Kildonan holds virtual school on snow days

AMENIA — On Monday morning, Jan. 12, and again on Tuesday, Jan. 27, when icy roads dictated that all area schools were closed,  students at The Kildonan School were actually in school. “Virtual school,” that is. 

Working from their homes or in the dorms, students logged into a new Learning Management System, or LMS, now in place at the school, and made their way to online classrooms. In these classrooms they were connected to each other and their teachers, who had also logged in from their homes.  

On regular school days, as well as on this virtual school day, teachers take attendance using the LMS. LMS is also used to post resources and assignments, for students to ask their teachers questions, participation in class discussions and to turn in assignments. 

“The LMS is visually appealing; everything for my students is in one place online. I like it a lot.“ said Michelle Sorentino, a teacher at the school. 

The Kildonan School is using an LMS from Finalsite, a company that provides web solutions for public, private and international schools, based in Glastonbury, Conn.

Because there were so many snow days last winter, and thus so many interruptions in learning, rolling out LMS at Kildonan before the snow flew this winter was a priority. 

“We can’t afford to lose so many learning days to unpredictable weather, and with technology like this available there is no reason to let that happen,” said Mary Taft, academic dean at The Kildonan School. “We have our camp program, Dunnabeck, starting in June, so we can’t tack on extra days then. We have international students who purchase plane tickets way in advance. We can’t extend the school year beyond the originally scheduled end date. This was the best solution.” 

In addition, “It’s the continuity in learning that the LMS provides which is important. And having students access course materials online is a great way to prepare them for college, where online platforms are standard practice,” said Taft.

On a recent snow day, or campus closing as it is now called, students and teachers at Kildonan followed a two-hour delay schedule, which called for changing classes by logging in and out of online classrooms.  The schedule had breaks built into it and overall was a total of 4.4 hours of learning time, compared to the regular school day of 8.8 hours. 

During one break a group of girls went outside and made a 10-minute snowman.  At the end of the day a 10th-grader remarked, “I really enjoyed this.” 

Holding virtual school on recent snow days was actually not so different from any other school day at Kildonan. The one-to-one iPad program at the school means that  students use their iPads every day of the year.  As a school for students with dyslexia and language-based learning differences, assistive technology for reading, writing and organizing ideas is integrated into tutoring and every subject, every school day. There were no technical glitches during Kildonan’s recent virtual school; that’s no surprise given the important part technology plays at Kildonan.