I appreciated our lesson on modality. I think it is really important to be learning about the different forms of access for students because in all honesty, with anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers and variants, I don’t think COVID is ever going to completely go away. As new teachers we need to be prepared for a world that may be multi-access.
We spoke a lot about the benefits and biases surrounding face to face, online and hybrid learning. While online learning has been quite frustrating at times, I do enjoy not having to take two busses to get to campus each morning and this is nothing compared to the many students who live much further.
In my high school, we also had students that lived on Gabriola Island, every morning they had to take the boat over and were often late which frustrated teachers. I wonder now if we had had better tech access at that time how many would have chosen online or hybrid learning. We were the tech hub for the district for learn at home, but that wasn’t integrated into mainstream learning as far as I know.
I do know that there are cases when it would not work. Particularly the community that I lived in last year, attendance was poor so one would think it could be helpful but internet access was non-existent for most households and I doubt everyone had the technology for it to work which is unfortunate because those inequalities really act as a barrier for education access in remote communities, and consequently, Indigenous communities.
Despite pros and cons, I think that increasing the options and giving students choice is always overall something positive that we should be striving for.