when there are big blizzards. If you're getting ten inches or more, it's not uncommon to have as many people as are in the household working on shoveling sidewalks, driveways, etc..., and to have kids from poorer communities moving around renting shoveling services.
Also playing--you get to go to school every day, but big blizzards only come once in a while, particularly for people in most states.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I would call that poverty, but "true poverty" to me suggests unsanitary conditions where medical help is unavailable, children have to be sold to pay bills, human waste sewers are the ditches that run by people's "houses" (which consists of cardboard boxes, tents, and the like) and other problems that are pretty much unheard of in the developed world.
Your friend, as difficult as his life was, knew where his next meal was coming from (the cafeteria every day Monday through Friday), used toilets that flush, had clean water available (from the drinking fountains at school and if he was in the US any restaurant he cold find - they're required to provide water free of charge), had emergency medical care available, etc.. He even had education available free of charge.
Yes, I did grow up in a nice suburb and I'm very thankful I didn't live your friend's childhood, but I'm even more thankful I didn't leave a truly poor childhood in another country where surviving to adulthood isn't taken for granted.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp
in six states you do have to link up with a "normal" school to get your curriculum certified but its guaranteed by the Constitution due to religious reasons. And trying to get a law passed to make it otherwise will get a Policritter a visit by Mr Smith http://www.hslda.org/speakers/speaker.asp?s=1 and he has taken cases to SCOTUS and won.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
With a lot of budgetary issues in today's economy, I find it hard to believe that school officials & administration will actually pounce on over-priced solutions to allow a lot of students (figure between 1,000 and 4,000) to take lessons online rather than canceling one day of school.
Similarly (as other comments have outlined), they're going to run into a whole lot of issues with lower income areas that do not have access to the same resources and higher speed connections that a lot of more privileged areas have.
To actually outline the changes that would have to happen in order for this to be remotely successful could easily fill a 5 page document - the problems with it are huge. I don't see this happening for another 10 or 15 years, at LEAST.
My initial reaction was a bit different: where I grew up, classes were only cancelled when the temperature went below ~ -25 degrees Celsius. We had Snow Days for half the damned academic year.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Yes, and "pants". The word is "pantalones" and it isn't even English!
If it's just a day or two, just let the kids be kids. They have a whole lifetime of wage slavery ahead of them. If it's an extended period, it's probably better than a bunch of make up days later.
However, it will only work IF all the kids have a computer they can use exclusively during classtime and the power and internet stays up.
Fortune cookie says snow day - stay home :-)
It would be a perfect opportunity to get those webcams focused just right and pointed in just the right direction. Did I mention that I'm a bit pf a perv.?
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
If the local school is able to get any cable or FiOS company to wire me in, I'll absolutely support my kids to being tortured with the typical snowday or two we're likely to experience in rural South Jersey. Some people are going to have to be provided with PCs, too, to make this work.
Hurry up, though... only one kid left in public school....
-Dave Haynie
The HeliOS Project installs roughly 400 computers a year for disadvantaged students in Central Texas in a year's time. 60 percent of them are still not connected to the Internet after 90 days because they cannot afford the service. And no, Time Warner, Clear and other ISP's could not care less. Let 'em eat dialup. If the school system is going to subsidize their broadband connection, then it might work...outside of that, it won't.
Windows assumes you are an idiot...Linux demands proof.
The thing is, even relative poverty (and we're talking about poor meaning "children not eating regularly", not "only having one car or computer per household") is harder to swallow in a rich country like the US, as it is easily curable just by redistributing a small proportion of the wealth around.
In somewhere like Sierra Leone or Somalia, even if you took all the money and divided it equally, you still wouldn't have that much each.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"as it is easily curable just by redistributing a small proportion of the wealth around." Unfortunately it isn't that simple. The earlier poster pointed out the example of a teacher giving a kid a coat and shoes, only to have the coat and shoes taken away by the parent. Perhaps this parent had a legit need (works outside in the cold all day while the kid is warm inside the school building) but maybe the parent was irresponsible and selfish. There are parents like that. There are parents who would sell the coat and shoes for alcohol or other drugs.
The school lunch program works great because it goes directly to the kids and solves an obvious indisputable high-priority need. But how do you solve the problem of weekends? You can provide money, but you don't know how it will be spent. Even food stamps can be bartered away.
And to the extent that you succeed in providing for all children regardless of parental involvement, you remove the burden of parenthood from the parent and the cost of what is often irresponsible (but pleasurable) behavior and thereby encourage more of the behavior.
Unfortunately poverty is not "easily curable". If it were, not only could we cure it in developed countries, I believe there is enough wealth to go around that we could cure it everywhere.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
The problem is that administrators have to make the call in time to get the word out to everyone concerned that a snow day has been declared. Otherwise, you get school bus drivers and teachers showing up for work, parents dropping their kids off at school, and the whole system having to be started up and then stopped. Typically, an administrator needs to be up around 4 or 5 in the morning, poring over weather reports and trying to figure out what the impact will be. They make the best guess they can, and sometimes they're wrong. They would rather err on the side of caution, as letting school go on when the weather is too bad will lead to accidents and parents having to be called out of work or what have you when they finally decide they really do need to call it off early. But then that leads to the days when nobody understands why school was called off, because the administrator's best guess at the time he/she needed to make the call was that there would be too much snow, and he/she turned out to be wrong. They can't win.
A good point, but the way things seem to be headed, a house without a high speed internet connection will eventually be about as unheard of as a house without a telephone has been for decades.
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!