Snow days 1 and 2-What did our students do?

You know in England when the weather is genuinely bad- towns like Christchurch actually get snow. This is a very rare occasion as we are in one of the mildest parts of the country, by the coast and protected by the Isle of Wight. It was therefore a genuine shock to all of us at school last Monday morning to find we had to close the school for the first time in the last few decades. By Tuesday the conditions were even worse and we had to take the frustrating decision to close for a second day. Having sent the students off to enjoy a day of sledging and snow ball fighting our teachers spent the day at home working remotely from home. This is perfectly easy with SharePoint driving our Staff Gateway alongside Exchange which makes email our most used staff resource.

It was only on Tuesday afternoon when a member of staff posed a question to me by email that I started to think about student usage of our Learning Gateways. They had no access to school computers throughout the whole of Monday. Did any of them log in with so much snow fun to be had? A quick check of the stats showed that nearly 50% of students spent time on our Learning Gateways throughout Monday and this trend continued on Tuesday. One parent even called the local BBC radio station (Radio Solent) to thank the school and a particularly innovative Sociology teacher for providing such high quality resources online.

Snow....in Christchurch!