My travel companion, Jose, and I had been keeping a close tab on the coronavirus situation, and we were warned by my relatives in Hong Kong to stock up on as many face masks and hand sanitizers as we could while we were in the Philippines as they were virtually sold out everywhere in Hong Kong and China. We had originally planned to return to Shanghai on February 16th but had been notified by our principal that the start of physical classes in China had been delayed until at least March 2. At that point, the number of reported infected people had been raising still and we contemplated travelling elsewhere to ride out the situation. The problem was, we had, and still have, no idea how long this situation would last, nor have we been given any sort of certainty as to a specific return date for work.
With all this in mind, teachers, administrators and staff members hustled to get an online instructional plan in place for the start of semester 2, which began on February 19. Our main learning management system is Moodle and it is a platform that our school has been using for a few years. We use Moodle to communicate information and share resources and lesson materials. Since we are teaching in China, WeChat (the Chinese equivalent to WhatsApp) has also been indispensable as a communication tool, especially since Moodle was unprepared to handle such a high volume of users, or accommodate our rapidly growing storage needs (our brilliant IT team has been able to curb many of these issues since then, but the server still undergoes regular maintenance causing minor disruptions in our workflow).
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WeChat is not just a messaging app, but also has social media features, payment options, and several other utilities built in. In short, WeChat is pretty much woven into the fabric and lifeblood of what living and working in China is like. That said, it is THE number one tool to utilize if you are looking for a stable and reliable method of communicating with people in China. No server issues, no need for a VPN… so while privacy is still a concern, it is now a part of my online instructional plan. (There is an option to limit communications with contacts to “chats” only so you can hide your social media posts).
Given that we’ve been fully online with our learning for about two weeks now, we’re addressing minor hiccups as we go, adjusting the pacing of our lessons, and working on finding authentic ways to assess student learning. We’re thinking about how to troubleshoot potential issues with academic honesty and ways to get an accurate and holistic picture of how our students are learning. The biggest unknown at the moment is when we will be back in the classroom, and how the coronavirus situation will pan out… Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
[…] the time Semester 2 began mid-February, and I was “temporarily” residing back in Canada. For safety […]
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