Doing classwork on snow days?

I recently read an article on CNN titled, "Students, say goodbye to snow days -- and say hello to school at home." You can find it here. It's only fitting that I post about it when we should be having a snow day too! By the way, is it considered classwork if it's done on a snow day? Does "snowwork" sound right?

The article talked about how teachers are holding classes online on snow days. No one gets a day off on snow days. Students have to complete assignments online from the comfort of their own homes. Teachers have to be online too so that they can answer any questions there students have. The reason why this is happening is because teachers feel that they are losing precious time in the classroom with so many snow days piling up. 

I think that the idea of holding class online on a snow day is a little far fetched. I don't see younger students participating in this. Elementary students will want to play in the snow and drink lots of hot chocolate on snow days! Snow days are for watching all of your favorite Disney movies when you're young! I didn't see anyone convincing an 8 year old to sit down at a computer to complete classwork. I have found that when working with young students, you have to use close proximity to get the student to stay on task. The close you are standing or sitting to a little one, the more likely they are to do their work. Will Mom and Dad keep their child on task at home? I'm worried that if we start making it mandatory for students to attend class online that parents won't support this idea. 

I can understand why holding class online would work for high school students. High school students always have their phones or devices glued to their hands. I don't see why they couldn't get online to participate in an open discussion about a book. I will contradict myself by saying that I loved snow days as a high school students because it meant that I got to vegetate all day. I don't think it is asking too much for students to complete ONE assignment while they enjoy their day off. 

I thought it was interesting that one of the schools mentioned in the article had a higher attendance rate online than it did on a normal school day. Maybe this shows that a lot of students are too lazy to crawl out of bed and go to class? If that's the case, are teachers and parents doing something wrong? Teachers and parents alike should motivate students to show up to class and get an education.

I like that we now have things like Google Docs or Canvas that allows students to get classwork done online. My high school wasn't technology savvy enough to give students the option to complete work online. My school district was also very poor, so we didn't have the luxury of receiving person iPads or laptops. I did a lot of book work in school. The teachers understood that not many students had home computers to work type papers and that is why we were given class time to do so. Holding class online wouldn't be an option for students in poorer school districts. 

I noticed a teacher was using Twitter to hold a discussion online. One student mentioned that he had to be to the point when type his reaction to a book because he only has 140 characters to type his response with. I don't think 140 characters is enough to convey most of my ideas. However, I don't think any form of social media is a good place to do school related things! There is too much drama on Twitter. I know students that use Twitter as an outlet to say whatever floats into their mind. A lot of those thoughts aren't school appropriate. I know students that use Twitter to write mean things about teachers. My point is that Twitter is like the free-for-all of the internet. By being a Twitter follower of one of your students, you can access everything they've ever tweeted. A teacher would probably read things that they would rather not know. I just think Twitter could cause a lot of problems if were used to hold a class discussion. 

In conclusion, I think having older students attend class online during a snow day is a good idea. I don't know how younger students would handle having to sit in front of a computer to attend class.