What Is Distance Learning?

Distance learning describes any learning that happens without the students being physically present in the lesson. (However, this could also apply to the teacher in certain situations.)

Challenges

There are many challenges to distance learning but in this forum I will focus on the technological challenges. In our region we have the challenge that high speed internet access is not ubiquitous. Some households have cable or DSL, others are dependent on cellular data solutions and some of the geographically isolated are limited to low bandwidth legacy satellite access.

There are better solutions coming in the very near future such as the Starlink satellite system now in Beta testing. This system is designed to provide high speed internet access to anywhere on the globe for around $99 per month plus an additional upfront equipment fee.

Here is a link to a Beta testers first use impressions. It is an interesting read and looks very promising.

Our Plan for Distance Learning

Currently families are able to send their students to school so the technology divide is somewhat mollified but what happens should we go into distance learning mode only?

The region has purchased 6 mobile hotspots they can be deployed anywhere there is a cell signal. The concept is that should the schools close for a period of time, these devices could be located at schools or other government buildings to provide internet access to any Region1 student. Student with little or no internet access could be driven to hotspot that they could access from their school issued Chromebook. The Chromebooks will automatically connect to the hotspot with the network ID of Region1. The student would be able to access Google classroom for assignments, do research, and open documents for use in "Offline Mode " at home. Once the work is done, the student would need to return to the hotspot to reconnect their Chromebooks and allow it to synchronize the documents and Google classroom.

These systems are assembled but not will not be deployed until they are needed and we now what and where the needs will be.

This plan is far from perfect but it does provide an option for families with internet access challenges.

You can see pictures of the kits we have assembled below