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Kialo Edu is a free argument mapping and debate site, designed to teach critical thinking and encourage rational classroom discussion.
https://twitter.com/KialoEdu

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a merge cube to describe coronavirus

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CoSpaces Edu: Make AR & VR in the classroom

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this animation describe the corona virus, it signs, how it spreads and the solutions to protect

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Free Online Learning Resources for Teaching Your Students Virtually by Jill Staake on March 13, 2020

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Free Online Learning Resources for Teaching Your Students Virtually by Jill Staake on March 13, 2020

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Shared by Barbara Cotter

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With school districts starting the 2020/2021 school year online, parents and teachers are continually looking for online learning resources. Teachers have been tasked with delivering lesson plans and classroom activities as part of distance learning. Parents are trying to keep students on track with their studies and educational growth. We are here to help! This growing list offers a wealth of resources for all ages of students, parents, and teachers!

Go to:

Online Resources for Kids in Grades K-5

These sites have ready-to-use lesson plans and activities for a vast amount of subjects for younger students.

What It Is: This comprehensive program covers a wide variety of subjects for students aged 2-8 (Pre-K through second grade). It offers more than 850 self-guided lessons across 10 levels. A companion program focuses on teaching English as a second language for this age group.

What It Is: This MMO game gives kids something other online learning resources may lack: a sense of community. Students up to age 13 play games to learn across a range of topics (math, reading, social studies, science, and more), while also creating their own online persona and interacting with others in the game.

What It Is: Daily free resources and activities in American Sign Language and English, for young deaf children ages 3-10. They offer weekly activities based on their award-winning VL2 Storybook Apps to support bilingual language development. It is run by Motion Light Lab, part of a research center on Visual Language and Visual Learning at Gallaudet University.

What They're Offering: Free access to Motion Light Lab's award-winning VL2 ASL Storybook Apps. Every week, the Motion Light Lab offers a free Storybook App which includes daily offerings in ASL and English, live storytelling "sign aloud" on Mondays, and an ASL/English literacy lesson live-streamed every Wednesday on YouTube featuring deaf narrators and accompanying worksheets for a deeper dive into each story.

What It Is: BrainPop offers in-depth learning on topics across the curriculum for upper elementary and middle school students. Each topic includes videos, quizzes, related reading, and even coding activities. Teachers have access to planning and tracking resources too. They also offer BrainPop Jr., specially designed for younger kids.

What They're Offering: All schools get free access to their COVID-19/coronavirus online learning resources for talking to students about the topic.

What It Is: A character education video subscription series for K-2 students that highlight positive character traits, exemplified by prominent figures.

What It Is: A nonprofit and charity, Classroom Champions connects volunteer Olympians, Paralympians, Student-Athletes, and Professional Athletes to K-8 classrooms through a social and emotional based curriculum and mentorship experience.

What It Is: A fun and educational game-based environment where kids learn to code without any prior experience. After completing CodeMonkey's award-winning coding courses, kids will be able to navigate through the programming world with a sense of confidence and accomplishment.

What It Is: Turn writing assignments into something amazing with the illustrations, animations, and sound effects available. Kids can even write their own choose-your-own-adventure story!

What It Is: This research-based emotional skills program is designed for children ages 4-11 and gives kids practical tools for dealing with impulse control, frustration, and acting out. Emotional ABCs teaches children how to figure out what they're feeling, why they're experiencing that emotion, and how to make better choices for lifetime emotional resilience.

What It Is: Three beta-stage eLearning tools from the scientists in their R&D division to help improve reading, writing, and English language speaking skills.

What It Is: A science teaching resource that brings school science standards to life through fun and educational videos paired with lesson plans, activities, quizzes, reading material, discussion questions, and more.

What It Is: Using multimedia Interactive Posters, students can express ideas with ease by combining images, graphics, audio, video, and text on one digital canvas!

What It Is: Happy Numbers helps teachers deliver quality math instruction, monitor progress, and math growth-all remotely. Students can access Happy Numbers from any Internet-enabled device (even a smartphone!).

What it is: HearBuilder, from Super Duper Publications, is an online, research-based, foundational literacy program. It helps students in PreK-Grade 5 strengthen skills in the essential pre-literacy areas of following directions, sequencing, auditory memory and phonological awareness.

What they're offering: HearBuilder is available free for 60 days. Teachers, parents and therapists can access self-directed activities and short and targeted tasks for students, as well as tools to monitor student progress. HearBuilder is accessible at school or during distance learning.

What It Is: Highlights @ Home is a new, free service for families and teachers that delivers themed content bundles twice a week from the well-known children's magazine creator, Highlights.

What It Is: iknowit is a site with over 500 common-core aligned activities and math games for students in the elementary grades. The site keeps track of progress, offers graphical hints and explanations, and there are also animated characters to cheer students along.

What They're Offering: A free 30 day trial with unlimited access and no credit card required.

What It Is: A platform for reading comprehension passages and skill assessment in early education and home schooling.

What It Is: Mentoring Minds impacts millions of students every day by partnering with principals and teachers across the country to improve student achievement and teach critical thinking. Find educator resources that focus on the 9 traits of Critical Thinking.

What They're Offering: Free coloring book in English and Spanish, as well as a new animated video series.

What It Is: Mindsets Live Classes and Open Math Challenges help teachers & families keep learning going in math, science, & STEAM with fun and creative real-world problem-solving.

What It Is: This popular differentiated learning site provides instruction across a wide array of elementary subjects. Available for at-home instruction and classroom instruction, online training on effectively using the site is also available.

What It Is: PebbleGo offers safe, interactive online research resources on topics selected by their teachers for students K-3.

What It Is: Hands-on, minds-on learning can happen anywhere and everywhere. If you're looking for STEMspiration because of an unexpected homeschooling need, you're in the midst of an uncommon education experience, or you just want to have some STEM fun, Pitsco has great resources that are always available for free.

What It Is: Produced by RedRover, Kind News magazine is a Parent's Choice Approved Award winning children's magazine that inspires readers to explore the relationship between people and animals. It includes engaging articles, colorful illustrations, activities, and games to help kids explore the relationship between people and animals and develop knowledge and skills necessary for empathy and kindness.

What They're Offering: KindNews.org includes free lesson plans, links to past issues, and humane-themed books.

What It Is: Scholastic created the Scholastic Learn at Home website to provide students with an array of learning journeys that span various content areas. Subscriptions include several learning opportunities per day, including projects based on articles and stories, virtual field trips, reading and geography challenges, and more.

What It Is: Seekadoo is a safe, kid-friendly search engine app for children ages 3-13. Seekadoo's content database is carefully curated to ensure appropriate material for children and integrated ad-blocking eliminates tracking and monetization of children's data so their digital footprints remain private.

What It Is: The Square Panda Smart Letters playset engages children's tactile and kinesthetic as well as visual and auditory senses, because neuroscience shows that early readers learn best in a multisensory environment.

What It Is: An online learning tool which provides personalized math and spelling practice. It adapts questions to each student, using engaging games and rewards for effort and achievement to build their confidence, and is proven to accelerate progress. Teachers can set focused work to consolidate existing knowledge and get real-time feedback on each individual child, making it an ideal home learning tool.

What it is: Super Duper Publications has created an online library of its most popular print materials to provide access for teachers and parents doing distance and hybrid/blended learning.

What they're offering: The Super Duper Digital Library is available at a discounted rate of 199.95 for an annual subscription or $19.95 for a monthly subscription. It provides more than 365 standards-based online resources (with more being added daily) for students PreK-Grade 5. Resources include unique, engaging instructional games, cards, and worksheets to target specific skills, such as basic concepts, literacy, grammar, social skills, critical thinking, sequencing, listening, early skills, articulation, phonemic awareness, memory, motor skills, sensory integration, phonics, reading, and more.

What It Is: Super Star Online, by Help Me 2 Learn, is a supplemental reading, phonics, and math program featuring a wide variety of songs, interactive activities, and games in an engaging and easy-to-use format. Features include the Super Star Motivational and Data Tracking System.

What It Is: Super Teacher Worksheets has tens of thousands of printable teaching resources for Kindergarten through 5th grade teachers and parents working with Pre-K through 5th grade students. Topics include math, reading, writing, phonics, grammar, spelling, science, and social studies.

What It Is: A digital series that aims to give young people a fun and active way to use their imaginations while learning about the process of creating theater.

What It Is: A nationwide writing curriculum designed for teachers, administrators, and parents. It takes away the stress of finding and developing a curriculum for their students.

What It Is: A program for PreK-1st grade students and those with special needs to learn to write their letters, numbers, and shapes using fun visuals, rhythmic chants, and repetition.

What It Is: A web-based keyboarding program that teaches students how to type and has unique transdisciplinary Common Core and NGSS aligned content provided through its lessons.

What It Is: Virtual Field Trips specializes in K-8 social studies, life science, geography, and ancient civilization curriculum content. Their website has online learning videos and quizzes along with a list of the national and state Standards that the videos align with.

What It Is: An easy-to-use platform designed to empower K-8 students to master math content at their own pace.

Online Learning Resources for Grades 6-12

Use these ready-to-implement resources in your virtual classrooms for older learners.

BBC My World Media Literacy

What It Is: A complete web-based math curriculum designed to help students ages 8-13 deepen their understanding of math.

What It Is: Math lessons, skills practice resources, and at-home learning videos for grade 6-12 students.

What It Is: NativeAccent delivers spoken English skills practice with targeted feedback to students on their computers and mobile devices using advanced speech recognition and A.I. technologies.

What It Is: Software engineers from some of the leading technology companies, including Google, Facebook, and Amazon, are volunteering their time to help students learn how to code while schools are closed.

What It Is: Free, interactive virtual classes open to students, teachers, and anyone else interested in learning to code in a fun and engaging manner through game development. The program is aligned to ISTE Standards for computer science education.

What It Is: GeoInquiries™ are free, standards-based, online explorations of maps and data about a wide variety of content plus an initial introduction. Any school can also request a free account with logins for teachers and students, so they can create, save, and share content, with free Mapping Hour videos to instruct teachers and parents.

What They're Offering: Free online content and accounts for schools on an interactive mapping platform. Learn More.

What It Is: Everydae is an online SAT math prep program. 10-minute micro lessons match busy schedules. Built by industry experts with 17+ years industry experience.

What It Is: Teaches STEM and STEAM with a game design focus. GameSalad is best suited for 6th grade and up depending on student readiness. Detailed instructions for students and full lesson plans for teachers make a great introduction to coding.

What It Is: A unique cultural immersion resource for Spanish, French and German language learning for grades 6-12. iCulture offers travel videos, day in the life videos, current news articles, and songs that are all 100% target language, age and school appropriate, and include topics of interest to teens and young adults.

What It Is: Popfizz CS is a computer science education platform for grades 6-12. Popfizz offers a wide range of online student courses and professional development for educators.

What They're Offering: All their tools are easily accessible on their website for free.

What It Is: An interactive AP Biology course with engaging content and interactive activities in the form of quizzes and flashcards to provide immediate reinforcement of the material. Teachers can assign portions of the course to their students, and track their progress. Or students can work independently and track their own progress!

What It Is:Thousands of free study guides, test prep, and video learning resources.

What It Is: Resources include free trials to Vernier Video Analysis™ and Pivot Interactives, the Vernier Physics with Video Analysis e-book and extended demo of the LoggerPro software needed to complete the experiments, Scratch coding activities, experiment content and access from ADInstruments and LabArchives, and more than 200 experiments with sample data covering a large range of subjects. With these tools, teachers can help students form a deep understanding of key scientific concepts outside the classroom and laboratory.

What It Is: VidCode is an online coding and computer science curriculum specifically for teens. It teaches JavaScript, web programming, design, and more.

What It Is: Online close reading instruction, leveled authentic texts with comprehension quizzes, and gamified vocabulary for grades 6-12.

K-12 Online Learning Resources

These sites have lesson plans and activities ready to go on a variety of subjects for any grade.

What It Is: A comprehensive suite of digital solutions that significantly accelerate literacy and deepen learning across the content areas.

What They're Offering: Achieve3000 Literacy at Home Digital provides access to engaging non-fiction articles at 3 reading levels. Sign up for a free account here. Additionally, they are offering Literacy Printable Packets for students who do not have internet access at home.

What It Is: K-12 personalized online math instruction that provides each student with a unique study path through skills at each level. Individual study plans are prescriptive, adaptive, and automatically assigned

What It Is: An eBook hosting platform for schools and libraries.

What It Is: BoomWriter offers a variety of tools, features, and resources that lets teachers conduct fiction, nonfiction, and vocabulary-focused writing assignments. BoomWriter inspires students to write on any subject and integrates easily with existing curriculum. Try it for ELA, Social Studies/History, Science, and even Math.

What It Is: A digital portfolio that allows students and educators to shape knowledge and ideas into practical, usable, and shareable work. With bulb, educators can track progress, measure competency, and create dynamic curricula or use one of their templates.

What It Is: A PreK-12 educational company that provides a supplemental, and highly differentiated literacy digital curriculum with demonstrated efficacy.

What It Is: CCC! Streaming Media helps students visualize printed text and aids their understanding of complex concepts. The content has been vetted by educators and aligned to Common Core and state standards, and is supplemented with Teacher's Guides, Student Activities, and Knowledge Checks (quizzes).

What It Is: Century was designed as an intervention tool to identify and remedy gaps in a student's education. It uses artificial intelligence to tailor the learning experience to the learner, much like an actual teacher in the classroom would.

What It Is: ClassHook offers quality media clips on every conceivable topic. Pre-curated playlists make it easier to find what you need for the subject at hand.

What It Is: Crabtree Publishing Company is dedicated to producing high-quality books and educational products for K-9+. Through their website, different selections of their books can be accessed along with free online resources that are included in a Crabtree subscription.

What It Is: The Critical Thinking Co. publishes award-winning PreK-12+ educational textbooks, activity books, e-books, and apps that help children become better problem-solvers. The approach is unique: help kids develop foundational reasoning & critical thinking skills while learning the core subjects (reading, writing, math, science, and social studies).

What It Is: Discovery Education provides online textbooks, multimedia content, and professional development support for virtual classrooms and teachers. Daily DE offers supplemental learning activities, including virtual field trips and lessons, for both educators and parents that will update daily to align with a new educational theme.

What It Is: Innovative math and science online solutions that are fun to use and really work. Gizmos, Reflex, and Science4Us are used in classrooms in every state and over 50 countries worldwide.

What It is: Hip-hop videos and instructional activities that promote literacy and spark creativity.

What It Is: Follett offers over 1,000 PreK-12 titles in science, social studies, language arts, math, and more. AV2 World Languages features high-interest titles in 10 different languages with full audio support. Parents and students will find these resources interactive, easy to use and a great way for students to independently explore a new topic.

What It Is: Interdisciplinary, curriculum-aligned resources to support online learning from Pre-K through undergraduate; Live and on-demand training materials to help optimize existing resources; Professional development eBooks to help transition to and strengthen virtual learning and Authoritative Gale resources on health-related topics and global issues.

What It Is: A math practice program for concept mastery and retention.

What They're Offering: Free, unlimited trial usage for schools until July 2021.

What It Is: Original, fully-customizable musicals that not only enhance Reading and Communication skills, but also employ Arts Integration and Social Emotional Learning to encourage strong character development both onstage and off.

What It Is: A website loaded with standards-aligned lessons, games, and activities that will keep K-8 students engaged while learning from home.r.

What It Is: A highly adaptable program that teaches challenging life skills to school students with various special needs. The full program offers 39 lessons, 65 videos, visual components, and role plays around the topics of hygiene, social skills, relationships development, and health that can be implemented both virtually and face-to-face.

What It Is: InferCabulary is a web-based, research-backed, device-agnostic, K-12, fun, game-based, visual approach for teaching nuanced vocabulary that simultaneously improves students' critical thinking skills. InferCabulary is the opposite of rote memorization of definitions - they mimic the act of avid readership so students deeply learn words and improve comprehension.

What It Is: Do you Kahoot! Teachers have loved this fun online quiz game platform for years. Here's why we're into it.

What They're Offering: Kahoot! Basic is free for educators and students, but they're also currently offering their Premium distance learning tools for free. Learn more here- Kahoot!

What It Is: A weekly current events-based program. It presents engaging and important stories from around the world in a newsmagazine format.

What It Is: An online core supplement for grades 1-12 that was designed to be used in classrooms to help teachers with increasing responsibilities and numbers of students.

What It Is: At the Lerner Bookshelf, they've set up two collections of eBooks (Grades PreK-5 and Grades 6-12) that allow for unlimited simultaneous access by every student in a school. They also offer reading book lists, videos, educational downloads, information on authors who are available for virtual visits, and more.

What It Is: Listenwise teaches students to be better listeners using podcasts, comprehension questions, and quizzes.

What It Is: MAD-learn's web-based mobile app development tool is a holistic set of modules for students to experience the software development lifecycle firsthand.

What It Is: NGSS based science lessons for 4th-8th graders that can easily be done from home.

What It Is: This is the only online learning management system for teaching music at all age levels. Band practice might be off the table for now, but students can still work on theory, notation, sight-reading and more.

What It Is: The NASA STEM Engagement site offers STEM resources, activities, lesson plans, virtual field trips, and more! Also check out NASA Home and City to find out how space travel impacts your daily life.

What They're Offering: Explore the Hubble Telescope and listen to astronauts share their stories. All for free!

What They're Offering: All resources are free.

What It Is: News-O-Matic features five daily news stories specifically for kids, written at a variety of reading levels from grades K through 8. Every story is translated by native speakers from English into Spanish, French, and Arabic. And all these texts, at all levels and languages, are read out loud so kids can listen along. Teachers have access to a special dashboard to track students' reading progress, change their reading levels, and see students' answers to comprehension questions for each article.

What it is: PBLWorks, the leading provider of professional development for high-quality Project Based Learning (PBL), has created a free eBook to support high-quality Project Based Learning at home.

What they're offering: This Teachable Moment, a free downloadable eBook offers a primer on Project Based Learning (PBL) and 21 easy implemented, "follow the recipe" PBL projects, informed by educational research and designed for children of all ages. Projects such as creating a cooking show focused on family recipes and the history behind them, or creating a plan for a new school that meets our new reality, engage children in real-world issues and activities that matter to them while also teaching concepts like literacy, math and more.

What It Is: Perfection Next is a digital learning platform offering access to our entire catalog of digital resources including AMSCO Advanced Placement, Language Arts, Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies, and World Languages.

What It Is: A web-app that gives teachers and students a unique way to create stories, demonstrate learning, and enhance writing assignments - in any subject - through digital comics. Users can explore topics in Math, Science, Social Studies, History, English, Art, or any other subject. They can also choose images from popular content, books and movies like The Hunger Games or The Outsiders, plus other topics like the solar system, black history, or the environment - all Common Core aligned.

What They're Offering: All-access for free for 30 days during the COVID-19 crisis. Learn more here- Pixton EDU.

What It Is: Quill offers a set of diagnostic assessments and independent practice activities that focus on grammar, sentence construction, and other writing and literacy skills. All the while, Quill provides teachers with free, in-depth data reports on student performance.

What It Is: An online guided reading tool that "listens" while a student reads a selection aloud, detects when they falter, and provides immediate intervention in the form of correct pronunciation.

What It Is: Teachers and parents can keep their child's reading instruction moving forward with Reading Horizons' library of virtual webinars and lessons.

What It Is: Readorium helps students learn nonfiction reading strategies as they build rich background knowledge in science at school or at home.

What It Is: RoboKind's virtual coding course will help districts provide elementary and middle school students with engaging computer science content during this unexpected period of school closures.

What It Is: Rozzy Learning has engaging lesson plans and other resources for science, social studies, math, and STEM for K-8th grade.

What It Is: This brand-new virtual classroom platform integrates PowerPoint, Zoom video webinars, and Slido quizzes into one streamlined package.

What It Is: SMART Learning Suite is a virtual classroom platform that easily integrates everything you already have on Google Drive or in Microsoft documents. You can add videos and other online resources as needed.

What It Is: Join their expert staff in learning about awesome topics like 3D design, video game design, coding, and more all from home. Their staff deliver lessons virtually and are available live to help provide targeted guidance and assistance to students as they work through awesome activities and projects.

What It Is: Study Island provides standards-based practice, test preparation, and formative assessments in grades K-12. Students get feedback to guide their learning and educators get immediate data to determine who needs intervention and who is ready to move on.

What It Is: A K-12 publishing company that creates science and social studies curriculum to enable educators to improve their ability to engage students in a diverse classroom.

What It Is: With Tyto Online, students solve authentic science problems as they learn, using a video game to power their experience. 'Tyto Online' is NGSS-aligned, covering life science and some Earth and space science.

What It Is: These online learning resources are specifically for those who teach French, Spanish, and ESL. Students get audio and video, interactive writing and speaking exercises, and more.

What It Is: Students and families can access news stories about the world, politics, United States, science, sports, and more. Xyza also recently launched www.newsicle.co where students try and answer one news-related trivia quiz every weekday.

What They're Offering: Completely free and unlimited access to 1000+ Xyza: News for Kids articles.

Remote Learning and Virtual Classroom Platforms

These sites allow you to follow your existing lesson plans by creating your own online learning resources. Some also provide the platforms you need to host virtual interactive multimedia classrooms.

What It Is: With Bloomz, teachers and schools save time by having all the tools they need to communicate with today's parents and students in one easy-to-use (and free) app.

What It Is: Life Skills Academy by Conover is an online video library designed to be used outside the classroom so parents or guardians can help learners with disabilities learn how to function independently at home, work, or in the community. Based on the concept of video modeling, users watch someone do the desired behavior and then do it themselves.

What It Is: EduGuide saves schools time and money by efficiently multiplying their student support system, building self-motivation that keeps students learning, even when they are remote. EduGuide provides a simple way for every student to both be mentored by a caring adult and learn to mentor their peers on key social-emotional SEL habits that boost student success.

What It Is: Teachers can access a collection of learning paths from some of the most well-known thought leaders in education covering topics such as Understanding by Design, Habits of Mind, Social Emotional Learning, Cultural and Linguistic Diversity, Personalized Learning, and Growth Mindset.

What It Is: Get the most out of Google Classroom and other Google tools with this platform. They offer webinars and other resources to help teachers create and manage the best virtual classrooms.

What It Is: A cloud-based solution from Impero Software to help schools manage and record student safety and health information, from first aid to COVID-19 symptom tracking, to more complex mental health issues. Impero back:drop gives districts a way to keep track of and communicate about potential concerns safely and securely and eliminates the need for paper-based reporting systems.

What They're Offering: Impero has made Impero back:drop free indefinitely, helping schools fill a critical need for staying on top of student mental and physical concerns during the pandemic and beyond.

What It Is: A collaborative online image and video editor with a cloud storage Workspace. Teachers can make video lessons to send to students for remote learning, students can work together on a group project, and classrooms can share multimedia projects with each other.

What It Is: Projector App helps teachers project their real word notes onto a professional-looking, virtual blackboard.

What it is: PBLWorks, the leading provider of professional development for high-quality Project Based Learning (PBL), has created a free eBook to support high-quality Project Based Learning at home.

What they're offering: This Teachable Moment, a free downloadable eBook offers a primer on Project Based Learning (PBL) and 21 easy implemented, "follow the recipe" PBL projects, informed by educational research and designed for children of all ages. Projects such as creating a cooking show focused on family recipes and the history behind them, or creating a plan for a new school that meets our new reality, engage children in real-world issues and activities that matter to them while also teaching concepts like literacy, math and more.

What It Is: A cloud-based lesson delivery software service that energizes students with polling, timed assessments, interactive lessons, activities, and millions of immersive resources from educators around the world. ClassFlow is certified by iKeepSafe as compliant with federal and state requirements for handling protected personal information, including student data, and is safely used by over 4.5 million students worldwide.

What It Is: SafeToNet makes the digital world safer for children to explore and enjoy. Its award-winning AI-powered software safeguards children and their mental wellbeing when using their mobile devices, without sacrificing their privacy. The app provides an intelligent safeguarding keyboard and wellbeing tools that respond in real-time to help children make better decisions online, identify when they are under threat or distress, and prevent messages from being sent that could harm them and others.

What It Is: Free K-12 Math, ELA, Science and Social Studies resources! Create effective classwork and assignments that have been proven to increase performance. All content is designed to engage and challenge students at their own level./li>

What It Is: Keep your music students practicing at home with this online music classroom. You can track student progress, and they'll get instant feedback from the online tools.

What It Is: More than just a computer, classroom, STEM kits, or a project - SmartLabs are a comprehensive and immersive solution.

What It Is: StudyBee is a grading and student feedback system that extends Google Classroom functionality, with the ability to link assignments to custom or standardized educational objectives from the US.

What It Is: A collaborative presentation tool used for all grade levels that works perfectly for the remote classroom.

What It Is: An online bookmarker for educators. Committed to making personalized learning and educational technology easily accessible for everyone, everywhere.

What It Is: Companies across the world use Webex to keep their teams in contact remotely. They offer lots of tools that are ideal for taking your classes online.

What It Is: Rather than fighting smartphones, Wooclap turns them into an exceptional learning tool. Wooclap is a free tool to help maintain interactivity and effective pedagogy. Their goal is to capture the attention of students to improve their learning whether they're in the classroom or at home taking an online course.

What It Is: Project your lessons in group settings with Zoom. You can even record the sessions for students who need to review later. This video and audio conferencing tool has a chat functionality where students can ask questions as you teach.

Professional Development & Training

These sites assist with continuing professional development and curriculum for teachers.

What It Is: Nomadic is a digital learning pioneer launching a Remote Work Boot Camp to help newly remote folks get better equipped to face our current working reality.
Feeling overwhelmed? You're definitely not alone. Join fellow educators in the WeAreTeachers Chat group on Facebook to get support from others just like you.

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350+ Amazing Websites For Kids Learning at Home

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Looking for distance learning and online learning resources for kids, tweens, and teens at home? Parents and teachers, we've got you covered.

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45+ Free Educational Websites for Kids Written by Amber

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45+ Free Educational Websites for Kids Written by Amber

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Shared by Barbara Cotter

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http://bit.ly/corvidEDU

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COVID-19 EDU Resources Curated by Katie McNamara @KatieJMcNamara Online Teaching Support Teach From Home Google GUHSD Library Priorities with Online Teaching and Learning Suzanne Sannwald @suzannesannwald School Closure Learning Continuity Planning Checklist Secondary Principals @massp Coronavi...

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Ok with all of these Google Docs packed with resources going around, overhelm can set it. Here is a pared down list of tools I use/d as an instructional designer to create online courses for...

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Understanding the outbreak of a virus from TED-ED

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Understanding the outbreak of a virus from TED-ED

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We thought it might be helpful to gather some of our resources that offer valuable insights on topics being circulated in the news in relation to the COVID-19 outbreak. For example, what defines a pandemic? How can viruses be transmitted from animals to humans? And exactly what is a virus?

How pandemics spread

Dig into the history of pandemics to learn how viruses and disease spreads and what we can do to stop future outbreaks.

In our increasingly globalized world, a single infected person can board a plane and spread a virus across continents. Mark Honigsbaum describes the history of pandemics and how that knowledge can help halt future outbreaks.

How do viruses jump from animals to humans

Discover the science of how viruses can jump from one species to another and the deadly epidemics that can result from these pathogens.

At a Maryland country fair in 2017, farmers reported feverish hogs with inflamed eyes and running snouts. While farmers worried about the pigs, the department of health was concerned about a group of sick fairgoers. Soon, 40 of these attendees would be diagnosed with swine flu. How can pathogens from one species infect another, and what makes this jump so dangerous? Ben Longdon explains.

How vaccines work

Learn the science behind how vaccines trigger an immune response and teach our bodies to recognize dangerous pathogens.

The first ever vaccine was created when Edward Jenner, an English physician and scientist, successfully injected small amounts of a cowpox virus into a young boy to protect him from the related (and deadly) smallpox virus. But how does this seemingly counterintuitive process work? Kelwalin Dhanasarnsombut details the science behind vaccines.

How does your immune system work?

Explore how your immune system's vast network of cells, tissues, and organs coordinate your body's defenses against bacteria, viruses and toxins.

The immune system is a vast network of cells, tissues, and organs that coordinate your body's defenses against any threats to your health. Without it, you'd be exposed to billions of bacteria, viruses, and toxins that could make something as minor as a paper cut or a seasonal cold fatal. So how does it work? Emma Bryce takes you inside the body to find out.

Cell vs. Virus: A battle for health

How does your body fight a virus? Take a look inside your cells to witness how they produce antibodies and fight to keep you healthy.

All living things are made of cells. In the human body, these highly efficient units are protected by layer upon layer of defense against icky invaders like the cold virus. Shannon Stiles takes a journey into the cell, introducing the microscopic arsenal of weapons and warriors that play a role in the battle for your health.

Learning from smallpox: How to eradicate a disease

Find out how smallpox became the first (and only) disease to be permanently eradicated through the use of vaccination and isolation to prevent transmission.

For most of human history, we have sought to treat and cure diseases. But only in recent decades did it become possible to ensure that a particular disease never threatens humanity again. Julie Garon and Walter A. Orenstein detail how the story of smallpox - the first and only disease to be permanently eliminated - shows how disease eradication can happen, and why it is so difficult to achieve.

The surprising reason you feel awful when you're sick

What actually makes you feel sick? Discover how your immune system and proteins called cytokines respond to infections.

It starts with a tickle in your throat that becomes a cough. Your muscles begin to ache, you grow irritable, and you lose your appetite. It's official: you've got the flu. It's logical to assume that this miserable medley of symptoms is the result of the infection coursing through your body - but is that really the case? Marco A. Sotomayor explains what's actually making you feel sick.

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We thought it might be helpful to gather some of our resources that offer valuable insights on topics being circulated in the news in relation to the COVID-19 outbreak. For example, what defines a pandemic? How can viruses be transmitted from animals to humans? And exactly what is a virus?

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Scholastic Learn at Home
https://classroommagazines.scholastic.com/support/learnathome.html

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Via Patricia Brown & Kim Lane Clark

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Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.

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Coronavirus Simulation: Why Outbreaks Spread

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Coronavirus Simulation: Why Outbreaks Spread

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From Washington Post

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As more and more schools begin to close due to Covid19, let's make sure we're addressing the issue of access for our students.

Feel free to make a copy of this form to find out what your students access to Internet and devices looks like outside of school.

Keep in mind that some students may be responsible for babysitting younger siblings during this time, so the issue of "time" is a notable one to consider as schools take learning online.

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Access Google Forms with a personal Google account or Google Workspace account (for business use).

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This is a survey that classes/schools/districts can use to find out about students' digital access at home. This is an uber important issue as it addresses access and equity during this time of remote learning.

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Access Google Forms with a personal Google account or Google Workspace account (for business use).

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💡 The "Learning at Home" Disco Library Playlist is filled with 50+ ready-to-use discussion prompts for at-home learning. Each topic is simple, innovative, and fun!

💡 We have added several additional FlipgridPD webinars. During the live session, our Educator Innovation Leads will explain the basics of Flipgrid and answer your questions!

💡 We created this simple guide to help the families in your community use Flipgrid to keep their children active, connected and engaged while they may be home from school.

💡 This tweet contains the name of 250+ educators who are ready and willing to support you as you begin using Flipgrid in a remote learning situation. Please add your name and info!

Once again, you inspire us daily. Thank you for sharing your ideas and the brilliant ways your learners invest in their own learning, no matter where they are! Moreover, we love seeing how you support fellow educators by sharing on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Please know our entire team is always here for you: reach out any time at support@flipgrid.com or @Flipgrid on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Thank you for being part of the Flipgrid community!

💚 Team Flipgrid

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Remote Learning with Flipgrid - Flipgrid

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As educators, learners and families are impacted by COVID-19, know that our entire team is always here for you. Inspired by the ways you foster community beyond the classroom, we have curated a collection of resources to help you and your peers. Remote Learning with Flipgrid PDF This simple one

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How to prepare for extended school closings—and not lose your mind

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How to prepare for extended school closings—and not lose your mind

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Article on UpWorthy

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There is no getting around the fact that this is an extremely stressful time for all of us. There are concerns for our health, of course. But it's not just that.

The ripple effect of the Coronavirus could be vast - impacting our daily life in profound ways over the coming weeks and months.

If you're the parent of a school-aged child, you've almost certainly become aware that the chance of your child's school closing for an extended amount of time is very real. Quite possibly your local school has already been shut down (I just got a call that our schools close tomorrow).

My background as a social worker with children and families has given me some thoughts on how to best prepare for a situation like this (although the mom in me feels the stress like everyone else!).

For a lot of us, the thought of an indeterminate amount of time at home with our kids - perhaps unable to socialize much with others, and while many of us will be trying to work remotely - well, it's daunting to say the least.

These next few days are a good time to begin to wrap our brains around this likely scenario, and to come up with some strategies to cope with the stresses this will bring.

Here are my thoughts for making it through this quarantine with your kids.

KIDS THRIVE ON ROUTINE AND PREDICTABILITY

Children need routine and predictability in order to feel safe. This is especially important during a time of crisis.

It's one thing to be off of your routine for a few days over the holidays. It's quite another to be off of your routine for an unknown amount of time, without any of the familiar signposts to anchor you (which are readily available during the holidays, and completely absent in our current scenario).

So, this is very important: Create order, with some flexibility, in your days as soon as possible.

WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE:

Set up a schedule that involves regular times for bathing, eating, school-work/learning activities, and socializing.

Maintain a set time for going to sleep, and the same bedtime routine your kids are used to.

This is not the time to let it become the Wild West at your house. In doing so, you will be taking away the structure and normalcy that will keep your child feeling safe.

There is room for some flexibility - you do not need to be running a military operation from your family room. But a general structure and flow to the day that the kids can expect will help you greatly here.

FOCUS ON SCHOOL WORK IN REASONABLE INCREMENTS

Depending on your child's age, they may have some academics they're expected to keep up with at home. My best suggestion here is to establish a certain time of day (not the whole day!) and a certain place for study at your house. A few hours AT MOST should be sufficient.

If your school hasn't sent home any materials, you will be able to find some great learning materials online. Sheppard Software and Khan Academy are examples of excellent online resources for kids.

Reading with your child, doing hands-on projects, even baking and playing board games can be educational. Again this depends on your child's age. Hopefully we will all be getting a bit of direction from our local teachers, if this quarantine goes on for any length of time.

LIMIT YOUR CHILD'S ANXIETY BY MANAGING YOUR OWN

This is a highly uncertain time on a massive scale. While kids will have varying levels of awareness about the scope of concern over the Coronavirus, they will for sure be picking up on our anxieties.

Talk to your kids about what is going on, without being overly dramatic. Fortunately, we can honestly tell our kids that most children are not becoming very sick from this virus, and that they should be OK.

You can explain to them why we are practicing "social distancing" and use this as a teachable moment in prevention. There is no need to unduly scare our kids, but they should have a general idea of what's going on.

If you and another adult are going to discuss the Coronavirus, be mindful of your child's age and emotional ability to process the conversation they may be privy to. Kids hear EVERYTHING. Except when you want them to listen, at which time they hear nothing.

BUILD IN TIME TO LET OFF STEAM

Let's be honest here, this is going to be stressful. You and your kids are going to be on top of each other, maybe for awhile. Nobody is used to this!

So find ways to let out steam - a loud dance party, a quick run around the block with your kids, a communal yell - whatever! Let. It. Out.

CUT YOUR KIDS SOME SLACK

This isn't the time to be on top of every annoying behavior. Give your kids some grace.

They will need it, and also it's been shown that sometimes the best way to deal with an irritating behavior from a kid is to simply look the other way. Not for the really egregious stuff, but for the small stuff.

Try to ignore what you can ignore, and save your interventions for when you really need them (which, let's be honest, we're gonna need them).

DON'T BE ON TOP OF YOUR KIDS ALL DAY

You will need space from them and they'll need it from you. If you can create pockets of the day for alone time, or quiet / independent time, please do.

TRY TO GET OUTSIDE

If at all possible, find time during the day to get outside; in your yard, for walks, maybe on a trail.

This is not a natural disaster or war - we're just trying to create social distancing here.

So get some fresh air when you can.

IF YOU'RE WORKING FROM HOME, RELAX YOUR STANDARDS

We all know it is REALLY HARD to work from home when you have the kids with you. It can feel nearly impossible. But a lot of us will be working from home, and if this is a lengthy quarantine situation we have to find ways to make this work. So do what you need to do, here.

You may need to allow more screen time than usual. You may need to accept that the house won't be as clean as you'd like. You might make dinner more basic so you don't have to stress about prep or cleanup.

You have work to do, and that's going to be very challenging with your kids at home. So let some things go, within reason.

ASK YOUR KIDS TO STEP UP TO THE CHALLENGE

Kids like to feel that they have an important role. Help them understand that this is an unusual time and that we ALL need to pitch in to get through it.

If your kids don't have a few chores yet, this is a great time to start. Make it a daily part of their routine, and let them know that they're helping the family out by pitching in.

Also let your kids know that by sacrificing their social and school time, they are doing a great service to other more vulnerable community members. They are helping to keep people safe.

Be on the lookout for ways you and your child can help a neighbor - maybe an elderly person who needs groceries, or the kid next door who doesn't have a solid lunch. Help when you can, and let your child brainstorm ways to help.

This is a chance to model altruism, so take it.

FIND A WAY TO MAKE SOME SPECIAL MEMORIES

As weird as it sounds, there are actually some good opportunities here to make special memories with your kids.

We are in uncharted territory now. I'm almost certain that we will remember this time - and how we came together, or didn't - decades from now. So do your best to find some way to create special moments.

Maybe every night the kids get to put special toppings on an ice cream scoop.

Maybe you all read together in a tent with a flashlight, to create a sense of adventure and camaraderie rather than fear.

Maybe you watch a movie together as a family each night, knowing you can sleep in a bit later (unless you have toddlers, in which case good luck sleeping later).

Maybe instead of a regular nightly bath it's a bubble bath with glow sticks around the room.

You get the idea.

Kids love and appreciate magic, and anything that seems "special" or out of the ordinary. So do something to acknowledge that this time is different - and to allow a new, special tradition to take root in your child's mind.

These are the things childhood memories are made of, and despite the fear many of us feel, we do have an opportunity here.

THIS IS GOING TO BE HARD.

But we can do it.
This article was originally published on A Mothership Down.
In fact - we have no other choice! It's like being in labor that way. You can't really opt out, and it's going to hurt, but....well, it is the reality of our current situation.

As much as possible, try to think of yourself as a strong leader for your kids (even if you kind of want to puke right now). Step into the role you've been given. Every generation faces hardships, and it is too soon to tell what it is we are up against here. But we can do this.

Reach out to your friends, laugh when you can, and remember that this will pass. And let's help each other out whenever possible.

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How to prepare for extended school closings-and not lose your mind

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"For a lot of us, the thought of an indeterminate amount of time at home with our kids - perhaps unable to socialize much with others, and while many of us will be trying to work remotely - well, it's daunting to say the least.

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The InterACTIVE Class Facebook Community 

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The InterACTIVE Class Facebook Community 

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Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.

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Ed Tech Team is providing free virtual learning around G-Suite

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Virtual Learning Series: Teaching Online

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We get it - coordinating relevant, engaging professional development courses for your school or district is tough, not to mention costly. And, there is the added headache of coordinating schedules, managing weather interruptions, finding coverage for teachers... the list goes on and on. That's exactly why we created our Virtual Learning Series here at EdTechTeam Canada.

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A list of lessons for the adult English language learner

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MUSD will update our Coronavirus web page as information becomes available. For the latest developments from the SCC Public Health Department on the Coronavirus, please use these links (which can also be found on the District website): ESL Resources about the Coronavirus (COVID-19) (updated 03/14/2020--check back for more updates) Words in WHO's Advice to Protect Yourself from Coronavirus: soap -n.

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A list of resources for adult English Language Learners.

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MUSD will update our Coronavirus web page as information becomes available. For the latest developments from the SCC Public Health Department on the Coronavirus, please use these links (which can also be found on the District website): ESL Resources about the Coronavirus (COVID-19) (updated 03/14/2020--check back for more updates) Words in WHO's Advice to Protect Yourself from Coronavirus: soap -n.

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Top educators' home learning tips for parents Facebook group

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Top educators' home learning tips for parents Facebook group

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Via Scott Bedley

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Top Educators' - Home Learning Tips for Parents

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This group is created to be a resource to help parents who will now have to support learning at home. We hope this will be a valuable resources to families impacted by this current human tragedy....

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Shared by Mike Washburn

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So you're stuck at home, and your kids are, too. Now what?

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Coronavirus Resources: Teaching, Learning and Thinking Critically

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Coronavirus Resources: Teaching, Learning and Thinking Critically

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NY Times

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Coronavirus Resources: Teaching, Learning and Thinking Critically (Published 2020)

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A page we will continue to update with ideas for working, at school or at home, with content from The Times and other reliable sources about this global pandemic.

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Free COVID-19 Editable Lesson on Nearpod

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Free COVID-19 Editable Lesson on Nearpod

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In this current events lesson, students watch videos and read articles to learn about the current outbreak of coronavirus, termed COVID-2019.

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Organized by Key Information, Offline Ideas, School Planning and Cleaning Suggestions, Helpful Tweets, Informational Sites, Lists of Companies Offering Free Access to Schools Closed Due to COVID-19, and chat questions from 3/11/20

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Understanding COVID-19 Editable lesson on Nearpod

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Understanding COVID-19 Editable lesson on Nearpod

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In this current events lesson, students watch videos and read articles to learn about the current outbreak of coronavirus, termed COVID-2019.

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Camp free Resources to educate your kids when having to stay home

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Camp free Resources to educate your kids when having to stay home

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Shared by Barbara Cotter

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If you've suddenly found yourself at home with kids to entertain, I actually have some good news for you. As long as you have Internet access, there are a ton of resources beyond Netflix that can keep your kids entertained and keep their brains from turning to mush before everyone returns to school.

There are lots of companies that have stepped up to offer free access to their programs during these strange times. I'm also including some resources that are always free, just in case you've overlooked them. And, at the very end, I'm including some ideas for screen breaks in case your family needs some offline time.

All Subjects

Math/Coding

Reading/Writing/Spelling/Grammar

History/Geography

Science/Health

Fine Arts/Culture

Preschool

Offline Activities

Card game rules from Bicycle

Free printable math worksheets from Education.com

Simon Says, London Bridge, and Limbo

Poetry reading and/or read-aloud time. Sometimes when I'm doing something like cleaning the kitchen or folding laundry I have the kids read to me so we can work on pronunciation and other reading skills.

As volunteers die down at local animal shelters because everyone is in quarantine, you might consider giving a rescue animal a little vacation in your home so you can teach your kids about pet ownership. Most animal shelters appreciate temporary fosters because it lessens the strain, especially during a crisis. Just be sure to get an animal that has a good track record around kids and never leave kids unsupervised.

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COVID19 Camp: Free Resources to Educate and Entertain Your Kids During Quarantine

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If you've suddenly found yourself at home with kids to entertain, I actually have some good news for you. As long as you have Internet access, there are a ton of resources beyond Netflix that can keep your kids entertained and keep their brains from turning to mush before everyone returns to school.

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Welcome to the third segment of Between Two Episodes! In between two full episodes, we release a special bonus feature. This feature is an interview between students and someone who has a unique perspective on maths. In this Between Two Episodes, students Logan and Mena interview Deputy Eric Lucas, a police officer with the Hanover County Sheriff's Department.

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Dave Schmittou ft. James Shaw

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Free educational resources for remote learning

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Free educational resources for remote learning

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Free educational resources for remote learning

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More and more EdTech companies offering FREE support and/or access to schools affected by COVID19 closures!

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Shared by Sacha Taylor-Blades

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275+ Enrichment Activities for Children While Parents are Working Remotely

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Shared via Michael Flood

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Skip to content

COVID-19 #Coronavirus latest data visualized.
You are welcome to use these graphic in any way you please.

Created by David McCandless, Omid Kashan, Fabio Bergamaschi, Dr Stephanie Starling, Univers Labs, Nueker, Tom Evans
Learn to Create Impactful Infographics

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COVID-19 #CoronaVirus Infographic Datapack - Information is Beautiful

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Updated daily, now with global vaccination stats

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Shared by Michael Flood

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With everything that's happening about the Coronavirus, it might be very hard to make a decision of what to do today. Should you wait for more information? Do something today? What?

Here's what I'm going to cover in this article, with lots of charts, data and models with plenty of sources:

How many cases of coronavirus will there be in your area?

What will happen when these cases materialize?

What should you do?

When?

When you're done reading the article, this is what you'll take away:

The coronavirus is coming to you.
It's coming at an exponential speed: gradually, and then suddenly.
It's a matter of days. Maybe a week or two.
When it does, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed.
Your fellow citizens will be treated in the hallways.
Exhausted healthcare workers will break down. Some will die.
They will have to decide which patient gets the oxygen and which one dies.
The only way to prevent this is social distancing today. Not tomorrow. Today.
That means keeping as many people home as possible, starting now.

As a politician, community leader or business leader, you have the power and the responsibility to prevent this.

You might have fears today: What if I overreact? Will people laugh at me? Will they be angry at me? Will I look stupid? Won't it be better to wait for others to take steps first? Will I hurt the economy too much?

But in 2-4 weeks, when the entire world is in lockdown, when the few precious days of social distancing you will have enabled will have saved lives, people won't criticize you anymore: They will thank you for making the right decision.

Ok, let's do this.

Country Growth

The total number of cases grew exponentially until China contained it. But then, it leaked outside, and now it's a pandemic that nobody can stop.

As of today, this is mostly due to Italy, Iran and South Korea:

There are so many cases in South Korea, Italy and Iran that it's hard to see the rest of the countries, but let's zoom in on that corner at the bottom right.

There are dozens of countries with exponential growth rates. As of today, most of them are Western.

If you keep up with that type of growth rate for just a week, this is what you get:

If you want to understand what will happen, or how to prevent it, you need to look at the cases that have already gone through this: China, Eastern countries with SARS experience, and Italy.

This is one of the most important charts.

It shows in orange bars the daily official number of cases in the Hubei province: How many people were diagnosed that day.

The grey bars show the true daily coronavirus cases. The Chinese CDC found these by asking patients during the diagnostic when their symptoms started.

Crucially, these true cases weren't known at the time. We can only figure them out looking backwards: The authorities don't know that somebody just started having symptoms. They know when somebody goes to the doctor and gets diagnosed.

What this means is that the orange bars show you what authorities knew, and the grey ones what was really happening.

On January 21st, the number of new diagnosed cases (orange) is exploding: there are around 100 new cases. In reality, there were 1,500 new cases that day, growing exponentially. But the authorities didn't know that. What they knew was that suddenly there were 100 new cases of this new illness.

Two days later, authorities shut down Wuhan. At that point, the number of diagnosed daily new cases was ~400. Note that number: they made a decision to close the city with just 400 new cases in a day. In reality, there were 2,500 new cases that day, but they didn't know that.

The day after, another 15 cities in Hubei shut down.

Up until Jan 23rd, when Wuhan closes, you can look at the grey graph: it's growing exponentially. True cases were exploding. As soon as Wuhan shuts down, cases slow down. On Jan 24th, when another 15 cities shut down, the number of true cases (again, grey) grinds to a halt. Two days later, the maximum number of true cases was reached, and it has gone down ever since.

Note that the orange (official) cases were still growing exponentially: For 12 more days, it looked like this thing was still exploding. But it wasn't. It's just that the cases were getting stronger symptoms and going to the doctor more, and the system to identify them was stronger.

This concept of official and true cases is important. Let's keep it in mind for later.

The rest of regions in China were well coordinated by the central government, so they took immediate and drastic measures. This is the result:

Every flat line is a Chinese region with coronavirus cases. Each one had the potential to become exponential, but thanks to the measures happening just at the end of January, all of them stopped the virus before it could spread.

Meanwhile, South Korea, Italy and Iran had a full month to learn, but didn't. They started the same exponential growth of Hubei and passed every other Chinese region before the end of February.

Eastern Countries

South Korea cases have exploded, but have you wondered why Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand or Hong Kong haven't?

Taiwan didn't even make it to this graph because it didn't have the 50 cases threshold that I used.

Many of them were hit by SARS in 2003, and all of them learned from it. They learned how viral and lethal it could be, so they knew to take it seriously. That's why all of their graphs, despite starting to grow much earlier, still don't look like exponentials.

So far, we have stories of coronavirus exploding, governments realizing the threat, and containing them. For the rest of the countries, however, it's a completely different story.

Before I jump to them, a note about South Korea: The country is probably an outlier. The coronavirus was contained for the first 30 cases. Patient 31 was a super-spreader who passed it to thousands of other people. Because the virus spreads before people show symptoms, by the time the authorities realized the issue, the virus was out there. They're now paying the consequences of that one instance. Their containment efforts show, however: Italy has already passed it in numbers of cases, and Iran will pass it tomorrow (3/10/2020).

Washington State

You've already seen the growth in Western countries, and how bad forecasts of just one week look like. Now imagine that containment doesn't happen like in Wuhan or in other Eastern countries, and you get a colossal epidemic.

Let's look at a few cases, such as Washington State, the San Francisco Bay Area, Paris and Madrid.

Washington State is the US's Wuhan.The number of cases there is growing exponentially. It's currently at 140.

But something interesting happened early on. The death rate was through the roof. At some point, the state had 3 cases and one death.

We know from other places that the death rate of the coronavirus is anything between 0.5% and 5% (more on that later). How could the death rate be 33%?

It turned out that the virus had been spreading undetected for weeks. It's not like there were only 3 cases. It's that authorities only knew about 3, and one of them was dead because the more serious the condition, the more likely somebody is to be tested.

This is a bit like the orange and grey bars in China: Here they only knew about the orange bars (official cases) and they looked good: just 3. But in reality, there were hundreds, maybe thousands of true cases.

This is an issue: You only know the official cases, not the true ones. But you need to know the true ones. How can you estimate the true ones? It turns out, there's a couple of ways. And I have a model for both, so you can play with the numbers too ( direct link to copy of the model).

First, through deaths. If you have deaths in your region, you can use that to guess the number of true current cases. We know approximately how long it takes for that person to go from catching the virus to dying on average ( 17.3 days). That means the person who died on 2/29 in Washington State probably got infected around 2/12.

Then, you know the mortality rate. For this scenario, I'm using 1% (we'll discuss later the details). That means that, around 2/12, there were already around ~100 cases in the area (of which only one ended up in death 17.3 days later).

Now, use the average doubling time for the coronavirus (time it takes to double cases, on average). It's 6.2. That means that, in the 17 days it took this person to die, the cases had to multiply by ~8 (=2^(17/6)). That means that, if you are not diagnosing all cases, one death today means 800 true cases today.

Washington state has today 22 deaths. With that quick calculation, you get ~16,000 true coronavirus cases today. As many as the official cases in Italy and Iran combined.

If we look into the detail, we realize that 19 of these deaths were from one cluster, which might not have spread the virus widely. So if we consider those 19 deaths as one, the total deaths in the state is four. Updating the model with that number, we still get ~3,000 cases today.

This approach from Trevor Bedford looks at the viruses themselves and their mutations to assess the current case count.

The conclusion is that there are likely ~1,100 cases in Washington state right now.

None of these approaches are perfect, but they all point to the same message: We don't know the number of true cases, but it's much higher than the official one. It's not in the hundreds. It's in the thousands, maybe more.
San Francisco Bay Area
Until 3/8, the Bay Area didn't have any death. That made it hard to know how many true cases there were. Officially, there were 86 cases. But the US is vastly undertesting because it doesn't have enough kits. The country decided to create their own test kit, which turned out not to work.

These were the number of tests carried out in different countries by March 3rd:

Turkey, with no cases of coronavirus, had 10 times the testing per inhabitant than the US. The situation is not much better today, with ~8,000 tests performed in the US, which means ~4,000 people have been tested.

Here, you can just use a share of official cases to true cases. How to decide which one? For the Bay Area, they were testing everybody who had traveled or was in contact with a traveler, which means that they knew most of the travel-related cases, but none of the community spread cases. By having a sense of community spread vs. travel spread, you can know how many true cases there are.

I looked at that ratio for South Korea, which has great data. By the time they had 86 cases, the % of them from community spread was 86% (86 and 86% are a coincidence).

With that number, you can calculate the number of true cases. If the Bay Area has 86 cases today, it is likely that the true number is ~600.

France and Paris

France claims 1,400 cases today and 30 deaths. Using the two methods above, you can have a range of cases: between 24,000 and 140,000.

The true number of coronavirus cases in France today is likely to be between 24,000 and 140,000.

Let me repeat that: the number of true cases in France is likely to be between one and two orders or magnitude higher than it is officially reported.

Don't believe me? Let's look at the Wuhan graph again.

If you stack up the orange bars until 1/22, you get 444 cases. Now add up all the grey bars. They add up to ~12,000 cases. So when Wuhan thought it had 444 cases, it had 27 times more. If France thinks it has 1,400 cases, it might well have tens of thousands

The same math applies to Paris. With ~30 cases inside the city, the true number of cases is likely to be in the hundreds, maybe thousands. With 300 cases in the Ile-de-France region, the total cases in the region might already exceed tens of thousands.

Spain and Madrid

Spain has very similar numbers as France (1,200 cases vs. 1,400, and both have 30 deaths). That means the same rules are valid: Spain has probably upwards of 20k true cases already.

In the Comunidad de Madrid region, with 600 official cases and 17 deaths, the true number of cases is likely between 10,000 and 60,000.

If you read these data and tell yourself: " Impossible, this can't be true ", just think this: With this number of cases, Wuhan was already in lockdown.

With the number of cases we see today in countries like the US, Spain, France, Iran, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden or Switzerland, Wuhan was already in lockdown.

And if you're telling yourself: " Well, Hubei is just one region ", let me remind you that it has nearly 60 million people, bigger than Spain and about the size of France.

So the coronavirus is already here. It's hidden, and it's growing exponentially.

What will happen in our countries when it hits? It's easy to know, because we already have several places where it's happening. The best examples are Hubei and Italy.

Fatality Rates

The World Health Organization (WHO) quotes 3.4% as the fatality rate (% people who contract the coronavirus and then die). This number is out of context so let me explain it.

It really depends on the country and the moment: between 0.6% in South Korea and 4.4% in Iran. So what is it? We can use a trick to figure it out.

The two ways you can calculate the fatality rate is Deaths/Total Cases and Death/Closed Cases. The first one is likely to be an underestimate, because lots of open cases can still end up in death. The second is an overestimate, because it's likely that deaths are closed quicker than recoveries.

What I did was look at how both evolve over time. Both of these numbers will converge to the same result once all cases are closed, so if you project past trends to the future, you can make a guess on what the final fatality rate will be.

This is what you see in the data. China's fatality rate is now between 3.6% and 6.1%. If you project that in the future, it looks like it converges towards ~3.8%-4%. This is double the current estimate, and 30 times worse than the flu.

It is made up of two completely different realities though: Hubei and the rest of China.

Hubei's fatality rate will probably converge towards 4.8%. Meanwhile, for the rest of China, it will likely converge to ~0.9%:

I also charted the numbers for Iran, Italy and South Korea, the only countries with enough deaths to make this somewhat relevant.

Iran's and Italy's Deaths / Total Cases are both converging towards the 3%-4% range. My guess is their numbers will end up around that figure too.

South Korea is the most interesting example, because these 2 numbers are completely disconnected: deaths / total cases is only 0.6%, but deaths / closed cases is a whopping 48%. My take on it is that a few unique things are happening there. First, they're testing everybody (with so many open cases, the death rate seems low), and leaving the cases open for longer (so they close cases quickly when the patient is dead). Second, they have a lot of hospital beds (see chart 17.b). There might also be other reasons we don't know. What is relevant is that deaths/cases has hovered around 0.5% since the beginning, suggesting it will stay there, likely heavily influenced by the healthcare system and crisis management.

The last relevant example is the Diamond Princess cruise: with 706 cases, 6 deaths and 100 recoveries, the fatality rate will be between 1% and 6.5%.

Note that the age distribution in each country will also have an impact: Since mortality is much higher for older people, countries with an aging population like Japan will be harder hit on average than younger countries like Nigeria. There are also weather factors, especially humidity and temperature, but it's still unclear how this will impact transmission and fatality rates.

This is what you can conclude:

Excluding these, countries that are prepared will see a fatality rate of ~0.5% (South Korea) to 0.9% (rest of China).

Countries that are overwhelmed will have a fatality rate between ~3%-5%

Put in another way: Countries that act fast can reduce the number of deaths by a factor of ten. And that's just counting the fatality rate. Acting fast also drastically reduces the cases, making this even more of a no-brainer.

Countries that act fast reduce the number of deaths at least by 10x.

So what does a country need to be prepared?

What Will Be the Pressure on the System

Around 20% of cases require hospitalization, 5% of cases require the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), and around 2.5% require very intensive help, with items such as ventilators or ECMO ( extra-corporeal oxygenation).

The problem is that items such as ventilators and ECMO can't be produced or bought easily. A few years ago, the US had a total of 250 ECMO machines, for example.

So if you suddenly have 100,000 people infected, many of them will want to go get tested. Around 20,000 will require hospitalization, 5,000 will need the ICU, and 1,000 will need machines that we don't have enough of today. And that's just with 100,000 cases.

That is without taking into account issues such as masks. A country like the US has only 1% of the masks it needs to cover the needs of its healthcare workers (12M N95, 30M surgical vs. 3.5B needed). If a lot of cases appear at once, there will be masks for only 2 weeks.

Countries like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong or Singapore, as well as Chinese regions outside of Hubei, have been prepared and given the care that patients need.

But the rest of Western countries are rather going in the direction of Hubei and Italy. So what is happening there?

What an Overwhelmed Healthcare System Looks Like

The stories that happened in Hubei and those in Italy are starting to become eerily similar. Hubei built two hospitals in ten days, but even then, it was completely overwhelmed.

Both complained that patients inundated their hospitals. They had to be taken care of anywhere: in hallways, in waiting rooms...

I heavily recommend this short Twitter thread. It paints a pretty stark picture of Italy today

Healthcare workers spend hours in a single piece of protective gear, because there's not enough of them. As a result, they can't leave the infected areas for hours. When they do, they crumble, dehydrated and exhausted. Shifts don't exist anymore. People are driven back from retirement to cover needs. People who have no idea about nursing are trained overnight to fulfill critical roles. Everybody is on call, always.

Francesca Mangiatordi, an Italian nurse that crumbled in the middle of the war with the Coronavirus

That is, until they become sick. Which happens a lot, because they're in constant exposure to the virus, without enough protective gear. When that happens, they need to be in quarantine for 14 days, during which they can't help. Best case scenario, 2 weeks are lost. Worst case, they're dead.

The worst is in the ICUs, when patients need to share ventilators or ECMOs. These are in fact impossible to share, so the healthcare workers must determine what patient will use it. That really means, which one lives and which one dies.

"After a few days, we have to choose. [...] Not everyone can be intubated. We decide based on age and state of health." - Christian Salaroli, Italian MD.

Medical workers wear protective suits to attend to people sickened by the novel coronavirus, in the intensive care unit of a designated hospital in Wuhan, China, on Feb. 6. (China Daily/Reuters), via Washington Post

All of this is what drives a system to have a fatality rate of ~4% instead of ~0.5%. If you want your city or your country to be part of the 4%, don't do anything today.

Satellite images show Behesht Masoumeh cemetery in the Iranian city of Qom. Photograph: ©2020 Maxar Technologies. Via The Guardian and the The New York Times.

Flatten the Curve

This is a pandemic now. It can't be eliminated. But what we can do is reduce its impact.

Some countries have been exemplary at this. The best one is Taiwan, which is extremely connected with China and yet still has as of today fewer than 50 cases. This recent paper explain all the measures they took early on, which were focused on containment.

They have been able to contain it, but most countries lacked this expertise and didn't. Now, they're playing a different game: mitigation. They need to make this virus as inoffensive as possible.

If we reduce the infections as much as possible, our healthcare system will be able to handle cases much better, driving the fatality rate down. And, if we spread this over time, we will reach a point where the rest of society can be vaccinated, eliminating the risk altogether. So our goal is not to eliminate coronavirus contagions. It's to postpone them.

The more we postpone cases, the better the healthcare system can function, the lower the mortality rate, and the higher the share of the population that will be vaccinated before it gets infected.

How do we flatten the curve?

Social Distancing

There is one very simple thing that we can do and that works: social distancing.

If you go back to the Wuhan graph, you will remember that as soon as there was a lockdown, cases went down. That's because people didn't interact with each other, and the virus didn't spread.

The current scientific consensus is that this virus can be spread within 2 meters (6 feet) if somebody coughs. Otherwise, the droplets fall to the ground and don't infect you.

The worst infection then becomes through surfaces: The virus survives for up to 9 days on different surfaces such as metal, ceramics and plastics. That means things like doorknobs, tables, or elevator buttons can be terrible infection vectors.

The only way to truly reduce that is with social distancing: Keeping people home as much as possible, for as long as possible until this recedes.

This has already been proven in the past. Namely, in the 1918 flu pandemic.

Learnings from the 1918 Flu Pandemic

You can see how Philadelphia didn't act quickly, and had a massive peak in death rates. Compare that with St Louis, which did.

Then look at Denver, which enacted measures and then loosened them. They had a double peak, with the 2nd one higher than the first.

If you generalize, this is what you find:

This chart shows, for the 1918 flu in the US, how many more deaths there were per city depending on how fast measures were taken. For example, a city like St Louis took measures 6 days before Pittsburgh, and had less than half the deaths per citizen. On average, taking measures 20 days earlier halved the death rate.

Italy has finally figured this out. They first locked down Lombardy on Sunday, and one day later, on Monday, they realized their mistake and decided they had to lock down the entire country.

Hopefully, we will see results in the coming days. However, it will take one to two weeks to see. Remember the Wuhan graph: there was a delay of 12 days between the moment when the lockdown was announced and the moment when official cases (orange) started going down.

How Can Politicians Contribute to Social Distancing?

The question politicians are asking themselves today is not whether they should do something, but rather what's the appropriate action to take.

There are several stages to control an epidemic, starting with anticipation and ending with eradication. But it's too late for most options today. With this level of cases, the only options politicians have in front of them are containment, mitigation or suppression.
Containment
Containment is making sure all the cases are identified, controlled, and isolated. It's what Singapore, South Korea or Taiwan are doing so well: They very quickly limit people coming in, identify the sick, immediately isolate them, use heavy protective gear to protect their health workers, track all their contacts, quarantine them... This works extremely well when you're prepared and you do it early on, and don't need to grind your economy to a halt to make it happen.

I've already touted Taiwan's approach. But China's is good too. The lengths at which it went to contain the virus are mind-boggling. For example, they had up to 1,800 teams of 5 people each tracking every infected person, everybody they got interacted with, then everybody those people interacted with, and isolating the bunch. That's how they were able to contain the virus across a billion-people country.

This is not what Western countries have done. And now it's too late. The recent US announcement that most travel from Europe was banned is a containment measure for a country that has, as of today, 3 times the cases that Hubei had when it shut down, growing exponentially. How can we know if it's enough? It turns out, we can know by looking at the Wuhan travel ban.

This chart shows the impact that the Wuhan travel ban had delaying the epidemic. The bubble sizes show the number of daily cases. The top line shows the cases if nothing is done. The two other lines show the impact if 40% and 90% of travel is eliminated. This is a model created by epidemiologists, because we can't know for sure.

If you don't see much difference, you're right. It's very hard to see any change in the development of the epidemic.

Researchers estimate that, all in all, the Wuhan travel ban only delayed the spread in China by 3-5 days.

Now what did researchers think the impact of reducing transmission would be?

The top bloc is the same as the one you've seen before. The two other blocks show decreasing transmission rates. If the transmission rate goes down by 25% (through Social Distancing), it flattens the curve and delays the peak by a whole 14 weeks. Lower the transition rate by 50%, and you can't see the epidemic even starting within a quarter.

The US administration's ban on European travel is good: It has probably bought us a few hours, maybe a day or two. But not more. It is not enough. It's containment when what's needed is mitigation.

Once there are hundreds or thousands of cases growing in the population, preventing more from coming, tracking the existing ones and isolating their contacts isn't enough anymore. The next level is mitigation or suppression.
Mitigation or Suppression The new article, Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance, covers mitigation vs. suppression at length.
Mitigation requires a heavy amount of testing, contact tracing, quarantines and isolations to flatten the curve without stopping the outbreak

Suppression tries to go one step further and quench the outbreak. It requires heavy social distancing. People need to stop hanging out to drop the transmission rate (R), from the R=~2-3 that the virus follows without measures, to below 1, so that it eventually dies out.

These measures require closing companies, shops, mass transit, schools, enforcing lockdowns... The worse your situation, the worse the social distancing. The earlier you impose heavy measures, the less time you need to keep them, the easier it is to identify brewing cases, and the fewer people get infected.

This is what Wuhan had to do. This is what Italy was forced to accept. And then France, Spain, and many other countries. Because when the virus is rampant, the only measure is to lock down all the infected areas to stop spreading it at once.

With thousands of official cases - and tens of thousands of true ones - this is what countries like the US, the UK, Germany, Netherlands or Switzerland need to do.

But they're not doing it.

Some business are working from home, which is fantastic.
Some mass events are being stopped.
Some affected areas are in quarantining themselves.

Nobody can enter or exit lockdown areas, unless there are proven family or work reasons.

Movement inside the areas is to be avoided, unless they are justified for urgent personal or work reasons and can't be postponed.

People with symptoms (respiratory infection and fever) are "highly recommended" to remain home.

Standard time off for healthcare workers is suspended

Closure of all educational establishments (schools, universities...), gyms, museums, ski stations, cultural and social centers, swimming pools, and theaters.

Bars and restaurants have limited opening times from 6am to 6pm, with at least one meter (~3 feet) distance between people.

All pubs and clubs must close.

All commercial activity must keep a distance of one meter between customers. Those that can't make it happen must close. Temples can remain open as long as they can guarantee this distance.

Family and friends hospital visits are limited

Work meetings must be postponed. Work from home must be encouraged.

All sports events and competitions, public or private, are canceled. Important events can be held under closed doors.

All these measures will slow down the virus. They will lower the transmission rate from 2.5 to 2.2, maybe 2. Hopefully more. But they aren't enough to get us below 1 for a sustained period of time to stop the epidemic.

So the question becomes: What are the tradeoffs we could be making to lower the R? This is the menu that Italy has put in front of all of us:

Then two days later, they added: No, in fact, you need to close all businesses that aren't crucial. So now we're closing all commercial activities, offices, cafes and shops. Only transportation, pharmacies, groceries will remain open."

How to pick the right measures for your country? Read Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance. One approach is to gradually increase measures. Unfortunately, that gives precious time for the virus to spread. If you want to be safe, do it Wuhan style. People might complain now, but they'll thank you later.

How Can Business Leaders Contribute to Social Distancing?

If you're a business leader and you want to know what you should do, the best resource for you is Staying Home Club.

It is a list of social distancing policies that have been enacted by US tech companies-so far, 328.

They range from allowed to required Work From Home, and restricted visits, travel, or events.

There are more things that every company must determine, such as what to do with hourly workers, whether to keep the office open or not, how to conduct interviews, what to do with the cafeterias... If you want to know how my company, Course Hero, handled some of these, along with a model announcement to your employees, here is the one my company used ( view only version here).

It is very possible that so far you've agreed with everything I've said, and were just wondering since the beginning when to make each decision. Put in another way, what triggers should we have for each measure.

Risk-Based Model for Triggers

To solve this, I've created a model ( direct link to copy).

If your company had 100 employees in the Washington state area, which had 11 coronavirus deaths on 3/8, there was a 25% chance at least one of your employees was infected, and you should have closed immediately.

If your company had 250 employees mostly in the South Bay (San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, which together had 22 official cases on 3/8 and the true number was probably at least 54), by 3/9 you would have had ~2% chances to have at least one employee infected, and you should have closed your office too.

[Updated as of 3/12] If your company is in Paris (intramuros), and it has 250 employees, today there's a 95% chance that one of your employees has the coronavirus, and you should close your office by tomorrow.

It enables you to assess the likely number of cases in your area, the probability that your employees are already infected, how that evolves over time, and how that should tell you whether to remain open.

It tells us things like:

The model uses labels such as "company" and "employee", but the same model can be used for anything else: schools, mass transit... So if you have only 50 employees in Paris, but all of them are going to take the train, coming across thousands of other people, suddenly the likelihood that at least one of them will get infected is much higher and you should close your office immediately.

If you're still hesitating because nobody is showing symptoms, just realize 26% of contagions happen before there are symptoms.

Are You Part of a Group of Leaders?

This math is selfish. It looks at every company's risk individually, taking as much risk as we want until the inevitable hammer of the coronavirus closes our offices.

But if you're part of a league of business leaders or politicians, your calculations are not for just one company, but for the whole. The math becomes: What's the likelihood that any of our companies is infected? If you're a group of 50 companies of 250 employees on average, in the SF Bay Area, there's a 35% chance that at least one of the companies has an employee infected, and 97% chance that will be true next week. I added a tab in the model to play with that.

It might feel scary to make a decision today, but you shouldn't think about it this way.

This theoretical model shows different communities: one doesn't take social distancing measures, one takes them on Day n of an outbreak, the other one on Day n+1. All the numbers are completely fictitious (I chose them to resemble what happened in Hubei, with ~6k daily new cases at the worst). They're just there to illustrate how important a single day can be in something that grows exponentially. You can see that the one-day delay peaks later and higher, but then daily cases converge to zero.

But what about cumulative cases?

In this theoretical model that resembles loosely Hubei, waiting one more day creates 40% more cases! So, maybe, if the Hubei authorities had declared the lockdown on 1/22 instead of 1/23, they might have reduced the number of cases by a staggering 20k.

And remember, these are just cases. Mortality would be much higher, because not only would there be directly 40% more deaths. There would also be a much higher collapse of the healthcare system, leading to a mortality rate up to 10x higher as we saw before. So a one-day difference in social distancing measures can end exploding the number of deaths in your community by multiplying more cases and higher fatality rate.

This is an exponential threat. Every day counts. When you're delaying by a single day a decision, you're not contributing to a few cases maybe. There are probably hundreds or thousands of cases in your community already. Every day that there isn't social distancing, these cases grow exponentially.

This is probably the one time in the last decade that sharing an article might save lives. They need to understand this to avert a catastrophe. The moment to act is now.

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With everything that's happening about the Coronavirus, it might be very hard to make a decision of what to do today. Should you wait for more information? Do something today? What? Here's what I'm going to cover in this article, with lots of charts, data and models with plenty of sources: How many cases of coronavirus will there be in your area?

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Top 25 Learning tools for when school is closed

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Top 25 Learning tools for when school is closed

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Shared by Barbara Cotter

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(Image credit: Unsplash: Jacqueline Kelly)

Remote teaching and learning has been on a steady increase in recent years until the coronavirus came along. Now, with its rapid spread, more and more schools are cancelling classes. Consequently, teachers now are turning to technology to deliver instruction to their remote students when school is closed.

Here is an alphabetical list of digital tools that can be used to keep the learning happening during a school closure:

- Offers an online curriculum for ages 2 to 8 covering numerous core subjects including math, reading, and science.

Adventure Academy - From the creators of ABCmouse, this online curriculum is for ages 8 to 13 and features gamified learning for Math, Reading, and Science.

- A free visual- and student-based response platform that allows educators to blend learning and flip classrooms in real-time on browser based devices. Students can interact with teacher-developed resources from home.

BoomWriter - One of my favorites for remote learning, and teachers and students love it! A free site that lets educators create student accounts before then directing them to super engaging fiction, nonfiction and/or vocabulary-focused personalized writing activities in any subject. Enter instructions (with or without vocabulary), upload resources, and then share!

and BrainPop Jr - Delivers online learning opportunities in numerous subjects by showing animated videos and then following up with brief assessments and quizzes.

- A versatile learning tool that provides a digital canvas for multiple educational needs. The Ideas Lab showcases learning resources to be used remotely.

- Chocked full of educational videos and premade playlists that can be assigned to students to view from home.

- Create reading assignments for students in grades K-8 that can also be integrated into Google Classroom. Features a curated, COPPA-compliant database that provides assessment and language/speech options.

- Useful for flipping a classroom or lesson. Educational videos can be viewed remotely and followed up with assessments to gauge learning.

EducationCity - This online platform provides an abundance of engaging games, resources, and activities for grades PreK-6.

- Offers hundreds of animated explanation videos, on subjects from biology to social media, that can be embedded and shared.

Glogster EDU - The Glogpedia features multimedia posters covering more than 80 topics across nine disciplines, such as math, social studies and science.

- Interactive math practice for grades K-5 that offers an easy-to-use interface and tracks student data.

- One of the most used game-based learning platforms that allows educators to create their own content-related quizzes and games.

- A fast-paced vocabulary game site that also allows teachers to choose from existing work packs or develop their own. You can also track student progress.

- A mobile learning tool that supports student engagement and collaborative learning. Also recently posted how to use Nearpod at home during school closures.

- A teacher-curated trove of educational videos, lessons, quizzes and games.

RoomRecess - More than 140 teacher-developed games for kids involving math, reading, literacy, typing, and more.

- A new site focused on differentiated instruction through game-based learning that adjusts to the student as they progress. Also provides tracking and assessment tools.

SuperTeacherWorksheets - Hundreds of worksheets and activities that can be printed for home use, ranging from math and science to literacy and phonics.

- With this platform, ESL, ELL and foreign language teachers can flip a lesson and have students work at home with the help of numerous videos and activities.

Vocab Victor - A free mobile app for building vocabulary skills that assesses and adapts to a student's vocabulary level in real-time.

VoiceThread - Students can develop their creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration through interactive digital stories and presentations.

WatchKnowLearn - A free site with an abundance of K-12 videos on a wide variety of subjects.

YouTube Teachers - Dozens of educational videos covering topics that range from vector quantities to plate tectonics.
David Kapuler is an educational consultant with more than 10 years of experience working in the K-12 environment. For more information about his work, contact him at dkapuler@gmail.com and read his blog at cyber-kap.blogspot.com

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Top 25 Learning Tools For When School is Closed

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(Image credit: Unsplash: Jacqueline Kelly) Remote teaching and learning has been on a steady increase in recent years until the coronavirus came along. Now, with its rapid spread, more and more schools are cancelling classes. Consequently, teachers now are turning to technology to deliver instruction to their remote students when school is closed.

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Support for Learning Support Students in Virtual Learning

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Support for Learning Support Students in Virtual Learning

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Advice from international educators who are on prolonged online learning due to school closures

(Compiled by Lauren Fernandez)

General Philosophy`

Don't expect that it will be perfect and accept that the amount of learning won't be the same as usual. Also if you teach Secondary explain to them that an effective online session is as much as what they give back. Nothing worse than trying to engage with unresponsive kids on the other side. It's much more awkward when you're online. Have to say that most of my kids have been awesome in that respect and really responsive.

Be willing to learn alongside the kids. This is a new situation for everyone.

Pace yourself.

Depending upon the age level that you're teaching (as others have shared) be realistic in your expectations.

Have patience! Just because it doesn't work the first doesn't mean it doesn't work

Expect the unexpected!

Don't be afraid to ask for help

Realize that things might take a bit longer with the learning curve

My mantra has been " Be comfortable with being uncomfortable."

Plan less. It's all daunting for the kiddos and everything will take 3x longer. And...if you haven't closed school yet, borrow as many things from school as you can think of.

Borrow where necessary. There are some great videos that can help supplement the course material in any subject.

Allow for students to give alternative avenues to show that they have been working hard and are progressing toward learning goals. Let parents know that simple photos of work, etc. can be accepted if students are struggling to submit. Don't let parents or students feel like it is a big time-consuming task to learn how to turn in their work.

Practice beforehand

Practice routines and expectations before going digital. We didn't have a chance to, and I have students who have not submitted an ounce of work. I've emailed, contacted parents, made Google Classroom comments, etc.

I was so glad I already had my google classrooms up and running.

Do a dry run in your class one day. See it from the kids perspective. What technology do they need instructions on. How can they access this or that?

I'm starting week 6. My advice is become a Seesaw expert, or any platform you are using, learn how to work smart around it so you can be efficient. Then a checklist of how you will provide feedback. Connection is key to learning.

If teaching young learners get them typing first. Typing.com is free and has structured lessons.

Prepare your kids NOW. I started almost a week before we finally closed with 4th graders. Practice using your digital platform (Google Classroom). Show them how to log into learning sites, accept video conferencing invites, using digital tools like the highlighter feature on Scholastic News. I spent 3 days prepping kids, teaching very little content. It made the transition pretty seamless. There's always going to be small bumps but there's been no major freak outs.

Practice the tech and programs you are going to use with the students before they are out to troubleshoot any issues. I wish I had my teaching resources, but that would require travelling from country to country with them.

For the teacher side, we had PD last week to have teachers plan what a week of continuous online learning might look like, what kind of support they might need and challenges that they face (ie. Low student participation). This week we have PD carousel to introduce all of the resources that are available (edpuzzle, pear deck, Screencastify etc.). Teachers will choose which ones they want to attend and get upskilled. We use Seesaw for Kg1, Kg2, Year1, and Year 2. Also, we created a Google Site with all of the resources for parents with expectations from teacher, student, parents, as well as tech help beginners guides, and troubleshooting and brain breaks to help with movement etc.

I wish we had used some of that extra time during the in-service period to fully develop a plan for this scenario, train on software, etc.

I wish we had been encouraged to plan as if this was the foreseeable future. Instead, we were told to expect students in the classroom after that first week. Two days in and the government announced that public schools would be extending their closure, and of course we followed suit.

Take it with you

Workload

Don't give too much homework! Be realistic.

Bite sized lessons are best!

Break it down for you AND for your students into smaller chunks. And be organized like never before!

Starting my sixth week. I really think it is based on the age of the student. I am teaching 8th grade. I have to keep them engaged because there are so many distractions at home. I am doing a lot of group work that needs to be done within the timeframe of the class period. Zoom, and their breakout rooms have been great, as well as flipgrid. I have been assessing them on FlipGrid. Easy to grade and you can hear if they know what they are talking about.

Assessment

Self Care.

Five weeks in. My advice: Take eye breaks. I downloaded audiobooks and podcasts so I don't use screens during my "off" times.

So be patient with yourself, laugh at yourself, live and learn every day.

Be strict with times you close your computer. It will eat up 12 hours a day easily if you let it.

Be able to laugh at yourself.

Have a plan for your down time, free moments in between when you are just waiting for questions or submissions for students. My first week, for my non-live classes that I prep & release online for them to work through, the during-class time when I'm required to be available for student questions was torture (even though I'd set a some interactive discussions). Times since then have been better when I was ready with a plan for what I'd do (organizing files, marking things, editing photos, etc.) anything I could easily stop & come back to in between dealing with student questions/concerns.

Look after your wellbeing - posture, exercise, sleep, getting away from emails / notifications / the devices. Don't underestimate how much extra time, energy, and attention this experience will require of you.

Breathe, keep yourself in one piece and embrace the experience.... one day at a time.....

We are in week 6 now. I just asked my teachers this question last week. One clear theme was based around teacher wellness: set a schedule for yourself of when you will work and when you will turn off. Stick to it. Another theme was one task at a time. Finish that task before moving to the next. I know this sounds really simple but it's easy to get distracted with all the emails and texts coming in from students and teachers. It can be 24 hours if you allow it.

Our school was clear with parents about when we would be available to return emails and answer WeChat messages. If you haven't started teaching online yet, make sure that parents know when you will be available. And more important, when you will NOT be available.

As a teacher, set boundaries for lesson creating. Try to engage in a new task, project, or hobby to fill your heart and give you something to look forward to outside of planning/teacher times. Allow yourself grace to adjust each week as you manage online learning and observe your students. The novelty of online learning will wear off. Emotional issues like stress, anxiety or depression can threaten student engagement. Keep things as light as possible, in your communication with students and give parents a chance to share successes and proud moments with the teacher.

Engagement/ Feedback loops

Give meaningful and personal feedback - My students in Suzhou China have been away from friends for too long. We have started weekly competitions for the students to engage and share like Post a baby photo of yourself, What is your favorite hobby, cook a meal and post

When we started many teachers were very keen to teach their classes in their usual personal way. While this is great in a live classroom this approach can cause issues for the following reasons. Not all students will have access to the same connectivity and platforms - try and standardise your teaching platform so the students know where to go to see your work. We used TEAMS, MOODLE and Email. Only pastoral leadership has access to wechat (social media) for which is always accessible for those students struggling with teaching platforms

Teachers will be flatout delivering information and trying to find fun ways to have the students give answers - tasks back. Don't be afraid of posting a VIDEO of yourself. The Students won't judge you as much as you may yourself.

Whereas, on using google hangouts, the whole class is not working well, so I'm doing small groups of 4 so we can all see each other's faces. I am changing the groups so they see different people each time.

Set up your class simple and start small. Have tutorials/step-by-step posters for students on how to use online tools, especially for ones they are not used to. Make sure you have clear expectations and you include parents in conversations about that. Try to have at least 1-2 live meetings with your students but keep it simple.

Try to have online meetings at the start of each class and record these. Microsoft teams is a great resource but there are plenty of others.

When you get there...stay in touch. The students will be missing the conversations and daily interactions. Be available.

Add a personal touch each day, like a video of yourself talking to the kids. An activity you think will take 10 minutes will take 30 or more. The less links, the better. Mental health for you and the students comes first, stop working in the evening and on weekends.

When you deliver, ask questions and encourage them to ask questions too. More the better.

As a parent, personal connection with and feedback from teachers was a really big deal for my kids. When activities are explicitly direct in regards to posting or turning in homework, that was helpful. That is supportive to families as well.

Tutors/Advisors/Boarding staff all teachers can have a small cohort of students who can chat and relay problems to.

Connection between students

Keep communications simple and clear

Do not overload the students. Take the time to talk to them. Keep it simple-as in limited instructions and more interactions.

Keep the language you use simple. A lot of teachers have said that this has been a challenge. When we are face to face we read body language and use a lot of gestures to be understood. Video screens don't necessarily show this and messages, sound quality, bad internet connections can all make a lesson become so much more difficult when a student does not really understand what is being asked of them. So keep the language simple.

communication > Daily Bulletin > Tutor notices > House News are all good ways to keep the community informed and included. Connections and Inclusion are vital for wellbeing

Consider mandatory brief once a week video conference if you're not doing synchronous conferencing for class as we are

Be organised. Give step by step instructions that clearly explain what you want. Make sure you have a platform to be using.

Increased Support

Parents/Caregiver Empowerment and Support

Routine/ Planning

keep Routines as best you can. help the students set up a daily schedule or Work - Rest - Play timetable. Also SUPER helpful for parents trying to regulate screen time.

Keep it SIMPLE. It is easy to get caught up in gadgets and websites, but the most important thing is to maintain your connection with your students, period. This is a learning experience for everyone.

I plan the whole week at a time(takes an entire day or more) but then the actual delivering of the lessons is a much more manageable workload. But I don't have anyone else at home to help either so to each their own.

Plan the work so the students know EXACTLY what's expected then you will need less on screen time answering questions. Be very literal.

into my sixth week of online, a really good prep is to prepare live lessons and a series of short how to hints and tips. We still have staff and students out of china with variable access to internet so recording the live lesson for those to access always good. Keep the use of platforms to 1 or 2, centralizes information and communication. We use Managebac for curriculum management and Teams for communication, works well most of the time. Keep the work simpler, online learning requires simple clear instructions and objectives take longer to achieve. Good luck

Schedule your assignments so students are not overwhelmed

For me it's important to keep the same routine as on normal school days. The only difference is that only the upper part of my body is dressed professionally as I am on Zoom with my students quite a lot.

Our school has been closed for 6-7 weeks. I agree... it can get overwhelming quickly for teachers, students and parents. Assignments need to be engaging and show your face in a video it's way more personal the students will do much better if they see you rather than just seeing written out instructions or assignments. Also get feedback from parents through surveys. See how they are handling it at home and what is working. Then adjust accordingly but you still won't please all the parents.

Absolutely. You must, must, stop at some pre-set time. I had students texting me and asking questions at 11:30 pm, then I'm up and ready to begin lessons before 7:30 am.

I'm a virtual instructor and if you let it - your days will be 14-16 hours long. Pick a time everyday to shut it down and the rest can wait until tomorrow.

Set times for when you will stop responding to students. I have students messaging me at all hours of the day. While I am responding to them about 12 hours of the day I do take the other 12 for me and not for them. Same for parents. 12 hours is more than I would do at work. Also blue screen glasses https://www.amazon.com/s... for example. I have had days where my headaches got so bad my eyes were watering.

Depending on the age of the students, above all I would say give your students strategies for organisation. Keeping track with all work and trying to keep all students on track has sometimes posed a challenge, particularly if there's no support at home. Give students more time to finish than you would usually expect. Touch base regularly with your students on an individual basis. Relax down with the planning - I've been going a little overboard and have now had to slow the pace right down to allow all students to move forward together reasonably. Use this opportunity to explore technology and resources that you've never used before - I'm learning so much all of the time.

Plan things out well in advance. Make expectations clear so that students know what is coming online (far more than in the classroom). I have started using "module" type work.

I wish we had not started with a week of asynchronous learning. We should have been synchronous from the start.

I planned on a 6 weeks basis, students felt a long term program and it helped a lot stay focused and positive. Students received materials on Friday, on our class usual schedule. Plus, we introduce the class journal: every child has to fill a short description of the best and the worst of day, plus some craft tutorial (we use seesaw). Good luck everyone...

Variety

Don't make all sessions tech based! ( assuming no one has said this!!) today I made my students listen to ABBA dancing queen whilst they were planning/ creating cereal boxes for Design! Kids need movement and teachers need to move too!!

Leadership

Finally; Leadership. Heads of Year deal with the students not engaging Heads Of department ensure all lessons are standardised and accessible by offering opportunities for feedback and options of educational platforms.

Technical Support

This is when the Information and Technology Team will be MOST important. Get these wonderful people well resourced.

Not too many learning platforms!!!

Choose one platform to use and stick with it.

Yes - The kids cannot cope with too many options. Teachers need to KISS (Keep It Simple Silly)

Pick your platforms and be consistent.

Make sure you have a platform that kids already use

Also, don't buy a ton of digital stuff. You can easily screenshot existing PDFs and task cards then enter them into Google forms or Google slides.

I wish we had surveyed students and parents beforehand about what technology they had available and gotten them set up with some training in advance.

Opportunity

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Advice from international educators who are on prolonged online learning due to school closures (Compiled by Lauren Fernandez) General Philosophy` Don't expect that it will be perfect and accept that the amount of learning won't be the same as usual.

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SplashLearn is great for K-5 math and is free for teachers

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SplashLearn is great for K-5 math and is free for teachers

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Teachers can assign practice assignments or assessments which students can access at home for free through laptops, iPads or smartphones.

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The outbreak of COVID-19 (coronavirus) has caused many districts to close temporarily. As per recent recommendations by CDC, schools need to prepare for remote learning.

SplashLearn is concerned with the disruption of classroom instructions at this crucial time of year. To ensure continuity of learning, teachers can assign the home assignments and enable home-access by adding parent emails.

The service is absolutely FREE for all the teachers. Whatever you assign to your class is FREE for the parents for home access as well. However, any game or activity not assigned by a teacher will be behind a paywall, and parents will need to buy a subscription to unlock them.

If you are an educator, we invite you to Sign-up to get full access to SplashLearn completely free. You can also write to us at schoolaccess@splashlearn.com, and our team will help you set it up for free.

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SplashLearn stands with schools/districts affected with closure due to COVID-19 (Corona Virus) outbreak

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The outbreak of COVID-19 (coronavirus) has caused many districts to close temporarily. As per recent recommendations by CDC, schools need to prepare for remote learning. SplashLearn is concerned with the disruption of classroom instructions at this crucial time of year. To ensure continuity of learning, teachers can assign the home assignments and enable home-access by adding parent emails.

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Shared by Patricia Brown and Christel Broady

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NEW YORK (WKBW) - Charter-Spectrum announced Friday it will offer free access to broadband and WiFi services to households with students who do not already have the services.

"In the coming weeks, many Americans will be affected either directly or indirectly by COVID-19 and Charter is focused on serving and supporting our 29 million customers. Americans rely on high speed broadband in nearly every aspect of their lives and Charter is committed to ensuring our customers maintain reliable access to the online resources and information they want and need," Charter-Spectrum said in a statement.

The company says free broadband and Wi-Fi access will be available for 60 days to households with K-12 and/or college students who do not already have a Spectrum broadband subscription at any service level up to 100 Mbps.

To enroll in the service you can call 1-844-488-8395, the company says it will waive installation fees for student households.

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Spectrum to offer free broadband and WiFi to students without it

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NEW YORK (WKBW) - Charter-Spectrum announced Friday it will offer free access to broadband and WiFi services to households with students who do not already have the services. "In the coming weeks, many Americans will be affected either directly or indirectly by COVID-19 and Charter is focused on serving and supporting our 29 million customers.

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Shared by Kory Graham

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STEM Faculty: Below is a thread of resources for teaching labs online. 

It was curated on the @PODNetworkHQ listserv, specifically by Martin Samuels of Harvard and LeighAnn Tomaswick of Kent State. 1/5

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STEM Faculty: Below is a thread of resources for teaching labs online. 

It was curated on the @PODNetworkHQ listserv, specifically by Martin Samuels of Harvard and LeighAnn Tomaswick of Kent State. 1/5

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STEM Faculty: Below is a thread of resources for teaching labs online. 

It was curated on the @PODNetworkHQ listserv, specifically by Martin Samuels of Harvard and LeighAnn Tomaswick of Kent State. 1/5

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STEM Faculty: Below is a thread of resources for teaching labs online. 

It was curated on the @PODNetworkHQ listserv, specifically by Martin Samuels of Harvard and LeighAnn Tomaswick of Kent State. 1/5

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STEM Faculty: Below is a thread of resources for teaching labs online. 

It was curated on the @PODNetworkHQ listserv, specifically by Martin Samuels of Harvard and LeighAnn Tomaswick of Kent State. 1/5

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Science and Math Online Solutions- Free

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Over 1.1 billion simulations delivered

160interactive simulations

97language translations

3001teacher-submitted lessons

Founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder creates free interactive math and science simulations. PhET sims are based on extensive education research and engage students through an intuitive, game-like environment where students learn through exploration and discovery.

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Founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder creates free interactive math and science simulations. PhET sims are based on extensive education research and engage students through an intuitive, game-like environment where students learn through exploration and discovery.

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Shared via Tom Kilgore

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As universities and colleges across the world are moving courses online to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, GoReact-the most popular tool in the world for teaching performance-based skills online-is extending support and resources to affected higher education institutions.

From now until July 30, college and university departments can onboard and use GoReact at no extra charge. Institutions may use GoReact for as many departments, courses, instructors, and students as needed, for free.

"We understand this is a time of significant urgency for schools to maintain continuity of learning while trying to mitigate coronavirus spread," said Ken Meyers, GoReact founder and CEO. "This is our way of offering no-strings-attached help for maintaining that learning momentum mid-semester. Skill-development courses create unique challenges for online environments, and that's where we're particularly useful. We're happy to do our part right now."

GoReact's customer success team will also provide free training resources and quick-start webinars to get faculty up and running fast. Any interested institution may contact GoReact at 801-717-3499 to get help with this free service.

Click to learn more about GoReact's resources for educational institutions navigating the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the latest information on the coronavirus outbreak, visit the CDC website .

About GoReact

GoReact is a Utah-based learning technology company that facilitates video observation, coaching and assessment for rapid skill development and improvement. It's an incredibly popular platform used in more than 500 colleges and universities worldwide. Visit us at goreact.com or find us on , , or .

Contact

Chad Jardine

(801) 717-3433

chad@goreact.com

GoReact is a Utah-based learning technology company that facilitates video observation, coaching and assessment for rapid skill development and improvement. It's an incredibly popular platform used in more than 500 colleges and universities worldwide. Visit us at goreact.com or find us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter.

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COVID-19 Online Classes-GoReact Offers Free Help

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As universities and colleges across the world are moving courses online to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, GoReact-the most popular tool in the world for teaching performance-based skills online-is extending support and resources to affected higher education institutions. From now until July 30, college and university departments can onboard and use GoReact at no extra charge.

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Shared via Marialice Curran

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#DeafEdTip: E-Learning Accessibility

Whether it be for inclement weather, water main breaks or to prevent the spread of infectious disease, more and more schoos are turning to E-learning days so that education can continue uninterrupted. Although this is not an exhausive list and additional accessibility considerations may need to be made based on individual needs, here are some general considerations for schools to keep in mind while planning for E-learning days in order to ensure equal access to content for students who are deaf and hard of hearing:

All visual media should have closed-captioning available. Please review material ahead of time and ensure that captions or subtitles have been created for the material. DO NOT rely on auto-generated speech-to-text as an appropriate substitute to provide equal access . www.dcmp.org has a collection of educationally relevant videos with captions that can be streamed. DCMP also has lesson plans to go with many of their videos.

If teachers will be using "live voice" and either recording themselves or will present live in an online format, students using assistive listening devices such as hearing aids, cochlear implants and bone anchored systems will need to have good quality auditory access as well as being able to see the speaker's face while talking.

Ahead of E-learning days, students would benefit from a functional evaluation to assess any technology that will be used on E-learning days to determine auditory/visual access settings and needs.

Additional resources for #DeafEdTip: E-Learning Accessibility:

If you would like more information or resources on E-Learning Accessibility, please contact CDHHE@isdh.in.gov.

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DeafEdTip: E-Learning Accessibility Whether it be for inclement weather, water main breaks or to prevent the spread of infectious disease, more and more schoos are turning to E-learning days so that education can continue uninterrupted.

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via Jerry Blumengarten

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Cybrary Man's Educational Web Sites
The internet catalogue for students, teachers, administrators & parents.
Over 20,000 relevant links personally selected by an educator/author with over 30 years of experience.

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Cybrary Man's Educational Web Sites The internet catalogue for students, teachers, administrators & parents. Over 20,000 relevant links personally selected by an educator/author with over 30 years of experience.

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Six Steps Toward Distance Learning (LINC)

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Six Steps Toward Distance Learning (LINC)

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By LINC Team

With the COVID-19 outbreak, we understand you are planning for a range of possible circumstances. Our team joined together to help you in this process. As a start, we organized several resources and recommendations for school leaders and teachers in our COVID-19 Resource Center.

One very real possibility is the closing of schools. We have compiled a list of six key priorities that will help school and district leaders plan for continued learning in the event students cannot come to school. See the six priorities below as well as a downloadable planning template. We hope you find this helpful. Please let us know how we can continue to support your efforts by reaching out to us via email at info@linclearning.com or on Twitter @linc_pd.

Plan for Continued Student Learning in the Event of School Closing
(Editable Template h ere)

Priority

How

Tips

1. Establish Communication Structures and Protocols
Communications Protocols (How, when and where?)

Develop your system for how the community (teachers, parents, students) will connect and communicate with one another. You may want to consider a Learning Management System (LMS) if you don't already have one.

Establish and clearly communicate norms for how you will work together? Eg. When and how do we expect members of the community to check in or be online? How will we share information?

Create an online space for families to ask questions, leave feedback and communicate.

Create a landing page on the school or district website to update families and provide answers to frequently asked questions. See this sample from the Northshore School District.

Determine how assignments will be shared with students and collected by teachers.

Decide on how teachers should take attendance and know when students are "absent."

Determine protocols for what teachers should do if students are absent.

Consider virtual office hours for teachers.

Create a space for teachers to communicate, collaborate, and ask questions.

Be sure there is someone assigned to provide timely feedback and responses.

2. Set Clear Expectations for Remote Structures and Routines
School Structure and Routines

Establish what your "virtual" school day will look like.

Determine what being "present" is for students and teachers.

Set expectations for student and teacher workload.

Set routines for the "school day".

See Sample of Virtual School Guidelines.

See Sample tips for families. Feel free to adapt. (To make your own copy to edit in Google Docs, go to File, Make a Copy).

Consider starting with asynchronous learning at first while teachers, students and families are getting adjusted and then move to synchronous.

Consider surveying families throughout to get feedback and act on it if necessary.

Provide family support - It is imperative that families stay informed and feel supported during this time.

Create a one-stop shop for online resources as well as determining a strategy for sharing information with families who do not have digital access at home.

3. Get Your Teachers and Distance Learning Toolkit Ready!

Start to prepare your teachers now for blended and digital learning. This is a great opportunity to onboard them to more intentional tech integration.

Identify a virtual professional development solution to continue to support teachers. We have created a playlist in LINCspring focused on preparing teachers specifically for distance learning. See more here.

Curate your school's toolkit of digital and distance learning tools. Here is a great resource of various tools to consider.

Some districts are closing a day early to provide training to teachers.

If possible hold daily staff virtual meetings where teachers share best practices.

See our Educator Resource List with ideas and resources for remote learning.

This list provides tools providing the pro version for free to closed schools.

4. Plan for Access to Technology and Your Digital Toolkit

Establish a plan for how students will access technology and other resources for learning.

Consider the technology your students already have access to - you can get creative here ie mobile phones, tablets, etc.

Consider the technology your Teachers have access to - what additional resources do they need to facilitate ongoing learning for Students and stay connected to the community?

Start to onboard your students to available technology and tools now. Get them set up with accounts and necessary log-in information on your selected tools. Train students before they leave

Communicate with families of the tools students will be using. Send home instructions/video for accessing online platforms/digital tools. Prepare them to think about space for students at home or other places for focused learning time.

Students will have all sorts of devices, make sure the learning is compatible with cell phones, older devices, etc.
Consider student equity and ensure students go home with devices (wherever possible) and passwords

5. Establish Community Connections

Connect with community members such as libraries and community centers to find out who will be open during your closure.

Determine whether students can gain access to devices and WiFi at local centers such as libraries or community centers.

Let families know where students can get meals they would normally get during the school day.

Share all relevant information regularly with families both digitally and through community partners

6. Take care of your community - Social and Emotional Care

There are many changes taking place and many unknowns which may heighten anxiety.

Make the social and emotional care of your community a priority.

Consider asking teachers to hold an Advisory period to keep students connected to each other and create the community they had in the classroom.

Have a plan for students who may struggle adapting to online learning that engages them and their families through regular phone calls and other communication.

Access editable version of this template for your school plan here.

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Six Steps Toward Planning for Distance Learning | LINC: The Learning Innovation Catalyst

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With the COVID-19 outbreak, we understand you are planning for a range of possible circumstances. Our team joined together to help you in this process. As a start, we organized several resources and recommendations for school leaders and teachers in our COVID-19 Resource Center. One very real p ...

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via Tanya Avrith

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Free Creative Cloud tools offered to students through May 31, 2020 from ⁦@AdobeForEdu⁩ #AdobeEduCreative #remotelearning #remoteteaching  https://t.co/uYAdEjoArD

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Free Creative Cloud tools offered to students through May 31, 2020 from ⁦@AdobeForEdu⁩ #AdobeEduCreative #remotelearning #remoteteaching  https://t.co/uYAdEjoArD

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Free Creative Cloud tools offered to students through May 31, 2020 from ⁦@AdobeForEdu⁩ #AdobeEduCreative #remotelearning #remoteteaching  https://t.co/uYAdEjoArD

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Free Creative Cloud tools offered to students through May 31, 2020 from ⁦@AdobeForEdu⁩ #AdobeEduCreative #remotelearning #remoteteaching  https://t.co/uYAdEjoArD

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Free Creative Cloud tools offered to students through May 31, 2020 from ⁦@AdobeForEdu⁩ #AdobeEduCreative #remotelearning #remoteteaching  https://t.co/uYAdEjoArD

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On Sam Fecich's show

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Bonus episode | Edumagic | Teaching Online in a Time of need featuring Dr. To |

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Making the most out of a class with a field experience ​Subscribe to the EduMagic Podcast ​Listen to episode 44 - Making the most out of a class with a field experience Read the show notes Share your strategies and tips on social with #EduMagic

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via Justin Schleider

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Live coronavirus dashboard tracker. See data, maps, social media trends, and learn about prevention measures.

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https://beyondblendedlearning.blogspot.com/2020/03/my-district-shut-down-4-tips-to-avoid.html?spref=tw

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My favorite lines from this song have always been:

Use them and let's start trying

To make it a place worth fighting for

With theOnce 1. 2. Reach out: Use tech resources like 3. 4. Be a rock: Move your teaching to an online format. Teaching online means offering a 4. "new normal" of the COVID-19 world, there will likely be times when our daily tasks and routines are disrupted to one degree or another. Tonight, President Trump suspended flights to and from Europe, the NBA has suspended the season, and there are questionable hoarding practices ( toilet paper, really?) by far too many people. the wave of disruption reaches your locality, it will NOT likely be like a bad weather day. The disruption probably won't be corrected later in the school year using one or two predetermined "make up" days. This coming front will be decidedly different than our last cold front.

IF... that's a strong IF... you have to start considering your own personal classroom contingency plan, consider the following:
Take care of yourself & your loved ones: If you're not ok, then you won't be of any educational help to your students. This includes maintaining communication and connection with fellow teachers and staff. Your campus is NOT simply the physical brick and mortar. The cultural fabric of your school is made of relationships which can continue and gain strength in moments like this.
Remind, Zoom, Stay positive: It's a scary enough world already for most of our students and the "coolness" of sitting at home will wear off quickly enough. Student's parents may be experiencing lay offs, a variety of material shortages, and/or a surplus of anxiety. Act like a hero even if you have to fake it. Model for your students that teaching isn't just a "job", it's a calling. predictable schedule/routine that your students can rely on and look forward to. If you can keep your school schedule in place, then do so. If you need to move somethings around, then do so. But try to be available the same time each day and the same days each week. It's times like these where you are literally the foundation of civilization by doing that thing you do. Keep teaching: Whether you're an online expert, a blended guru, or something else, your lessons can serve as an appreciated addition to the "new normal". Try using well thought out, high Bloom's discussion boards. Learn or experiment with Canvas, Google Classroom, or some other tech LMS vehicle. Create a "home base" for your lessons. As long as you keep the relationship in focus, keep pushing kids to think. Keep engaging students with rigorous content/questions. Keep putting yourself out there for your students. Model for them that the world hasn't shut down, Oh, Superman, where are you now? it just look a little differently for a little while. When every thing's gone wrong somehow? Flipgrid, or even emails to check in on your students. They need normalcy and you can provide that for them by simply checking in. Make sure to reach out to parents as well to let them know what you are offering and when. Make parents a part of the process if at all possible.

Don't ask:

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4 tips to avoid the Land of Confusion in the Covid-19 era.

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My favorite lines from this song have always been: Use them and let's start trying To make it a place worth fighting for With theOnce 1. 2. Reach out: Use tech resources like 3. 4. Be a rock: Move your teaching to an online format. Teaching online means offering a 4.

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Teachers Using Google Suite for Education Facebook Group

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Teachers Using Google Suite for Education Facebook Group

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not specifically eLearning, but many Google questions are asked and answered. (via Rachel Pierson @RPiersonEdu)

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Teachers Using Google Suite For Education

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The group's goal will be to share GSuite related questions, share best practices, and help one another when possible. Light-hearted education oriented humor is ALWAYS a plus! When applying for...

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I am crowd-sourcing the various ways Districts around the world are approaching virtual learning.

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Global Responses to CoVid Resources & notes from my PLN

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Non-screen activities for home via Pobble

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Non-screen activities for home via Pobble

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Shared via Phil Hintz (h/t Alberto Valdez)

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MY LEARNING (with Barbara Cotter being used in Gulf Region by my group of schools)

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MY LEARNING (with Barbara Cotter being used in Gulf Region by my group of schools)

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VLE-Virtual Learning Environment in support of COVID-19 and beyond

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This is Fusion VLE

A LMS/VLE which unifies your community of parents, teachers and students in any language on any device.

​

The design of is based around your needs. You can individually customise features, services and content based upon the groups which students belong to.

​

The interface also operates in over 100 languages.

A fantastic tool for creating independent and personalised learning for students.

Phil Redhead, Senior Manager, Digital Strategy

GEMS Education

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Fusion | My Learning UK Ltd | United Kingdom

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This is Fusion VLE A LMS/VLE which unifies your community of parents, teachers and students in any language on any device. ​ The design of is based around your needs. You can individually customise features, services and content based upon the groups which students belong to.

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WHO is bringing the world's scientists and global health professionals together to accelerate the research and development process, and develop new norms and standards to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic and help care for those affected.

The R&D Blueprint has been activated to accelerate diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics for this novel coronavirus.

The solidarity of all countries will be essential to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 health products.

WHO COVID-19 Research Database

The WHO Covid-19 Research Database is a resource created in response to the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). Its content remains searchable and spans the time period March 2020 to June 2023. Since June 2023, manual updates to the database have been discontinued.

The WHO evidence retrieval sub-group has begun collaboration with key partners to enrich the citations and build a more comprehensive database with inclusion of other content. The database is built by BIREME, the Specialized Center of PAHO/AMRO and part of the Regional Office's Department of Evidence and Intelligence for Action in Health.

For further information or questions, please contact the WHO Library via email.

Disclaimer: the designations employed and the presentation of the material in publications listed in this database does not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of WHO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Dotted and dashed lines on maps represent approximate border lines for which there may not yet be full agreement. The mention of specific companies or of certain manufacturers' products in publications listed in the database does not imply that they are endorsed or recommended by WHO in preference to others of a similar nature that are not mentioned. Errors and omissions excepted, the names of proprietary products are distinguished by initial capital letters. By listing publications in this database and providing links to external sites does not mean that WHO endorses or recommends those publications or sites, or has verified the content contained within them. The database has been compiled without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. The responsibility for the interpretation and use of publications included in this database lies with the reader. In no event shall WHO be liable for damages arising from its use.

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Global research on coronavirus disease (COVID-19)

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Repository of latest international multilingual scientific findings and knowledge on COVID-19.

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Ideas for educational things to do with your kids at home.

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Ideas for educational things to do with your kids at home.

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As I am writing this, I am hoping that nobody will need this information, but just in case, I thought I would put down some suggestions for parents for things to do with their kids and independent activities in the event the family is quarantined or if school is closed because of coronavirus.

Feel better soon and use the time wisely!

Games and fun

Here are some ideas for some ideas for fun

I have created a list of educational gift ideas. These are really for any kid, depending on where their interests lie.

If you have a Amazon Alexa or Google Home, there are loads of fun, interactive games you could play. Here are some suggestions of things you can do with the Google Home (and Google Assistant on your Android phone).

There are many great educational apps for iPads, iPhones, and Android tablets. This post is about apps for the popular Kindle Fire tablet, but you'll find the same apps on any Android tablet.

Play an epic game of monopoly, Jenga, or scrabble. Hold a tournament.

Watch a movie. Watch a movie series.

To say the least, YouTube is filled with amazing how-to videos for free. Here are some suggestions:

Educational video classes

It's very likely your school district will offer some sort of options for kids to learn at home. Still,this could turn into a mass home-schooling experiment, and for bad or good, may turn education on it's ears in a way that nobody has been able to accomplish on purpose.

There are loads of fantastic educational websites. Some include free video lessons and classes, others are paid courses.

Khan Academy - This is very helpful, free website with loads of videos on all sorts of educational topics. It's "gamefied" so your child can earn points and badges as they progress through lessons.

Outschool - I think this is a great opportunity for kids to learn. They have classes that are pre-recorded, and others that have a live teacher that teaches your child along with classmates via video lessons. One of my children is currently taking a language class from this site and it's really working well.

You may also want to have a look at Unschool.School.

Coding schools - Ok, now would be a good idea for kids who may have some interest in learning computer programming to take some courses or improve their skills with practice. There are some wonderful options for kids of all ages to get started. Here are three popular choices:

HourofCode is a great example, and it is very well done. Honestly, great for any age.

Scratch very good for kids age 6 to 12.

Code.org also a great option for learning to code.

EdX and Coursera - This could be an option for older kids - free online courses from major universities including Harvard, Yale, and probably most of the colleges you can think of. (There is even a course about cat and dog behavior from the University of Edinburgh)

The classes are on just about any imaginable topic. Some are self-guided, others are "live" in that if you pay a fee, you can submit work for grading and you have to complete work in a given time frame.

Lynda.com - A huge collection of online classes, mostly aimed at adults, but older kids/teens would benefit from many of them. For example, they have courses in Photoshop and other digital art tools that kids could benefit from. (Moms or dads would probably also find a worthwhile topic) Howard County Library offers it for free to their patrons, but if your library system doesn't, the cost to join Lynda is not very expensive and is month to month.

Learn a language with Duolingo. This is a fun, easy way for your child to learn a language or learn more of a language they already know. You may also check with your local library to see if they have any other online language learning resources. For example, Howard County Library offers Rosetta Stone for free.

Get out your library card and check to see what kind of electronic learning resources your local library has. (Note that in many places, you can get a access to libraries anywhere in your state and beyond). Here are some examples from the Howard County, Maryland library system (click to see them all):

Kids Infobits

LearningExpress - Practice tests for AP exams and the SATs. Library card needed to register.

Muzzy

ScienceFlix

Tons of electronic books for all ages to download to your phone, Kindle, or tablet.

Go on a virtual field trip. For example, this Madden Football by the Numbers field trip is great. Here are some others:

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Things to do with your kids if you're under Covid19 Coronavirus Quarantine

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As I am writing this, I am hoping that nobody will need this information, but just in case, I thought I would put down some suggestions for parents for things to do with their kids and independent activities in the event the family is quarantined or if school is closed because of coronavirus.

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Shared by Manorama Talaiver

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Explore the global situation

Coronavirus Country Profiles

We built 207 country profiles which allow you to explore the statistics on the coronavirus pandemic for every country in the world.

In a fast-evolving pandemic it is not a simple matter to identify the countries that are most successful in making progress against it. For a comprehensive assessment, we track the impact of the pandemic across our publication and we built country profiles for 207 countries to study in depth the statistics on the coronavirus pandemic for every country in the world.

Each profile includes interactive visualizations, explanations of the presented metrics, and the details on the sources of the data.

Every country profile is updated daily.

Every profile includes five sections:

Cases: How many new cases are being confirmed each day? How many cases have been confirmed since the pandemic started? How is the number of cases changing?

Deaths: How many deaths from COVID-19 have been reported? Is the number of deaths rising or falling? How does the death rate compare to other countries?

Vaccinations: How many vaccine doses are being administered each day? How many doses have been administered in total? What share of the population has been vaccinated?

Testing: How much testing for coronavirus do countries conduct? How many tests did a country do to find one COVID-19 case?

Government responses: What measures did countries take in response to the pandemic?

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge and thank a number of people in the development of this work: Carl Bergstrom, Bernadeta Dadonaite, Natalie Dean, Joel Hellewell, Jason Hendry, Adam Kucharski, Moritz Kraemer and Eric Topol for their very helpful and detailed comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this work. We thank Tom Chivers for his editorial review and feedback.

And we would like to thank the many hundreds of readers who give us feedback on this work. Your feedback is what allows us to continuously clarify and improve it. We very much appreciate you taking the time to write. We cannot respond to every message we receive, but we do read all feedback and aim to take the many helpful ideas into account.

Reuse our work freely

All visualizations, data, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

The data produced by third parties and made available by Our World in Data is subject to the license terms from the original third-party authors. We will always indicate the original source of the data in our documentation, so you should always check the license of any such third-party data before use and redistribution.

All of our charts can be embedded in any site.

Citation

Our articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and organizations. When citing this entry, please also cite the underlying data sources. This entry can be cited as:

Hannah Ritchie, Edouard Mathieu, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Cameron Appel, Charlie Giattino, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Joe Hasell, Bobbie Macdonald, Diana Beltekian and Max Roser (2020) - "Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus' [Online Resource]

BibTeX citation

@article{owidcoronavirus,
    author = {Hannah Ritchie, Edouard Mathieu, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Cameron Appel, Charlie Giattino, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Joe Hasell, Bobbie Macdonald, Diana Beltekian and Max Roser},
    title = {Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)},
    journal = {Our World in Data},
    year = {2020},
    note = {https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus}
}

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Country-by-country data and research on the pandemic. Updated daily.

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Free distance learning course bundle via Edtech Team

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Free distance learning course bundle via Edtech Team

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Shared via Wanda Terral

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Fantastic tips for educators prior to school closures via Natasha Rachell

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Fantastic tips for educators prior to school closures via Natasha Rachell

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How to prepare for extended school closings 

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How to prepare for extended school closings 

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Shared by Heather Hurley

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There is no getting around the fact that this is an extremely stressful time for all of us. There are concerns for our health, of course. But it's not just that.

The ripple effect of the Coronavirus could be vast - impacting our daily life in profound ways over the coming weeks and months.
If you're the parent of a school-aged child, you've almost certainly become aware that the chance of your child's school closing for an extended amount of time is very real. Quite possibly your local school has already been shut down (I just got a call that our schools close tomorrow).

My background as a social worker with children and families has given me some thoughts on how to best prepare for a situation like this (although the mom in me feels the stress like everyone else)!

For a lot of us, the thought of an indeterminate amount of time at home with our kids - perhaps unable to socialize with others, anxious about the virus, teaching them what we can at home, and while many of us will be trying to work remotely - well, it's daunting to say the least.

These next few days are a good time to begin to wrap our brains around this likely scenario, and to come up with some strategies to cope with the stresses this will bring.
Here are my thoughts for making it through this quarantine with your kids.
Kids thrive on routine and predictability

Children need routine and predictability in order to feel safe. This is especially important during a time of crisis.

It's one thing to be off of your routine for a few days over the holidays. It's quite another to be off of your routine for an unknown amount of time, without any of the familiar signposts to anchor you (which are readily available during the holidays, and completely absent in our current scenario).

So, this is very important: Create order, with some flexibility, in your days as soon as possible.

What this looks like:

Set up a schedule that involves regular times for bathing, eating, school-work/learning activities, and socializing.

Maintain a set time for going to sleep, and the same bedtime routine your kids are used to.

This is not the time to let it become the Wild West at your house. In doing so, you will be taking away the structure and normalcy that will keep your child feeling safe.

There is room for some flexibility - you do not need to be running a military operation from your family room. But a general structure and flow to the day that the kids can expect will help you greatly here.

Focus on school work in reasonable increments

Depending on your child's age, they may have some academics they're expected to keep up with at home. My best suggestion here is to establish a certain time of day (not the whole day!) and a certain place for study at your house. A few hours AT MOST should be sufficient.

If your school hasn't sent home any materials, you will be able to find some great learning materials online. Sheppard Software and Khan Academy are examples of excellent online resources for kids.

Reading with your child, doing hands-on projects, even baking and playing board games can be educational. Again this depends on your child's age. Hopefully we will all be getting a bit of direction from our local teachers, if this quarantine goes on for any length of time.

Limit your child's anxiety by managing your own

This is a highly uncertain time on a massive scale. While kids will have varying levels of awareness about the scope of concern over the Coronavirus, they will for sure be picking up on our anxieties.

Talk to your kids about what is going on, without being overly dramatic. Fortunately, we can honestly tell our kids that most children are not becoming very sick from this virus, and that they should be OK.

You can explain to them why we are practicing "social distancing" and use this as a teachable moment in prevention. There is no need to unduly scare our kids, but they should have a general idea of what's going on.

If you and another adult are going to discuss the Coronavirus, be mindful of your child's age and emotional ability to process the conversation they may be privy to. Kids hear EVERYTHING. Except when you want them to listen, at which time they hear nothing.

Build in time to let off steam

Let's be honest here, this is going to be stressful. You and your kids are going to be on top of each other, maybe for awhile. Nobody is used to this!

So find ways to let out steam - a loud dance party, a quick run around the block with your kids, a communal yell - whatever! Let. It. Out.

Cut your kids some slack

This isn't the time to be on top of every annoying behavior. Give your kids some grace.

They will need it, and also it's been shown that sometimes the best way to deal with an irritating behavior from a kid is to simply look the other way. Not for the really egregious stuff, but for the small stuff.

Try to ignore what you can ignore, and save your interventions for when you really need them (which, let's be honest, we're gonna need them).

Don't be on top of your kids all day

You will need space from them and they'll need it from you. If you can create pockets of the day for alone time, or quiet / independent time, please do.

Try to get outside

If at all possible, find time during the day to get outside; in your yard, for walks, maybe on a trail.

This is not a natural disaster or war - we're just trying to create social distancing here.

So get some fresh air when you can.

If you're working from home, relax your standards

We all know it is REALLY HARD to work from home when you have the kids with you. It can feel nearly impossible.

But a lot of us will be working from home, and if this is a lengthy quarantine situation we have to find ways to make this work.

So do what you need to do, here.

You may need to allow more screen time than usual. You may need to accept that the house won't be as clean as you'd like. You might make dinner more basic so you don't have to stress about prep or cleanup.

You have work to do, and that's going to be very challenging with your kids at home. So let some things go, within reason.

Ask your kids to step up to the challenge

Kids like to feel that they have an important role. Help them understand that this is an unusual time and that we ALL need to pitch in to get through it.

If your kids don't have a few chores yet, this is a great time to start. Make it a daily part of their routine, and let them know that they're helping the family out by pitching in.

Also let your kids know that by sacrificing their social and school time, they are doing a great service to other more vulnerable community members. They are helping to keep people safe.

Be on the lookout for ways you and your child can help a neighbor - maybe an elderly person who needs groceries, or the kid next door who doesn't have a solid lunch. Help when you can, and let your child brainstorm ways to help.

This is a chance to model altruism, so take it.

Find a way to make some special memories

As weird as it sounds, there are actually some good opportunities here to make special memories with your kids.

We are in uncharted territory now. I'm almost certain that we will remember this time - and how we came together, or didn't - decades from now. So do your best to find some way to create special moments.

Maybe every night the kids get to put special toppings on an ice cream scoop.

Maybe you all read together in a tent with a flashlight, to create a sense of adventure and camaraderie rather than fear.

Maybe you watch a movie together as a family each night, knowing you can sleep in a bit later (unless you have toddlers, in which case good luck sleeping later).

Maybe instead of a regular nightly bath it's a bubble bath with glow sticks around the room.

You get the idea.

Kids love and appreciate magic, and anything that seems "special" or out of the ordinary. So do something to acknowledge that this time is different - and to allow a new, special tradition to take root in your child's mind.

These are the things childhood memories are made of, and despite the fear many of us feel, we do have an opportunity here.

This is going to be hard.

But we can do it.

In fact - we have no other choice! It's like being in labor that way. You can't really opt out, and it's going to hurt, but....well, it is the reality of our current situation.

As much as possible, try to think of yourself as a strong leader for your kids (even if you kind of want to puke right now). Step into the role you've been given. Every generation faces hardships, and it is too soon to tell what it is we are up against here. But we can do this.

Reach out to your friends, laugh when you can, and remember that this will pass. And let's help each other out whenever possible.

Need more camaraderie in your day? Follow A Mothership Down on Facebook!

Want A Mothership Down delivered to your inbox? SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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How to Prepare for Extended School Closings (And Not Lose Your Mind) - A Mothership Down

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There is no getting around the fact that this is an extremely stressful time for all of us. There are concerns for our health, of course. But it's not just that. The ripple effect of the Coronavirus could be vast - impacting our daily life in profound ways over the coming weeks and months.

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Uhaul offering free storage for students 

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Uhaul offering free storage for students 

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Shared via Clarence Houze

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U-Haul spokesman Jeff Lockridge told Insider that the moving company is offering students displaced by the coronavirus free storage for 30 days.

Major colleges and universities across the United States have closed their campuses and student housing to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

He said that while the offer is subject to availability, "There is no purchase of any kind necessary for the current offer to college students."

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

While major colleges and universities continue to close campuses amid the novel coronavirus outbreak, U-Haul is offering 30 days of free storage to college students who have been forced out of their dorms.

U-Haul spokesperson Jeff Lockridge told Insider that the offer is available at all U-Haul-owned and -operated storage facilities across the nation, subject to availability, for students who have been displaced because of coronavirus safety measures.

While the moving company already offers regular customers a free 30 days of storage when they rent a U-Haul truck or trailer, Lockridge said the offer for college students is completely free of charge.

"There is no purchase of any kind necessary for the current offer to college students," Lockridge told Insider. "It is merely a gesture of goodwill given the extraordinary circumstances taking place and our ability to help."

Colleges across the country have closed their campuses and student housing to help prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Schools are switching to remote classrooms include Columbia University, Harvard University, Ohio State University, and Notre Dame.

Lockridge said those who need storage for their belongings while they sort out where to go next, should visit https://www.uhaul.com/Storage/ to find a U-Haul location near them.

He said the offer is dependent on occupancy at facilities, and that if a facility is unable to offer a storage container, they will direct students to the next closest location.

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U-Haul is offering 30 days of free storage to college students who are displaced due to the coronavirus outbreak

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U-Haul spokesman Jeff Lockridge told Insider that the moving company is offering students displaced by the coronavirus free storage for 30 days. Major colleges and universities across the United States have closed their campuses and student housing to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

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Sites with free subscriptions for Covid19 

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Sites with free subscriptions for Covid19 

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Assembled by Kristen Ziemke; shared by Kory Graham and Julie Daniel Davis

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Shared by Christel Broady

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Shared via Hal Roberts

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Shared via Wanda Terrall

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Shared by Erin Roxborough

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By Doreen Marshall, Ph.D.

Human beings like certainty. We are hard-wired to want to know what is happening when and to notice things that feel threatening to us. When things feel uncertain or when we don't generally feel safe, it's normal to feel stressed. This very reaction, while there to protect us, can cause all sorts of havoc when there is a sense of uncertainty and conflicting information around us.

A large part of anxiety comes from a sense of what we think we should be able to control, but can't. Right now, many of us are worried about COVID-19, known as the "Coronavirus". We may feel helpless about what will happen or what we can do to prevent further stress. The uncertainty might also connect to our uncertainty about other aspects of our lives, or remind us of past times when we didn't feel safe and the immediate future was uncertain.

In times like these, our mental health can suffer. We don't always know it's happening. You might feel more on edge than usual, angry, helpless or sad. You might notice that you are more frustrated with others or want to completely avoid any reminders of what is happening. For those of us who already struggle with our mental wellness, we might feel more depressed or less motivated to carry out our daily activities.

It's important to note that we are not helpless in light of current news events. We can always choose our response. If you are struggling, here are some things you can do to take care of your mental health in the face of uncertainty:

Separate what is in your control from what is not. There are things you can do, and it's helpful to focus on those. Wash your hands. Remind others to wash theirs. Take your vitamins. Limit your consumption of news (Do you really need to know what is happening on a cruise ship you aren't on?).

Do what helps you feel a sense of safety. This will be different for everyone, and it's important not to compare yourself to others. It's ok if you've decided what makes you feel safe is to limit attendance of large social events, but make sure you separate when you are isolating based on potential for sickness versus isolating because it's part of depression.

Get outside in nature-even if you are avoiding crowds. I took a walk yesterday afternoon in my neighborhood with my daughter. The sun was shining, we got our dose of vitamin D, and it felt good to both get some fresh air and quality time together. Exercise also helps both your physical and mental health.

Challenge yourself to stay in the present. Perhaps your worry is compounding-you are not only thinking about what is currently happening, but also projecting into the future. When you find yourself worrying about something that hasn't happened, gently bring yourself back to the present moment. Notice the sights, sounds, tastes and other sensory experiences in your immediate moment and name them. Engaging in mindfulness activities is one way to help stay grounded when things feel beyond your control.

Stay connected and reach out if you need more support. Talk to trusted friends about what you are feeling. If you are feeling particularly anxious or if you are struggling with your mental health, it's ok to reach out to a mental health professional for support. You don't have to be alone with your worry and it can be comforting to share what you are experiencing with those trained to help.

We are in this together, and help is always available. If you're feeling alone and struggling, you can also reach out to The Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741 or National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK.

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Like what you're reading? Go to our Sharing Your Story page, where you'll find resources for sharing your own story, including story ideas, blog submission guidelines, tips for sharing your story safely and creative exercises to help you get started, and assignments for upcoming topics.

Write a blog post for AFSP! Click here for our Submission Guidelines.

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Taking Care of Your Mental Health in the Face of Uncertainty

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By Doreen Marshall, Ph.D. Human beings like certainty. We are hard-wired to want to know what is happening when and to notice things that feel threatening to us. When things feel uncertain or when we don't generally feel safe, it's normal to feel stressed.

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Shared via Rachelle Dene Poth and Melody McAllister

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To date, K-12 districts in a dozen U.S. states have closed due to the spread of COVID-19, and it's clear that many more are expected. We're working with many districts and schools as they organize resources to support a temporary shift to remote learning and communicate with students and parents.

Here is a checklist that we hope saves you time, as you research and work through plans for your own schools. Each point includes additional resources - please send us your ideas, links and examples through the ParentSquare Learning Network Facebook Group or by and we'll add them in!

Assess the feasibility of remote learning

Find out if families are ready to support remote learning

Address any equity needs

Establish your remote learning plans

Make sure teachers are prepared for remote learning

Make sure students know how to submit their work

Establish a regular communication schedule and cadence

Before drafting school-to-home communications, districts will have to meet specific legal and operational requirements to temporarily move to online learning. Identify what requirements your school or district needs to deliver for remote learning to be successful and for your organization to remain compliant.

Resources

The Public Education Office of Washington State published useful guidance for districts considering online learning, listing key requirements districts (and schools) should be able to meet if they want to move to online learning. These include:

Equal access for all students to learning resources

Meeting all learning and instructional needs, including providing necessary IEP supports

Adequate training for staff, students, parents and guardians

Tracking the attendance of both students and staff

Ensuring secure connectivity and protecting student and staff privacy

Providing school meals

Other sources we've found that provide useful resources specifically for initial planning for K-12 remote learning can be found here (Maine DOE). Look to your state resources, peer groups, and shared resources!

If you have to close schools and shift to remote learning, how prepared are families for this change? What kind of support do you need to provide?

a. Survey your parents

Survey your parents to find out if they can provide an adequate environment for successful remote learning. Here are example survey questions, to give you some ideas of the kinds of questions to include.

b. Review existing data

Students with IEPs may need more support for remote learning to be feasible. Some families may depend on schools for meals for their children. Tap into existing data to pinpoint nutrition, health or learning requirements you will need to support in order to ensure successful remote learning.

Schools in the U.S. are (understandably) required to ensure all students have equal access to learning resources and required materials, including technology.

a. Partner with local organizations

Engage and partner with local organizations to make sure all students and their families have what they need to be successful in a remote environment. Local government agencies, non-profits and businesses can support schools through the provision of wi-fi hotspots, computer tablets, headsets, supplies, food distribution, etc.

b. Update existing services

Identify school programs such as food service, IEPs, etc., that need to be adapted to a remote learning environment to ensure students have equal access.

c. Resources

a. Adapt for age and grade level

Work out what's appropriate by grade level. How you will handle attendance, assignments, virtual lessons, and live class sessions? What kind of daily schedule can students expect? What kind of student support will parents, guardians and families need to provide at home?

b. Resources

Here is one idea - what are yours? Let us know what you've found that's helpful and we'll add it here.
Example of single school draft framework:
All Grades

Elementary School

Challenging, as students can't really be directed at home without significant parent/guardian support (a significant burden for many families).

Teachers will send a daily post to parents, including a daily video for their students.

The video will include a welcome, along with small assignments, fun tasks, or will ask them to read a story, appropriate to students' developmental level.

School will send instructions for submitting assignments, as well as recommended daily schedules and home activities, including supplemental online educational resources.

Middle School

Teachers will send a daily post to students (parents cc'd) including a daily video for their students with a welcome and more substantial assignments, appropriate to students' developmental level.

School will send instructions for submitting assignments, as well as recommended daily schedules and home activities, including supplemental online educational resources.

High School

Teachers will determine assignments by 10 am and send to the Head of Division for review.

They will then send emails to students regarding assignments by 10am, referencing Moodle (or another LMS) assignments.

Students will check in by email as attendance call.

Office Admin Ms. Peggy will send a post to parents at the grade level that all students have their assignments for the day.

Students will send in their assignments by 6pm in order to get full credit.

Regardless of what LMS and communication resources you have available, it will be critical to make sure your teachers know how the school will handle remote learning, as well as how to use the necessary tools. Here are some of the key tasks all teachers will need to take on.

a. Adapt lesson plans for a remote environment

How can you adapt existing lesson plans to a remote environment? What can be accomplished asynchronously by students? What needs a live virtual space? How will you respond to questions and spark discussion and/or collaboration between students?
For lower grades that don't have an LMS, use assignment tools that work with both Windows and Mac systems - for example, use Google Docs/Sheets/Slides instead of Microsoft Word/Excel or Mac Keynote.
b. Deliver recorded lessons

Recording a video lesson or instructions can be as simple as recording yourself with a cellphone, and uploading the video! If you do not have a learning management system available, explore solutions like Youtube, Thinglink, Edpuzzle and Kaltura (source: Unesco list of open source solutions).

c. Deliver live online lessons

For upper grades, you may want to schedule specific times for a virtual class or check in. You'll find many general use remote meeting tools that you can use, such as Skype, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Amazon Chime, and Google Hangouts. Look for platforms that support breakout rooms, so you can set up smaller working groups and increase student interactions.

d. Message the class and students

You may have many communication channels available for teachers and students to use - an SIS, LMS, school email, Google comments, assignment/grading systems, etc. To avoid confusion, specify where teacher-class and teacher-student communications should take place. Make sure teachers and students know how to use the messaging tool ahead of time.

e. Resources

Here are some of the resources we've found that are helpful for teachers and school leaders as they prepare for teaching remotely and interacting with students and parents online.

a. Communicate your plans out to teachers, parents and students.

Schedule a series of communications to help everyone prepare before remote learning goes into effect. Set up information sessions for teachers, parents and students. Be ready to field questions and address any unforeseen scenarios that will inevitably come up.

b. Prepare students before you go remote

If you can, spend time while school is still in session to make sure students understand what's expected from them and how to use whatever tools they will need for remote learning.

c. Resources

In order to make sure that the increase in teacher, parent and school communication doesn't get confusing or overwhelming, it's important to set up a schedule and communications cadence.

a. Create contact levels and a communication schedule

Organize times and days for messaging from different people (teachers, staff, etc) so students and parents aren't overwhelmed and the amount of messages sent is under control. Communication with all groups - including parents, students and teachers - is obviously critical to successful distance learning. However, a messaging "free for all" risks causing confusion and message fatigue.

a. Establish a communication cadence and calendar, broken down by type.

The communication requirements between teacher-class, teacher-parent, school-grade, school-parent and district-parent are all different. Identify the types of communication that need to happen, as well as the frequency, and communicate this to teachers, school administrators, and other stakeholders.

b. Resources
Here is one cadence example:

Class or grade level communication options:

School-wide and district-wide communication:

Weekly school and virus updates

Additional updates only if critical developments occur

Weekly highlight of a remote learning project that one grade level has done (rotating grades)

PTA, sports, office administrative, etc:

Website post, no immediate email

Weekly summary email linking to individual items

Opt-in groups for those who want to be notified

We hope some of these ideas save you time, as you research and work through plans for your own schools! Related ParentSquare Learning Network articles: 8 Key Themes for School-to-Home Communication About Coronavirus (With Sample Posts) COVID(If you're looking for ParentSquare platform recommendations, please visit our company site: Using ParentSquare for COVID-19 Preparedness). -19 Communications Checklist: Make Sure You're Ready Before School Closure

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Are You Ready For Online Learning? Checklist for School Leaders - PSLN

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To date, K-12 districts in a dozen U.S. states have closed due to the spread of COVID-19, and it's clear that many more are expected. We're working with many districts and schools as they organize resources to support a temporary shift to remote learning and communicate with students and parents.

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Updated: March 11, 2020, 4:32 p.m. ET
Currently, we are updating this page twice a day.

The coronavirus outbreak in the United States is prompting K-12 education leaders to shut down individual schools or entire districts. Track where closures are happening and how many students are being affected. Read Education Week's full coverage of the novel coronavirus and its impact on schools here.

As of March 11, 2020, 4:32 p.m. ET, 1,561 schools have been closed or are scheduled to close, affecting 1,006,197 students. Schools are closing for many reasons related to coronavirus, including exposures, cleaning, or planning for extended closures.

There are 132,853 public and private schools in the U.S. and almost 50.8 million students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Zoom in to see which schools and districts have closed and/or re-opened. Click a circle to view more details. The "Current Status" and "States With Closures" interactive charts reflect data you see according to your zoom level. Sources: Local news reporting; National Center for Education Statistics; school/district websites Corrections will be made as we learn of them, and will be included in the next update.
Know of a school closing that is not on our list? Email [email protected] with a link to the news report or announcement.

How to Cite This Map

Map: Coronavirus and School Closures (2020, March 6). Education Week. Retrieved Month Day, Year from https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/map-coronavirus-and-school-closures.html

Related

Reporting/Analysis: Holly Peele & Maya Riser-Kositsky

Design/Visualization: Hyon-Young Kim

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Updated: March 11, 2020, 4:32 p.m. ET Currently, we are updating this page twice a day. The coronavirus outbreak in the United States is prompting K-12 education leaders to shut down individual schools or entire districts. Track where closures are happening and how many students are being affected.

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Shared via Adam Phyall

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(WXYZ) - Comcast announced Thursday it will be increasing speeds for the Internet Essentials program, and making the program free to new low-income customers for two months, amid the coronavirus outbreak.

In a letter, Comcast President of Consumer Services Dana Strong said that the change is for the millions of low-income Americans who don't have internet service during this uncertain time. It's to help them stay connected to families, workplaces and more.

The speeds are increasing from 15 Mbps to 25.

Those new customers will get complimentary internet essentials service for 60 days, which is normally available to qualified low-income households for $9.95 per month, and the speeds are increasing for new and existing customers.

The speeds will be rolled out nationally over the past few days, and all new customers will be a free self-install kit that includes a cable modem and WiFi router. There is no term contract.

To sign up, applicants can simply visit www.internetessentials.com. The accessible website also includes the option to video chat with customer service agents in American Sign Language. There are also two dedicated phone numbers 1-855-846-8376 for English and 1-855-765-6995 for Spanish.

Comcast has also released the following information:

Xfinity WiFi Free For Everyone: Xfinity WiFi hotspots across the country will be available to anyone who needs them for free - including non-Xfinity Internet subscribers. For a map of Xfinity WiFi hotspots, visit www.xfinity.com/wifi [xfinity.com]. Once at a hotspot, consumers should select the "xfinitywifi" network name in the list of available hotspots, and then launch a browser.

Pausing Our Data Plan: With so many people working and educating from home, we want our customers to access the internet without thinking about data plans. While the vast majority of our customers do not come close to using 1TB of data in a month, we are pausing our data plans for 60 days giving all customers Unlimited data for no additional charge.

No Disconnects or Late Fees: We will not disconnect a customer's internet service or assess late fees if they contact us and let us know that they can't pay their bills during this period. Our care teams will be available to offer flexible payment options and can help find other solutions.

Internet Essentials Free to New Customers: As announced yesterday, it's even easier for low-income families who live in a Comcast service area to sign-up for Internet Essentials, the nation's largest and most comprehensive broadband adoption program. New customers will receive 60 days of complimentary Internet Essentials service, which is normally available to all qualified low-income households for $9.95/month. Additionally, for all new and existing Internet Essentials customers, the speed of the program's Internet service was increased to 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream. That increase will go into effect for no additional fee and it will become the new base speed for the program going forward.

News, Information and Educational Content on X1 and Flex: For those with school-age students at home, we've created new educational collections for all grade levels in partnership with Common Sense Media. Just say "education" into your X1 or Flex voice remote. To help keep customers informed, we also have created a collection of the most current news and information on Coronavirus. Just say "Coronavirus" into your X1 or Flex voice remote.

24x7 Network Monitoring: Underpinning all of these efforts, Comcast's technology and engineering teams will continue to work tirelessly to support our network operations. We engineer our network capacity to handle spikes and shifts in usage patterns, and continuously test, monitor and enhance our systems and network to ensure they are ready to support customer usage. Our engineers and technicians staff our network operations centers 24/7 to ensure network performance and reliability. We are monitoring network usage and watching the load on the network both nationally and locally, and to date it is performing well.

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does washing your hands prevent the coronavirus

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Comcast offering 'Internet Essentials' package free for low-income customers for 60 days

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(WXYZ) - Comcast announced Thursday it will be increasing speeds for the Internet Essentials program, and making the program free to new low-income customers for two months, amid the coronavirus outbreak. In a letter, Comcast President of Consumer Services Dana Strong said that the change is for the millions of low-income Americans who don't have internet service during this uncertain time.

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This Can Be Our Finest Hour-But We Need All of You

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This Can Be Our Finest Hour-But We Need All of You

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From Grown and Flown

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Parenting
by Grown and Flown | March 11, 2020

For the vast majority of people nationwide and worldwide, this virus is not about you. This is one of those times in life, in history, when your actions are about something bigger. They are about someone else. They are about something greater, a greater good that you may not ever witness. A person you will save who you will never meet.

You may be healthy, and your kids may be healthy. Your parents may be healthy. Everyone around you seems fine. And all the things you planned and the 2020 spring you thought you were going to have has been completely undone. You have to work from home. Your conference is cancelled. Your semester is over. Your work is cancelled. It all seems fast, and out-of-proportion and disorienting. You look at each action and think-but it would be okay if I did that. It's not so big. We worked so hard. They would be so disappointed.

Your losses are real. Your disappointments are real. Your hardships are real. I don't mean to make light or to minimize the difficulty ahead for you, your family or community.

But this isn't like other illnesses and we don't get to act like it is. It's more contagious, it's more fatal-and most importantly, even if it can be managed. It can't be managed at a massive scale-anywhere. We need this thing to move slowly enough for our collective national and worldwide medical systems to hold the very ill so that all of the very ill can get taken care of.

Because at this time of severe virus there are also all of the other things that require care. There is still cancer, there are still heart attacks, there are still car accidents, there are still complicated births. And we need our medical systems to be able to hold us. And we need to be responsible because our medical systems are made up of people and these amazing healthcare workers are a precious and limited resource. They will rise to this occasion. They will work to help you heal. They will work to save your mother or father or sister or baby. But in order for that to happen we have very important work to do. ALL OF US.

So what is our work? Yes, you need to wash your hands and stay home if you are sick. But the biggest work you can do is expand your heart and your mind to see yourself and see your family as part of a much bigger community that can have a massive- hugely massive -impact on the lives of other people.

I remember the feeling of helplessness after 9/11 and after Hurricane Sandy. I remember how much people wanted to help. I remember how much generosity of spirit there was about wanting to give, wanting to be helpful, wanting to save lives. And many of you have had experiences since then-whether it was a mass shooting, or the wildfires, or floods. There have been times you have looked on and wondered how you could help. And now we ALL have that chance.

You can help by canceling anything that requires a group gathering. You can help by not using the medical system unless it is urgent. You can help by staying home if you are sick. You can help by cooking or shopping or doing errands for a friend who needs to stay home. You can help by watching someone's kid if they need to cover for someone else at work. You can help by ordering take-out from your local restaurants. Eat the food yourself or find someone who needs it. You can help by offering to help bring someone's college student home or house out-of-town students if you have extra rooms. You can help by asking yourself, "What can I and my family do to help?" "What can we offer?" You can help by seeing yourself as part of something bigger than yourself.

When the Apollo 13 oxygen tank failed and the lunar module was in danger of not returning to earth, Gene Kranz, the lead flight director overheard people saying that this could be the worst disaster NASA had ever experienced-to which he is rumored to have responded, "With all due respect, I believe this is going to be our finest hour."

Imagine if we could make our response to this crisis our finest hour. Imagine if a year or two from now we looked back on this and told the stories of how we came together as a team in our community, in our state, in our nation and across the world.

Your contribution to the finest hour may seem small, invisible, inconsequential-but every small act of 'not doing' what you were going to do, and 'doing' an act of kindness or support will add up exponentially. These acts can and will save lives. The Apollo 13 crew made it their finest hour by letting go of the word "I" and embracing the word "we." And that's the task required of us. It can only be our finest hour if we work together. You are all on the team. And we need all of you to shine in whatever way you can.

This post originally appeared here.

Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD, is a licensed psychologist and a trauma survivor who has worked for twenty-five years with the complex issues of trauma, integration, and behavior change across every level, from individuals to groups to large systems and countries. She has also been a senior consultant with Teleos Leadership Institute, an international consulting firm serving leaders of fortune 100 businesses and major not-for-profit organizations such as the United Nations. She is the founder and editor of The Trail Guide, a web-mag featured on www.gretchenschmelzer.com dedicated to healing repeated trauma and the author of Journey Through Trauma (Avery, 2018).

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This Can Be Our Finest Hour-But We Need All Of You

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Parenting by Grown and Flown | March 11, 2020 For the vast majority of people nationwide and worldwide, this virus is not about you. This is one of those times in life, in history, when your actions are about something bigger. They are about someone else.

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Helps explain why social distancing is needed by showing its impact

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How canceled events and self-quarantines save lives, in one chart

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This is how we all help slow the spread of coronavirus.

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How canceled events and self-quarantines save lives, in one chart

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How canceled events and self-quarantines save lives, in one chart

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from Vox

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How canceled events and self-quarantines save lives, in one chart

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This is how we all help slow the spread of coronavirus.

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Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy - updates on Covid-19

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Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy - updates on Covid-19

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"We have to understand that the potential for future pandemics to occur more frequently is very real. We have 8 billion people on the face of the Earth. We need food to feed that population, which means we have a very different world full of food production animals, using bush meat from the jungles and the forests of the world and so forth.

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Shared via Ken Bauer Favel

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I currently maintain several resources concerning higher education and the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.

A list of resources for keeping track of the virus, including dashboards, official sources, experts on social media, open access content, libguides, etc.

A spreadsheet listing information about colleges and universities closing because of the virus.

A range of posts about COVID-19 and its impact on academia.

This entry was posted in coronavirus. Bookmark the permalink.

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Coronavirus and higher education resources

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I currently maintain several resources concerning higher education and the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. A list of resources for keeping track of the virus, including dashboards, official sources, experts on social media, open access content, libguides, etc. A spreadsheet listing information about colleges and universities closing because of the virus.

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Shared on FB by Taylor Morro

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Shared via Jeff Kubiak

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As coronavirus spreads, many questions and some answers

The rapid spread of the virus that causes COVID-19 has sparked alarm worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared this rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, and many countries are grappling with a rise in confirmed cases. In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is advising people to be prepared for disruptions to daily life that will be necessary if the coronavirus spreads within communities.

Below, you'll find answers to a number of questions about coronavirus and COVID-19. We will be adding new questions and updating answers as reliable information becomes available.

FAQs about Coronavirus and COVID-19
What is coronavirus? What is COVID-19?
What are the symptoms of COVID-19?
What can I do to prevent myself and others from getting coronavirus?
How can I prepare myself and family for possible quarantine or isolation?
What is coronavirus? What should I do if I feel sick? What is COVID-19?
How many people have COVID-19? If a loved one gets sick, how can I care for them?
What do phrases like "community spread" and "social distancing" mean?
Questions about coronavirus or COVID-19? Click here.

Learn more about COVID-19 and how to protect yourself
Why is it so difficult to develop treatments for viral illnesses?
Podcast: Stress and anxiety in the time of COVID-19 (recorded 3/11/20)
What are the symptoms of COVID-19?
Dr. Greg L. Fricchione is the Mind Body Medical Institute Professor of Psychiatry at Mass General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Here he places in context the worries we all feel when an infectious disease like the coronavirus COVID-19 comes calling. You'll be happy to know the stress you're experiencing is hard-wired into your mammalian brain as a well-known flight-or-fight mechanism. Digging a little deeper, we can come to understand that countering stress with a healthy dose of resilience can help us deal with these anxieties. Dr. Fricchione is the faculty editor for the Harvard Health Publishing special health report Stress Management.
How long is it between when a person is exposed to the virus and when they start showing symptoms?
Podcast: A Harvard infectious diseases doctor looks at COVID-19 (recorded 3/3/20)
How does coronavirus spread?
Dr. Todd Ellerin is on the front lines of infectious disease containment and mitigation as the director of infectious diseases at South Shore Health in Weymouth, Massachusetts. He's an instructor at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital. We spoke to him to get an update on the rapidly developing story surrounding the coronavirus Covid-19.

Reliable resources
When are people most contagious?
General:
How deadly is COVID-19?
Coronaviruses are an extremely common cause of colds and other upper respiratory infections.

COVID-19, short for "coronavirus disease 2019," is the official name given by the World Health Organization to the disease caused by this newly identified coronavirus.
Who is at highest risk for getting very sick from COVID-19?
The numbers are changing rapidly.
Are kids immune to the virus that causes COVID-19?
The most up-to-date information is available from the World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Johns Hopkins University.
Will warm weather stop the outbreak of COVID-19?
It has spread so rapidly and to so many countries that the World Health Organization has declared it a pandemic (a term indicating that it has affected a large population, region, country, or continent).
Should I accept packages from China?
The flu kills more people than COVID-19, at least so far. Why are we so worried about COVID-19? Shouldn't we be more focused on preventing deaths from the flu?
Can I catch the coronavirus by eating food handled or prepared by others?
You're right to be concerned about the flu. Fortunately, the same measures that help prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus - frequent and thorough handwashing, not touching your face, coughing and sneezing into a tissue or your elbow, avoiding people who are sick, and staying away from people if you're sick - also help to protect against spread of the flu.

In addition, most people older than six months can and should get the flu vaccine to help prevent the flu. The flu vaccine will not protect you against this coronavirus.
What can I do to protect myself and others from COVID-19?
If you do get sick with the flu, your doctor can prescribe an antiviral drug that can reduce the severity of your illness and shorten its duration. There are currently no antiviral drugs available to treat COVID-19.

An antiviral drug must be able to target the specific part of a virus's life cycle that is necessary for it to reproduce. In addition, an antiviral drug must be able to kill a virus without killing the human cell it occupies. And viruses are highly adaptive. Because they reproduce so rapidly, they have plenty of opportunity to mutate (change their genetic information) with each new generation, developing resistance to whatever drugs or vaccines we develop.
What do I need to know about washing my hands effectively?
Some people infected with the virus have no symptoms. When the virus does cause symptoms, common ones include low-grade fever, body aches, coughing, nasal congestion, runny nose, and sore throat. However, COVID-19 can occasionally cause more severe symptoms like high fever, severe cough, and shortness of breath, which often indicates pneumonia.

Because this coronavirus has just been discovered, the time from exposure to symptom onset (known as the incubation period) for most people has yet to be determined. Based on current information, symptoms could appear as soon as three days after exposure to as long as 13 days later. Recently published research found that on average, the incubation period is about five days.
Should I wear a face mask?
The coronavirus is thought to spread mainly from person to person. This can happen between people who are in close contact with one another. Droplets that are produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes may land in the mouths or noses of people who are nearby, or possibly be inhaled into their lungs.

Coronavirus can also spread from contact with infected surfaces or objects. For example, a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes.

People are thought to be most contagious when they are most symptomatic. However, there have been reports of coronavirus spreading before people show symptoms. Preliminary research of individuals who developed mild disease also suggests that they could be contagious early in the course of their illness, even before they have experienced symptoms or are only experiencing mild symptoms.
Is it safe to travel by airplane?
The answer depends on whether you're looking at the fatality rate (the risk of death among those who are infected) or the total number of deaths. So far, influenza has caused far more deaths this flu season, both in the US and worldwide, than COVID-19. This is why you may have heard it said that the flu is a bigger threat.

Regarding the fatality rate, it appears that the risk of death after coronavirus infection (estimated at 3% to 4%) is less than it was for SARS (11%) and MERS (35%), but may be higher than the risk from seasonal flu (0.1%). However, the numbers circulating right now for this new coronavirus are likely to be adjusted over time as more people are tested and reporting becomes more consistent. For example, testing has been limited at the start of the outbreak, which could result in fewer identified cases, making it seem as though a larger percentage of infections are fatal.
Is there a vaccine available?
Older people, and those with underlying medical problems like chronic bronchitis, emphysema, heart failure, or diabetes, are more likely to develop serious illness.
Can a person who has had coronavirus get infected again?
Children, including very young children, can develop COVID-19. However, children tend to experience milder symptoms such as fever, runny nose, and cough. Some children have had severe complications, but this has been less common. Children with underlying health conditions may be at increased risk for severe illness.
How long can the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 survive on surfaces?
Some viruses, like the common cold and flu, spread more when the weather is colder. But it is still possible to become sick with these viruses during warmer months. At this time, we do not know whether the spread of COVID-19 will decrease when the weather warms up.

There is no reason to suspect that packages from China harbor coronavirus. Remember, this is a respiratory virus similar to the flu. We don't stop receiving packages from China during their flu season. We should follow that same logic for the virus that causes COVID-19.
I'm taking a medication that suppresses my immune system. Should I stop taking it so I have less chance of getting sick from the coronavirus?
We are still learning about transmission of the new coronavirus. It's not clear if it can be spread by an infected person through food they have handled or prepared, but if so it would more likely be the exception than the rule.
Will a pneumococcal vaccine help protect me against coronavirus?
That said, the new coronavirus is a respiratory virus known to spread by upper respiratory secretions, including airborne droplets after coughing or sneezing. The virus that causes COVID-19 has also been detected in the stool of certain people. So we currently cannot rule out the possibility of the infection being transmitted through food by an infected person who has not thoroughly washed their hands. In the case of hot food, the virus would likely be killed by cooking. This may not be the case with uncooked foods like salads or sandwiches.
I'm older and have a chronic medical condition, which puts me at higher risk for getting seriously ill, or even dying from COVID-19. What can I do to reduce my risk of exposure to the virus?
The following actions help prevent the spread of COVID-19, as well as other coronaviruses and influenza:

Avoid close contact with people who are sick.

Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.

Stay home when you are sick.

Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.

Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces using a regular household cleaning spray or wipe.

Wash your hands often with soap and water.

Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom; before eating; and after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing.
Can my pet infect me with the virus that causes COVID-19?

If soap and water are not readily available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol, covering all surfaces of your hands and rubbing them together until they feel dry.

Always wash hands with soap and water if hands are visibly dirty.

The CDC's handwashing website has detailed instructions and a video about effective handwashing procedures.

What can I do to keep my immune system strong?
Follow public health recommendations where you live. As of February 26, 2020, face masks are not recommended for the general public in the US. Some health facilities require people to wear a mask under certain circumstances.

If you have respiratory symptoms like coughing or sneezing, experts recommend wearing a mask to protect others. This may help contain droplets containing any type of virus, including the flu, and protect anyone within three to six feet of the infected person.

The CDC offers more information about masks. The WHO offers videos and illustrations on when and how to use a mask.
What can I do to prepare for a COVID-19 outbreak?
Stay current on travel advisories from regulatory agencies. This is a rapidly changing situation.

Anyone who has a fever and respiratory symptoms should not fly if at all possible. Even if a person has symptoms that feel like just a cold, he or she should wear a mask on an airplane.

No vaccine is available, although scientists will be starting human testing on a vaccine very soon. However, it may be a year or more before we even know if we have a vaccine that works.

While we don't know the answer yet, most people would likely develop at least short-term immunity to the specific coronavirus that causes COVID-19. However, you would still be susceptible to a different coronavirus infection. Or, this particular virus could mutate, just like the influenza virus does each year. Often these mutations change the virus enough to make you susceptible, because your immune system thinks it is an infection that it has never seen before.

We don't yet know how long the coronavirus can survive on surfaces such as plastic, porcelain, granite, steel, or copper. In the meantime, the CDC recommends cleaning frequently touched surfaces and objects every day. These include counters, tabletops, doorknobs, bathroom fixtures, toilets, phones, keyboards, tablets, and bedside tables.
What types of medications and health supplies should I have on hand for an extended stay at home?
If surfaces are dirty, first clean them using a detergent and water, then disinfect them. A list of products suitable for use against COVID-19 is available here. This list has been pre-approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for use during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Medical and health supplies
If you contract the virus, your response to it will depend on many factors, only one of which is taking medication that suppresses your immune system. In addition, stopping the medication on your own could cause your underlying condition to get worse. Most importantly, don't make this decision on your own. It's always best not to adjust the dose or stop taking a prescription medication without first talking to the doctor who prescribed the medication.
Should I keep extra food at home? What kind?
Vaccines against pneumonia, such as pneumococcal vaccine and Haemophilus influenza type B (Hib) vaccine, only help protect people from these specific bacterial infections. They do not protect against any coronavirus pneumonia, including pneumonia that may be part of COVID-19. However, even though these vaccines do not specifically protect against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, they are highly recommended to protect against other respiratory illnesses.

Anyone 60 years or older is considered to be at higher risk for getting very sick from COVID-19. This is true whether or not you also have an underlying medical condition, although the sickest individuals and most of the deaths have been among people who were both older and had chronic medical conditions, such as heart disease, lung problems or diabetes.
What should I do if I think I or my child may have a COVID-19 infection?
The CDC suggests the following measures for those who are at higher risk:

Obtain several weeks of medications and supplies in case you need to stay home for prolonged periods of time.

Take everyday precautions to keep space between yourself and others.

When you go out in public, keep away from others who are sick, limit close contact, and wash your hands often.

Avoid crowds.

Avoid cruise travel and nonessential air travel.

During a COVID-19 outbreak in your community, stay home as much as possible to further reduce your risk of being exposed.

At present, there is no evidence that pets such as dogs or cats can spread the COVID-19 virus to humans. However, pets can spread other infections that cause illness, including E. coli and Salmonella, so wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water after interacting with pets.
How do I know if I have COVID-19 or the regular flu?
Your immune system is your body's defense system. When a harmful invader - like a cold or flu virus, or the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 - gets into your body, your immune system mounts an attack. Known as an immune response, this attack is a sequence of events that involves various cells and unfolds over time.

Following general health guidelines is the best step you can take toward keeping your immune system strong and healthy. Every part of your body, including your immune system, functions better when protected from environmental assaults and bolstered by healthy-living strategies such as these:

Don't smoke.

Eat a diet high in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

Take a multivitamin if you suspect that you may not be getting all the nutrients you need through your diet.

Exercise regularly.

Maintain a healthy weight.

Control your stress level.

Control your blood pressure.

If you drink alcohol, drink only in moderation (no more than one to two drinks a day for men, no more than one a day for women).

Get enough sleep.

Take steps to avoid infection, such as washing your hands frequently and trying not to touch your hands to your face, since harmful germs can enter through your eyes, nose, and mouth.

For peace of mind, try to plan ahead for a possible outbreak.
How is someone tested for COVID-19?
For example, if there is an outbreak in your community, you may not be able to get to a store, or stores may be out of supplies, so it will be important for you to have extra supplies on hand.
What's the difference between self-isolation and self-quarantine, and who should consider them?
Talk with family members and loved ones about how they would be cared for if they got sick, or what would be needed to care for them in your home.

Consider what you might do if your child's school or daycare shuts down, or if you need to or are asked to work from home.

Stay up to date with reliable news resources, such as the website of your local health department. If your town or neighborhood has a website or social media page, consider joining it to maintain access to neighbors, information, and resources.

Try to stock at least a 30-day supply of any needed prescriptions. If your insurance permits 90-day refills, that's even better. Make sure you also have over-the-counter medications and other health supplies on hand.

prescription medications

prescribed medical supplies such as glucose and blood-pressure monitoring equipment

fever and pain medicine, such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen

cough and cold medicines

antidiarrheal medication

thermometer

fluids with electrolytes

soap and alcohol-based hand sanitizer

tissues, toilet paper, disposable diapers, tampons, sanitary napkins

garbage bags

Is there an antiviral treatment for COVID-19?
Consider keeping a two-week to 30-day supply of nonperishable food at home. These items can also come in handy in other types of emergencies, such as power outages or snowstorms.
What treatments are available to treat coronavirus?

canned meats, fruits, vegetables, and soups

frozen fruits, vegetables, and meat

protein or fruit bars

dry cereal, oatmeal, or granola

peanut butter or nuts

pasta, bread, rice, and other grains

canned beans

chicken broth, canned tomatoes, jarred pasta sauce

oil for cooking

flour, sugar

crackers

coffee, tea, shelf-stable milk, canned juices

bottled water

canned or jarred baby food and formula

pet food

household supplies like laundry detergent, dish soap, and household cleaner.

First call your doctor or pediatrician for advice.
Can I infect my pet?
If you do not have a doctor and you are concerned that you or your child may have COVID-19, contact your local board of health. They can direct you to the best place for evaluation and treatment in your area.
How can I protect myself while caring for someone that may have COVID-19?
It's best to not seek medical care in an emergency department unless you have symptoms of severe illness. Severe symptoms include high or very low body temperature, shortness of breath, confusion, or feeling you might pass out. Call the emergency department ahead of time to let the staff know that you are coming, so they can be prepared for your arrival.

COVID-19 often causes symptoms similar to those a person with a bad cold or the flu would experience. And like the flu, the symptoms can progress and become life-threatening. Your doctor is more likely to suspect coronavirus if:

you have respiratory symptoms

and
My parents are older, which puts them at higher risk for COVID-19, and they don't live nearby. How can I help them if they get sick?

you recently traveled to countries with ongoing community spread of the COVID-19 virus, including China, Iran, Italy, Japan, South Korea, or

you have been exposed to someone suspected of having COVID-19, or

there has been community spread of the virus that causes COVID-19 in your area

A specialized test must be done to confirm that a person has been infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. Most testing in the US has been performed at the CDC. The CDC has now approved states to do testing. While this means that a wider group of people will be tested, testing is still limited and still requires a doctor's order.

Self-isolation is voluntary isolation at home by those who have or are likely to have COVID-19 and are experiencing mild symptoms of the disease (in contrast to those who are severely ill and may be isolated in a hospital). The purpose of self-isolation is to prevent spread of infection from an infected person to others who are not infected. If possible, the decision to isolate should be based on physician recommendation. If you have tested positive for COVID-19, you should self-isolate.

You should strongly consider self-isolation if you:

have been tested for COVID-19 and are awaiting test results

have been exposed to the new coronavirus and are experiencing symptoms consistent with COVID-19 (fever, cough, difficulty breathing), whether or not you have been tested.

You may also consider self-isolation if you have symptoms consistent with COVID-19 (fever, cough, difficulty breathing) but have not had known exposure to the new coronavirus and have not been tested for the virus that causes COVID-19. In this case, it may be reasonable to isolate yourself until your symptoms fully resolve, or until you are able to be tested for COVID-19 and your test comes back negative.

Self-quarantine is voluntary quarantine at home by those who may have been exposed to the COVID-19 virus but are not experiencing symptoms associated with COVID-19 (fever, cough, difficulty breathing). The purpose of self-quarantine (as with self-isolation) is to prevent the possible spread of COVID-19. We are still awaiting consistent public health guidance on the question of who should self-quarantine. When possible, the decision to quarantine should be based on physician recommendation. Self-quarantine is reasonable if you are not experiencing symptoms, but have been exposed to the COVID-19 virus.

Currently there is no specific antiviral treatment for COVID-19.

Currently there is no specific antiviral treatment for COVID-19. However, similar to treatment of any viral infection, these measures can help:

While you don't need to stay in bed, you should get plenty of rest.

Stay well hydrated.

Take acetaminophen, ibuprofen, or naproxen to reduce fever and ease aches and pains. Be sure to follow directions. If you are taking any combination cold or flu medicine, keep track of all the ingredients and the doses. For acetaminophen, the total daily dose from all products should not exceed 3,000 milligrams.

There have not been reports of pets or other animals becoming sick with COVID-19, but the CDC still recommends that people sick with COVID-19 limit contact with animals until more information is known. If you must care for your pet or be around animals while you are sick, wash your hands before and after you interact with pets and wear a face mask.

You should take many of the same precautions as you would if you were caring for someone with the flu:

Stay in another room or be separated from the person as much as possible. Use a separate bedroom and bathroom, if available.

Make sure that shared spaces in the home have good air flow. Turn on an air conditioner or open a window.

Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains 60 to 95% alcohol, covering all surfaces of your hands and rubbing them together until they feel dry. Use soap and water if your hands are visibly dirty.

Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands.

Extra precautions:

You and the person should wear a face mask if you are in the same room.

Wear a disposable face mask and gloves when you touch or have contact with the person's blood, stool, or body fluids, such as saliva, sputum, nasal mucus, vomit, urine.

Throw out disposable face masks and gloves after using them. Do not reuse.

First remove and throw away gloves. Then, immediately clean your hands with soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Next, remove and throw away the face mask, and immediately clean your hands again with soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Do not share household items such as dishes, drinking glasses, cups, eating utensils, towels, bedding, or other items with the person who is sick. After the person uses these items, wash them thoroughly.

Clean all "high-touch" surfaces, such as counters, tabletops, doorknobs, bathroom fixtures, toilets, phones, keyboards, tablets, and bedside tables, every day. Also, clean any surfaces that may have blood, stool, or body fluids on them. Use a household cleaning spray or wipe.

Wash laundry thoroughly.

Immediately remove and wash clothes or bedding that have blood, stool, or body fluids on them.

Wear disposable gloves while handling soiled items and keep soiled items away from your body. Clean your hands immediately after removing your gloves.

Place all used disposable gloves, face masks, and other contaminated items in a lined container before disposing of them with other household waste. Clean your hands (with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand sanitizer) immediately after handling these items.

Caring from a distance can be stressful. Start by talking to your parents about what they would need if they were to get sick. Put together a single list of emergency contacts for their (and your) reference, including doctors, family members, neighbors, and friends. Include contact information for their local public health department.
Image: Naeblys/Getty Images
You can also help them to plan ahead. For example, ask your parents to give their neighbors or friends a set of house keys. Have them stock up on prescription and over-the counter medications, health and emergency medical supplies, and nonperishable food and household supplies (see How to prepare for more detail). Check in regularly by phone, Skype, or however you like to stay in touch.

community spread (community transmission): is said to have occurred when people have been infected without any knowledge of contact with someone who has the same infection

contact tracing: a process that begins with identifying everyone a person diagnosed with a given illness (in this case COVID-19) has been in contact with since they became contagious. The contacts are notified that they are at risk, and may include those who share the person's home, as well as people who were in the same place around the same time as the person with COVID-19 - a school, office, restaurant, or doctor's office, for example. Contacts may be quarantined or asked to isolate themselves if they start to experience symptoms, and are more likely to be tested for coronavirus if they begin to experience symptoms.

containment: refers to limiting the spread of an illness. Because no vaccines exist to prevent COVID-19 and no specific therapies exist to treat it, containment is done using public health interventions. These may include identifying and isolating those who are ill, and tracking down anyone they have had contact with and possibly placing them under quarantine.

epidemic: a disease outbreak in a community or region

flattening the curve: refers to the epidemic curve, a statistical chart used to visualize the number of new cases over a given period of time during a disease outbreak. Flattening the curve is shorthand for implementing mitigation strategies to slow things down, so that fewer new cases develop over a longer period of time. This increases the chances that hospitals and other healthcare facilities will be equipped to handle any influx of patients.

incubation period: the period of time between exposure to an infection and when symptoms begin

isolation: the separation of people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick

mitigation: refers to steps taken to limit the impact of an illness. Because no vaccines exist to prevent COVID-19 and no specific therapies exist to treat it, mitigation strategies may include frequent and thorough handwashing, not touching your face, staying away from people who are sick, social distancing, avoiding large gatherings, and regularly cleaning frequently touched surfaces and objects at home, in schools, at work, and in other settings.

pandemic: a disease outbreak affecting large populations or a whole region, country, or continent

presumptive positive test result: a positive test for the virus that causes COVID-19, performed by a local or state health laboratory, is considered "presumptive" until the result is confirmed by the CDC. While awaiting confirmation, people with a presumptive positive test result will be considered to be infected.

quarantine: separates and restricts the movement of people who have a contagious disease, have symptoms that are consistent with the disease, or were exposed to a contagious disease, to see if they become sick

SARS-CoV-2: short for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, SARS-CoV-2 is the official name for the virus responsible for COVID-19.

social distancing: refers to actions taken to stop or slow down the spread of a contagious disease. For an individual, it refers to maintaining enough distance between yourself and another person to reduce the risk of breathing in droplets that are produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes. In a community, social distancing measures may include limiting or cancelling large gatherings of people.

virus: a virus is the smallest of infectious microbes, smaller than bacteria or fungi. A virus consists of a small piece of genetic material (DNA or RNA) surrounded by a protein shell. Viruses cannot survive without a living cell in which to reproduce. Once a virus enters a living cell (the host cell) and takes over a cell's inner workings, the cell cannot carry out its normal life-sustaining tasks. The host cell becomes a virus manufacturing plant, making viral parts that then reassemble into whole viruses and go on to infect other cells. Eventually, the host cell dies.

Disclaimer:
As a service to our readers, Harvard Health Publishing provides access to our library of archived content. Please note the date of last review or update on all articles. No content on this site, regardless of date, should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.

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Coronavirus Resource Center - Harvard Health

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The rapid spread of the virus that causes COVID-19 has sparked alarm worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared this rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, and many countries are grappling with a rise in confirmed cases.

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Slides created by Dr. Torrey Trust

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School Closings Further Expose the Digital Divide

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School Closings Further Expose the Digital Divide

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The mounting school closures amid the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. are exposing major equity gaps in access to technology and the internet, and the FCC needs to step in, according to FCC commissioners.

"Now is absolutely the time to talk about the coronavirus disruption and how technology can help," Jessica Rosenworcel, an FCC commissioner, said Tuesday during a Senate hearing. "Nationwide we are going to explore the expansion of tele-work, tele-health and tele-education, and in the process we are going to expose some really hard truths about the scope of the digital divide."

Those hard truths are playing out in real-time in Washington state, where 34 schools and three school districts have closed, some for as long as a month. And while a handful of them are taking their classes online, many others aren't due to the students varying levels of access to technology.

"The FCC should be convening broadband providers right now to prepare," Rosenworcel said. "It should be identifying how it can use universal service powers to support connective care for quarantined patients and how wifi hotspots can be available for loan for students who have schools that have shut and classes that have migrated online."

Photos: The Global Coronavirus Outbreak

Geoffrey Starks, another FCC commissioner, joined Rosenworcel in emphasizing the important role the FCC could play in stemming the coronavirus outbreaks and keeping communities forced to quarantine connected to the outside world.

"The FCC and communication networks have an integral role to play in responding to coronavirus," he said. "With quarantines being required, as it may be soon in many communities, broadband connections will become ever more vital. Everyone in the telecommunication sector must step up and the time is now."

"Americans are going to need broadband in their homes to help telework to keep the economy strong, to help understand medical information and potentially connect with medical care via telemedicine to help our youngest learners continue to grow," Starks continued. "The FCC must join immediately with efforts that bring broadband into homes impacted with COVID-19."

Some examples of things the FCC could do, he said, include lending hotspots to schools and libraries, setting up mobile hotspots in low-income neighborhoods and establishing temporary access to FCC's Lifeline Program, which provides low-income families with telephone service.

"There should be no American that is cut off from connectivity because of costs," Starks said. "It's going to be really important that we lean into hotspots."

During the hearing, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat, stressed the need to close the so-called "homework gap," which refers to the approximately 12 million students who do not have access to the internet at home and because of that are at a significant disadvantage in completing schoolwork.

"Obviously the coronavirus has further highlighted that gap," said Van Hollen, who introduced a bill last month that would take a portion of the proceeds from the FCC's forthcoming 5G auction and direct the funding to underserved communities in order to help close that so-called homework gap.

"You have some schools around the country closed," he said. "They're trying to arrange distance learning and homework over the internet. Obviously those students who are not connected are put at a huge disadvantage and there are some students who don't have a computer at home."

Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, sent a letter last week to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, asking him to deploy emergency resources to allow for temporary connectivity, especially in low-income communities where internet access is harder to come by.

"I believe that the Federal Communications Commission is uniquely positioned to respond to some of the challenges posed by COVID-19 just as it has in the past with disaster response," she wrote in a letter dated March 6, noting that under the direction of President George W. Bush, the FCC took emergency action in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

"There have already been week-long school closures in Washington state and it is likely that other school closures of uncertain duration will occur around the country," she wrote. "I request that the FCC consider whether temporary measures using its authority under section 254 of the Communications Act of 1934 could be used to facilitate at-home connectivity for students to keep up in class should remote schoolwork become necessary due to COVID-19 closures."

Cantwell's office said it has not received a response.

At the hearing Tuesday, Pai did not directly address providing temporary access to schools to help bolster online access to coursework amid the coronavirus outbreak, other than to say in opening remarks that the FCC's top priority is to close the digital divide, especially in rural areas.

"That's a crisis," Rosenworcel said of the 12 million students without internet access at home. "But now with the coronavirus we have real duties to figure out how to help get those kids online. Because when their schools shut down and their classes migrate online they are at the greatest risk of being left behind."

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Coronavirus School Closings Expose Digital Divide

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The mounting school closures amid the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. are exposing major equity gaps in access to technology and the internet, and the FCC needs to step in, according to FCC commissioners. "Now is absolutely the time to talk about the coronavirus disruption and how technology can help," Jessica Rosenworcel, an FCC commissioner, said Tuesday during a Senate hearing.

# data[].attributes.headline
Corona Virus Closings Expose Digital Divide

# data[].attributes.subject
Corona Virus Closings Expose Digital Divide

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The mounting school closures amid the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. are exposing major equity gaps in access to technology and the internet, and the FCC needs to step in, according to FCC commissioners.

"Now is absolutely the time to talk about the coronavirus disruption and how technology can help," Jessica Rosenworcel, an FCC commissioner, said Tuesday during a Senate hearing. "Nationwide we are going to explore the expansion of tele-work, tele-health and tele-education, and in the process we are going to expose some really hard truths about the scope of the digital divide."

Those hard truths are playing out in real-time in Washington state, where 34 schools and three school districts have closed, some for as long as a month. And while a handful of them are taking their classes online, many others aren't due to the students varying levels of access to technology.

"The FCC should be convening broadband providers right now to prepare," Rosenworcel said. "It should be identifying how it can use universal service powers to support connective care for quarantined patients and how wifi hotspots can be available for loan for students who have schools that have shut and classes that have migrated online."

Photos: The Global Coronavirus Outbreak

Geoffrey Starks, another FCC commissioner, joined Rosenworcel in emphasizing the important role the FCC could play in stemming the coronavirus outbreaks and keeping communities forced to quarantine connected to the outside world.

"The FCC and communication networks have an integral role to play in responding to coronavirus," he said. "With quarantines being required, as it may be soon in many communities, broadband connections will become ever more vital. Everyone in the telecommunication sector must step up and the time is now."

"Americans are going to need broadband in their homes to help telework to keep the economy strong, to help understand medical information and potentially connect with medical care via telemedicine to help our youngest learners continue to grow," Starks continued. "The FCC must join immediately with efforts that bring broadband into homes impacted with COVID-19."

Some examples of things the FCC could do, he said, include lending hotspots to schools and libraries, setting up mobile hotspots in low-income neighborhoods and establishing temporary access to FCC's Lifeline Program, which provides low-income families with telephone service.

"There should be no American that is cut off from connectivity because of costs," Starks said. "It's going to be really important that we lean into hotspots."

During the hearing, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat, stressed the need to close the so-called "homework gap," which refers to the approximately 12 million students who do not have access to the internet at home and because of that are at a significant disadvantage in completing schoolwork.

"Obviously the coronavirus has further highlighted that gap," said Van Hollen, who introduced a bill last month that would take a portion of the proceeds from the FCC's forthcoming 5G auction and direct the funding to underserved communities in order to help close that so-called homework gap.

"You have some schools around the country closed," he said. "They're trying to arrange distance learning and homework over the internet. Obviously those students who are not connected are put at a huge disadvantage and there are some students who don't have a computer at home."

Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, sent a letter last week to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, asking him to deploy emergency resources to allow for temporary connectivity, especially in low-income communities where internet access is harder to come by.

"I believe that the Federal Communications Commission is uniquely positioned to respond to some of the challenges posed by COVID-19 just as it has in the past with disaster response," she wrote in a letter dated March 6, noting that under the direction of President George W. Bush, the FCC took emergency action in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

"There have already been week-long school closures in Washington state and it is likely that other school closures of uncertain duration will occur around the country," she wrote. "I request that the FCC consider whether temporary measures using its authority under section 254 of the Communications Act of 1934 could be used to facilitate at-home connectivity for students to keep up in class should remote schoolwork become necessary due to COVID-19 closures."

Cantwell's office said it has not received a response.

At the hearing Tuesday, Pai did not directly address providing temporary access to schools to help bolster online access to coursework amid the coronavirus outbreak, other than to say in opening remarks that the FCC's top priority is to close the digital divide, especially in rural areas.

"That's a crisis," Rosenworcel said of the 12 million students without internet access at home. "But now with the coronavirus we have real duties to figure out how to help get those kids online. Because when their schools shut down and their classes migrate online they are at the greatest risk of being left behind."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Coronavirus School Closings Expose Digital Divide

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The mounting school closures amid the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. are exposing major equity gaps in access to technology and the internet, and the FCC needs to step in, according to FCC commissioners. "Now is absolutely the time to talk about the coronavirus disruption and how technology can help," Jessica Rosenworcel, an FCC commissioner, said Tuesday during a Senate hearing.

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Beaverton School District Remote Learning Page & Plans

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Beaverton School District Remote Learning Page & Plans

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Broken up with pre-K to K, 1-2, 3-5, middle school, and high school. As well as language supports, movement, and well being reminders.

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The BSD Teaching & Learning Department compiled strategies and educational activities that families can use to keep students engaged in learning in the event of a school closure.

Remote learning activities are organized by grade level and contain a combination of low tech and technology-based options across multiple subject areas, including consideration for student physical and mental wellness.

Our goal is to provide a structure for at-home learning so families have some easy-to-implement activities to prevent regression and learning loss during an extended break.

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Remote Learning - Beaverton School District

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The BSD Teaching & Learning Department compiled strategies and educational activities that families can use to keep students engaged in learning in the event of a school closure. Remote learning activities are organized by grade level and contain a combination of low tech and technology-based options across multiple subject areas, including consideration for student physical and mental wellness.

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The well-being of SFUSD students and staff is our top priority. Our School Health Programs personnel are in constant contact with the San Francisco Department of Public Health about health concerns, including COVID-19 (previously referred to as the "coronavirus"). We are working closely with the City of San Francisco to prepare in the event our schools are impacted.

COVID-19 is in the family of viruses that cause the common cold, so symptoms and prevention measures are similar. A person's risk for this virus is not dependent on race, ethnicity or culture.

Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom; before eating; and after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing.
If soap and water are not readily available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol. Always wash hands with soap and water if hands are visibly dirty.

Avoid close contact with people who are sick.

Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.

Stay home when you are sick.

Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.

Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces using a regular household cleaning spray or wipe.

Follow CDC's recommendations for using a facemask.

CDC does not recommend that people who are well wear a facemask to protect themselves from respiratory diseases, including COVID-19.

Facemasks should be used by people who show symptoms of COVID-19 to help prevent the spread of the disease to others.

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COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Resources for Families and Students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The well-being of SFUSD students and staff is our top priority. Our School Health Programs personnel are in constant contact with the San Francisco Department of Public Health about health concerns, including COVID-19 (previously referred to as the "coronavirus"). We are working closely with the City of San Francisco to prepare in the event our schools are impacted.

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These are pedagogical practices that promote care for the whole student and class collective. They come from Saint Mary's College in California.

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Sacred Heart Schools Plan for Instructional Continuity

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Sacred Heart Schools Plan for Instructional Continuity

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Shared via Holly Clark

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Shared via Holly Clark

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The Infused Classroom is about infusing great pedagogy with meaningful technology to help create student-centered classrooms and learning. We are platform agnostic - and are all about powerful...

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Computer Science & Computational Thinking

Advanced Robotics Demystified in 4 Steps

By building and programming robots, kids of all ages can learn about computer science, mechatronics, coding, literacy, physical science, mathematics, healthy competitiveness, teamwork and perseverance, but in order to get there, instruction must be deliberate and rigorous. Follow these four steps to get your students on track.

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We help educators around the world use technology to solve tough problems.

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via Hechinger Report

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The threat of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, is forcing educators across the country to think about what they'll do if they have to close their schools for weeks or even months at a time. State and federal agencies have advised schools to create online learning plans to minimize the disruption to student learning. For some schools, that's a small leap. Their students have internet connections at home, laptops they can work from, teachers who know how to design online lessons and a strong foundation of in-school blended learning experience.

But the fact is, these schools are rare. Most schools are completely unprepared - or, at best, woefully underprepared - for coronavirus and virtual learning. Unequal internet access is just the tip of the iceberg of a massive equity crisis facing U.S. schools should coronavirus force education online.

"People think it's about boxes and wires and that's just the beginning," said Beth Holland, digital equity and rural project director at the Consortium for School Networking, an industry association for tech directors across the country. CoSN members have been turning to each other for advice and support about how to approach coronavirus and virtual learning. But Holland is not optimistic. The data just don't support optimism.

What is Coronavirus doing to our schools?

We've got the latest and deepest takes.

According to the latest survey data from the Pew Research Center, 73 percent of adults have broadband internet at home. But the differences based on income are striking. While 92 percent of adults from households earning $75,000 or more per year say they have broadband internet at home, just 56 percent of adults from households earning below $30,000 say the same. About 17 percent of adults access the internet from home through a smartphone only. For the kids in their homes, that means trying to read assignments, write papers, do research and take quizzes with tiny screens and tinier keyboards.

Beyond the "boxes and wires" that get kids internet access in the first place, what happens when they're online is another problem entirely.

As Holland points out, successful remote learning experiences depend on teachers who know how to create and deliver engaging lessons online and students who have the digital literacy skills to access them. If entire K-12 districts move online, what can schools expect of early elementary schoolers? Not much. Younger children don't have the independent learning skills, attention spans or social-emotional maturity to succeed in virtual learning environments for very long, let alone the troubleshooting skills they will inevitably need to manage whatever technology they're using. Many middle and even high schoolers aren't much better equipped. And what's more, many of those older students may have to help watch their younger siblings during extended school closures, leaving them little time to tackle assignments of their own.

A host of organizations have stepped into the fray offering training and advice for teachers contemplating online learning for the first time. Noah Dougherty, a senior design principal at the education consulting firm Education Elements, wrote in a blog post last week that "the biggest shift virtual learning requires is flexibility and a recognition that the controlled structure of a school is not replicable online." Some districts have already described their school closure plans as though students will be able to cycle through their regular school schedules from home. This ignores a host of equity concerns around access and flies in the face of research-based best practices for online learning. Students cannot be expected to sit in front of their computers for seven hours per day.

The Global Online Academy will host a free course about designing online lessons starting March 16 (added because of popular demand for its first course, which is running this week). Outschool has also offered a series of free trainings about "telelearning," with a handful scheduled for March 11. The Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings has a webinar scheduled for 3 p.m. EST March 11 about the medical, legal, educational, logistical and equity issues that schools should be thinking about as they consider taking classes online.

Then there are the companies offering free use of their products should crisis hit a school community. BrainPop, Kahoot!, PearDeck, Google and GoGuardian are among them. Common Sense Media has curated a suite of recommendations for the best student collaboration tools, messaging apps, lesson-planning websites, interactive video apps, tools for project-based learning, and apps and websites for flipped classrooms and virtual field trips to help educators wade through what's out there.

Many teachers have been practicing blended and online learning for years. But they're not yet the norm in U.S. schools. And that's what has Holland most concerned about what mass school closures may mean for learning.

"I have a huge concern for that massive number of districts that don't even know how to start having that conversation because the infrastructure doesn't exist in schools, the infrastructure isn't there outside of schools, the culture isn't there for online learning," she said.

It's these schools that are so far still the norm.
Editor's note: This story led off this week's Future of Learning newsletter, which is delivered free to subscribers' inboxes every other Wednesday with trends and top stories about education innovation. This story about virtual learning and coronavirus was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger's newsletter. Subscribe today!

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Coronavirus is poised to inflame inequality in schools

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The threat of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, is forcing educators across the country to think about what they'll do if they have to close their schools for weeks or even months at a time. State and federal agencies have advised schools to create online learning plans to minimize the disruption to student learning.

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Shared in NYSCATE FB group

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COVID-19 Resource Center | LINC: The Learning Innovation Catalyst

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Section Supporting Schools Facing Coronavirus Supporting Student Learning During the COVID-19 Outbreak Many schools are now in the process of planning and preparing for the potential impact of the coronavirus. As a trusted partner, LINC wants to do our part to help. While you are planning, we&#8 ...

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Moderated by Carl 🤬, shared in the NYSCATE Facebook Group

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How Prepared is Your School for a Long-term Pandemic? - Wakelet

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Resources collected from the #FutureReady twitter chat

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Resources for very young learners (toddlers, grades 1, 2, #EFL, #ESL) during school closures.

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Resources for very young learners (toddlers, grades 1, 2, #EFL, #ESL) during school closures.

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A collection of songs, short stories and games for very young learners. https://www.symbaloo.com/mix/anthissitesforys12

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Sites for my year 1 & 2 EFL learners.

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Coronavirus Data Pack (from Information is Beautiful)

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Coronavirus Data Pack (from Information is Beautiful)

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Saw this on Twitter this morning. Valuable data.

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COVID-19 #Coronavirus latest data visualized.
You are welcome to use these graphic in any way you please.

Created by David McCandless, Omid Kashan, Fabio Bergamaschi, Dr Stephanie Starling, Univers Labs, Nueker, Tom Evans
Learn to Create Impactful Infographics

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COVID-19 #CoronaVirus Infographic Datapack - Information is Beautiful

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Updated daily, now with global vaccination stats

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Explaining coronavirus COVID-19 to kids.

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Shared by Jesse Lubinsky via FB

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Thanks to Bruce Reicher for sharing via the EduMatch Publishing FB group

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Does closing schools slow the spread of corona virus? - From Science Magazine

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Does closing schools slow the spread of corona virus? - From Science Magazine

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As the societal disruptions from COVID-19 spread and intensify, a question for many in the United States is, what about schools? Schools in Japan, Italy, parts of China, and elsewhere have shuttered. A small but increasing number in the United States are following suit, whether for a day, a week, or longer.

But does shutting a school help a broader community, especially when the role played by children in spreading COVID-19 remains uncertain? Nicholas Christakis, a social scientist and physician at Yale University, thinks it does, but he recognizes that questions around closing schools are difficult. Christakis studies social networks and is developing software and statistical methods to forecast an epidemic's spread before it happens.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: There seems to be a lot of variability in how schools are managing this. What are the different approaches schools can take-and have taken in past epidemics-and how might they help?
A: I'd like to emphasize the difference between reactive and proactive school closures. Reactive is when a school decides to close when a student or parent or staff member is sick. Most people don't argue with that. If the pandemic is at the school, you would want the school closed.

There have been a number of studies that have looked at reactive closures. These analyses, including a paper in Nature in 2006 using math models [of an influenza pandemic], typically find that such reactive school closures for a moderately transmissible pathogen reduces the cumulative infection rate by about 25% and delay the peak of the epidemic [in that region] by about 2 weeks. When you postpone the peak, you also typically flatten the epidemic and space out your cases. This has value. It means that the incidence on any given day is lower, so we don't overburden our health care system.
Q: So a reactive closure would occur after a case of COVID-19 in a student, parent, or staff member. Should one case like this close a school? Does it depend on circumstances at all?
A: If, for example, a person flew to your town from Italy and brought the condition with them, that means something different than a community-acquired case, where we don't know how they got the disease. A community-acquired case is like a canary in the coal mine. When you detect one case there are probably dozens or hundreds of others.
Q: A community-acquired case should close the school?
A: Yes. By that time, they've probably transmitted it to other people. It's the tip of the iceberg. One paper I looked at [on an influenza pandemic] looked at closing a class or a grade. It doesn't gain you much.
Q: What about the parent returning from a trip in Italy? Should that school close?
A: Maybe. They could isolate people close to the infected individual. I would probably close it, but I could certainly understand not doing so.
Q: How about proactive school closures, before there are any infections associated with a school? Are they helpful?
A: Proactive school closures-closing schools before there's a case there-have been shown to be one of the most powerful nonpharmaceutical interventions that we can deploy. Proactive school closures work like reactive school closures not just because they get the children, the little vectors, removed from circulation. It's not just about keeping the kids safe. It's keeping the whole community safe. When you close the schools, you reduce the mixing of the adults-parents dropping off at the school, the teachers being present. When you close the schools, you effectively require the parents to stay home.

There was a wonderful paper published that analyzed data regarding the Spanish flu in 1918, examining proactive versus reactive school closures. When did [regional] authorities close the schools relative to when the epidemic was spiking? What they found was that proactive school closing saved substantial numbers of lives. St. Louis closed the schools about a day in advance of the epidemic spiking, for 143 days. Pittsburgh closed 7 days after the peak and only for 53 days. And the death rate for the epidemic in St. Louis was roughly one-third as high as in Pittsburgh. These things work.
Q: How should jurisdictions decide when to pursue a proactive closing?
A: How many cases are there in the region? And what is the epidemiologically relevant region? If you're in a mid-sized town you might say, as soon as there's a community-acquired case in my town, whether it's in my school or not, I'm closing my school.
Q: Let's consider the community-acquired case of a rector at a church in Washington, D.C., whose COVID-19 diagnosis was announced this past weekend Q: This sounds hugely disruptive. . Should schools close in the region because of that one case? Q: Are there social distancing efforts short of closing schools, especially if there are no cases associated with a particular school? For example, canceling big events that bring together lots of families?
A: If the rector was in the epidemiologically relevant area (however you define it), and if you believe that you will close your school in a reactive fashion when there's a case at your school, and a community-acquired case appears-it's going to appear [in the school]. So why not close now ahead of time, and gain all the extra time for your staff and students to minimize spread?

A: Unsurprisingly, there are substantial costs-health costs and economic costs. Many children get school lunches; their health might suffer from closing the school. Health care workers could be taken out of commission to care for their own children precisely when we need them at hospitals. Parents could lose job opportunities. This is why in Japan, they're providing basic income to parents during the closure. It should be rightly seen as a state expense.
Q: Many schools have closed for 1 day to sanitize. Is that a useful strategy?
A: Yes, I'm so glad you mentioned that. We don't have to have an all-or-nothing policy. We can have intermediate steps. For example, why not allow families who want to keep their kids home keep them home? Why not cancel all activities, like sporting events and musical performances that have large groups present?
Q: Another big question is what the endgame is. If schools close, when should they reopen?
When we engage in social distancing, it's not so much that you don't get infected yourself. The real advantage is that by removing yourself from circulation, you stop all the paths of this virus through you. You are doing a social service, you are helping the community. Employees who want to work from home [and are able to] can work from home.
Q: School closures are pretty controversial right now. Some articles, like this one and this one, suggest they risk accomplishing little. And because this outbreak is still so new, we are drawing on previous outbreaks of other diseases to guess what shutting schools can do for this one. What would you say to people who argue that closures hold little value, especially when a community has relatively few cases of the virus?
A: I don't know the answer to that. It depends on the circumstances.

A: Honestly, I don't know how much research has been done. It's a number of weeks when you close. The Chinese have had their schools closed for 6 weeks. The Japanese have had their schools closed for four. What is the reopening rule? I don't know the answer.

A: Let's do a thought experiment. If there is an outbreak in your school, would you advocate for closing the school? If the epidemic is occurring around your school, you know that it is going to strike the school. And so if you're prepared to close the school when it arrives at your school, it makes much more sense to close when it is near the school.

We know from past epidemics of multiple types of viruses that school closure works. We know that it interrupts adult transmission even if the kids are not vectors. Here, it's likely that kids are vectors, and preliminary evidence from China suggests that they can be. I absolutely recognize it's a difficult calculus. But what we're talking about here is a pandemic.

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Does closing schools slow the spread of coronavirus? Past outbreaks provide clues

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As the societal disruptions from COVID-19 spread and intensify, a question for many in the United States is, what about schools? Schools in Japan, Italy, parts of China, and elsewhere have shuttered. A small but increasing number in the United States are following suit, whether for a day, a week, or longer.

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As COVID-19 spreads within the United States and across the globe, public health officials are calling for fewer public gatherings - which is pushing many activities online. The issue is particularly severe for schools, where the risk of spreading the disease is high. But as many US schools try to shift to online lesson plans, they're running into the limitations of our threadbare broadband networks, which leave many students unable to connect to their new online classrooms.

For school officials across the world, there's little time left to prepare. Earlier this week, the United Nations reported that 22 countries across three continents have already started closing schools as a result of novel coronavirus outbreaks. That means nearly 300 million children missing class worldwide, creating an "unparalleled" education disruption, according to the organization.

Washington state has seen 75 confirmed cases

Washington state has seen 75 confirmed cases, the most of any state in the country, and making up more than a quarter of the total cases in the US. As a result, the state has also seen many of the most extreme precautions. Schools in the state started to shut down operations this week to prevent new illnesses. Universities, high schools, middle, and elementary schools are all closing shop for varying amounts of time, some moving classes exclusively online through apps and software like Zoom and Google Classroom until they reopen.

In a message to families, Washington state's Northshore School District's superintendent, Michelle Reid, wrote that ahead of their closure on March 5th, teachers worked with students "to make sure they are acquainted with the online platform(s) they will be using and that students are equipped with a device and wifi to engage in virtual learning."

Every child should have "the ability to learn remotely because they have internet at home"

If a student in the district doesn't have a usable internet connection, the school will be providing them with a mobile hotspot so they can continue to learn, Reid wrote.

Seattle Public Schools' superintendent Denise Juneau told NPR that the district was asking teachers to "prepare packets of learning" to use while they're out of classroom. She went on to say, "online learning would - there would be some equity issues with that because there would be some students who may not have access to technology at home, Internet."

The New York Timesreported Friday that many other schools may not be as prepared as the Northshore School District, with some teachers across the country filling out a shared Google Doc with "tips and tricks" for online learning.

All of these examples highlight a problem the Federal Communications Commission and lawmakers have struggled to solve for years - the "homework gap." It's a term that refers to the barriers students face at school when they don't have access to a high-speed internet connection at home. In times of emergency, those online barriers become more apparent, especially when schools haven't planned for them in advance before moving classes online.

"As a parent and as a public servant, I believe there are ways we can make sure that when crises like these do occur, every child has the ability to learn remotely because they have internet at home," Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel told The Verge.

Over the years, the FCC has been criticized over its inaccurate broadband maps that make it more difficult for would-be rural internet providers to know where access is most desperately needed. As of right now, broadband providers submit their own data to the FCC to create their maps, and reports have shown that they exaggerate their coverage areas. Congress approved a bill this week that would require providers to submit more granular information and require the FCC to create a new process to verify that the data provided is correct.

Other lawmakers, like Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) have introduced measures specifically focused on closing the homework gap. His Homework Gap Trust Fund Act would establish a $2.4 billion trust fund that would be funded through the revenues received by the FCC's upcoming C-band midband spectrum auction later this year that would go toward solving the problem.

"During times of emergency, the digital divide can create even more serious impacts for under-served families across our country," Van Hollen told The Verge. "As coronavirus threatens to impact our schools, ensuring students have access to the internet at home is all the more important."

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As COVID-19 pushes classes online, some students are caught in the broadband gap

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As COVID-19 spreads within the United States and across the globe, public health officials are calling for fewer public gatherings - which is pushing many activities online. The issue is particularly severe for schools, where the risk of spreading the disease is high.

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Thanks to Susie Highley for sharing in the EduMatch Voxer group

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This access to devices spurred innovative ways to engage students and teachers outside of the traditional day and place through virtual options for learning. These experiences brought about the IDOE Flex Program, launched in 2011, and the Virtual Option for Inclement Weather, launched in 2014.