MOULTRIE, Ga. — The phrase “new normal” pops up yet again as many families and their children deal with the pressures of online classes, one being the need for internet access. 

Some families are still figuring out whether their kids will be learning in the traditional classroom, remotely or via the virtual classroom. 

Colquitt County Superintendent Doug Howell said on Aug. 17, the first day of classes, that about three-fourths of the county’s students have opted for the traditional setting with the other quarter choosing remote or virtual classes.

Parents had the first week of school to determine their child’s position, but in taking the virtual options, the need for internet access is a must. It’s an abundant need for a resource that lacks abundance in a rural area.

Howell said the school system knows the limitations of its county and is aiming to rectify it. It’ll take some time, however.

“It’s a big issue in Southwest Georgia, something I hope the state will address one day with broadband, etc.,” he said. “But, we put in for a grant back in the spring or early summer and we received 37 hotspots.”

The grant has been approved, so it’s a matter of waiting for the delivery. These hotspots will be deployed around the county via vehicles (i.e. a bus or car) for easy mobility.

 “If you had an older bus, an older car or something in the system, you could put [a hotspot] on it, and put that in an area where they’re having trouble with connectivity,” Howell said.

Beyond connectivity issues, some parents have also been worried about the use of Edgenuity, the program for the online courses in the remote classroom, in how it may demean the art of teaching.

Dr. Marni Kirkland, CCSS director of professional learning, said the program isn’t an end-all, be-all for student learning, rather a tool for teachers to enhance their lessons. 

This goes for in-person and remote learning.

According to Kirkland, Edgenuity is like a constant repository in that it has tools, quizzes and videos for the subjects learned during the 125 days of the semester.

“But [students] can’t get through that without a teacher,” she said. “That’s why even our remote students who are online, they’re not just given Edgenuity straight on. They have a teacher who’s helping them through Google Classroom when they run into difficulties.”

Google Classroom is another thing shared in traditional and online learning. Google Classroom functions as a learning management system for teachers to assign activities for students to do.

Like Howell also said on Aug. 17 and times before then, the remote classroom’s curriculum aligns with the traditional to give a sense of continuity.

“We adopted the pacing, which is the order of the content, across both ways,” Kirkland said. “If you’re home and if you’re in school, when you come back or go out to remote [learning], you haven’t missed anything.”

The school system did not want to make any student lose an edge over their choice of learning this year.

Kirkland said the first week of school was heavy in Edgenuity assignments as they wanted students and teachers to learn and get used to the program.  

It may have felt like that’s all they were doing, but Kirkland said this is preparation in case a schoolwide shutdown occurs again. It’s “blended learning,” she called it.

“Blended learning is new to our district to a great degree because we have not pushed the one-to-one device until recently,” she said. “We haven’t had the resources to do that, but now we do.”

As they learn to use Edgenuity more efficiently, teachers will be able to use it as needed, whether it be to enhance the learning of a poem via a quiz at the end of class or to learn the ins and outs of a math problem.

Again, it’s not the teacher’s only resource. In a blended learning setting, students will still have their textbooks and hands-on learning activities. 

“You’re kind of forced into a lack of options for children in online delivery and making it speak back to the day-to-day,” Kirkland said. “Edgenuity is valid [and] reliable in order to cover Georgia standards, but it cannot replace the art of teaching or a teacher.”