Online learning begins in Duval County

Students and teachers have been working together to flatten the learning curve as they navigate the first week of online learning. All Duval County students were expected to log into the virtual platform beginning March 23.
Dean Ledford, principal at Fletcher High School, urged parents, teachers and students to exercise patience and flexibility as they enter the new era for home-based learning.
“[They] will be our biggest values right now. This is a new experience for all of us. Students and teachers are learning together right now. So, we’re just getting our feet wet and making sure all the students have what they need,” he said.
“We’re just taking it day by day right now. We’re disappointed that we can’t be in school but obviously the health and safety of the students and teachers is the number one priority right now.”
According to Ledford, there is no information available about extending online learning beyond the current April 15 deadline.
“That’s the last thing we were told,” he said.
Most of the students at Fletcher High School were familiar with the online platforms that they already use in classes during a regular school day.
“It wasn’t completely new but there’s just a communication gap and the logistics of everything we had to get out to the students,” Ledford said. “For the most part, it was good. We’re working out different things with the amount of people countywide. There have been some delays, but we’ve received a lot of positive feedback regarding what students have been able to do and complete so far. We’re going to be ironing out kinks for a few days. Students and parents have been fantastic with it.”
Prom festivities and the annual Grad Bash have been cancelled. Ledford said it was too soon to determine whether graduation ceremonies will be held as scheduled.
“We’re waiting to see," he said. "Obviously, if we can come back, it’s something we definitely want to do. But we have to just wait and see if the April 15th [deadline] or something around there can happen.”
At Neptune Beach Elementary, Colby Paul’s students were excited to connect with their friends and anxious to get back to learning. Paul, who teaches grades K-5 at Neptune Beach Elementary, said the faculty was working out kinks in real time. Servers lagged from the sheer volume of users countywide. Lesson plans took time to upload but her students found comfort in small moments of normalcy, seeing faces of teachers and talking to their friends.
“The fact that we’re in elementary, it went really wonderful. There were some obvious glitches with the system because we all logged in at the same time. It was literally every child and every teacher in the district. That’s a lot of people. Some documents and assignments took a while to upload but we were on talking to our students all day and consistently. Especially at the elementary level, I feel like by the end of the week, it’s going to be working better than anticipated,” she said.
“For what we were doing, they were excited to say hi to each other and their teachers that they miss. Everyone was like ‘assignment, assignment’ and we were like, ‘hey, this is the test day.’ The first week, it’s all about not being pressured. You will be fine. We will all be successful. That’s the whole goal.”