Tag Archives: Remote Learning

Teen Nonprofits Find Solutions during Covid-19 Pandemic

By Anvitha Reddy, Charlotte Heuser, and Emma Dircks

Pho­to Cred­it: The Young-ish Entre­pre­neurs by SDI Productions/Getty Images

In the mid­dle of a Covid-19 lock­down packed with dis­tance learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties, teach­ers at the Schmal­ka­lden Ele­men­tary School in Thuringia, Ger­many, learned that the dig­i­tal tool they had been using didn’t meet the country’s strict data-pri­va­cy restric­tions. “A par­ent at the school asked whether I could devel­op a pro­gram from scratch over the week­end,” said Math­ias Wick­en­hagen, a 20-year-old pro­gram­mer in the neigh­bor­hood. “And I did.”

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Homeschooling and the Pandemic

By Mukta Dharmapurikar, Johanna Eichler, and Aaron Ming Meyer

While her neigh­bors rush down the street to catch the school bus, 14-year-old Lilah Had­den starts her school day at home. After spend­ing the morn­ing on math and cre­ative writ­ing with her moth­er, she takes a vio­lin class online, fin­ish­ing her day with inde­pen­dent read­ing. For two years now, home­school­ing has worked well for her. “I’m get­ting to … learn more of what I actu­al­ly want to learn about,” Lilah says, not­ing that she’s par­tic­u­lar­ly pas­sion­ate about music. But if it weren’t for the pan­dem­ic, the idea to school at home would nev­er have crossed her mind.

Covid-19 forced stu­dents around the globe to learn with­out phys­i­cal­ly going to school, as entire states and coun­tries went through long peri­ods of lock­down. It’s sparked new inter­est in home­school­ing alter­na­tives in places rang­ing from Des Moines, Iowa, to Ham­burg, Ger­many, where home­school­ing has been banned for over a cen­tu­ry. Stu­dents have dis­cov­ered that alter­na­tive school arrange­ments can offer more flex­i­bil­i­ty to man­age dif­fer­ences, pan­dem­ic stress, and distractions.

Home­school­ing — Gustoff fam­i­ly in Des Moines

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Remote Learning with American Studies

By Carolyn Blume, Andreas Hübner, Michaela Keck

With this fifth blog, we are com­ing to the end or our series on dig­i­tal teach­ing tools. We hope that you’ve been inspired by some of the Amer­i­can Stud­ies links rang­ing from the heart-warm­ing and hilar­i­ous antics of humans and ani­mals to the more schol­ar­ly posts on Aca­d­e­m­ic Earth.

Make Way for Duck­lings by Nan­cy Schön in Boston Pub­lic Garden
Google Lit Trips
By Carolyn Blume

“Trav­el is fatal to prej­u­dice, big­otry, and nar­row-mind­ed­ness.” Mark Twain

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