To help school leaders assess the readiness of their district for remote learning, Michigan Virtual created several guidance documents, including a School Closure Readiness Rubric, Planning Considerations for School Leaders, Teaching Continuity Readiness Checklist & Rubric, and Student Learning Readiness Checklist Template.
Since March 1, Michigan Virtual has provided nearly 146,000 online professional development enrollments (over 228,000 SCECHs) for educators seeking to improve their skills in multiple areas, including remote teaching strategies.
Teaching online is not simply a matter of putting lessons meant to be taught face-to-face in a digital format. There is a unique pedagogy to creating online content and Michigan Virtual has helped schools to ease their transition to an online format with free access to high-quality digital content from over 70 of our online courses as well as to EdReady Math & English, personalized learning programs for math (grades 4-12) and English (grades 8-12).
Michigan Virtual established the Learning Continuity Work Group comprised of two-dozen online and blended learning practitioners from around the state to develop resources for the coming academic year. The Work Group created a collection of free resources to help teachers and school administrators assess their remote teaching readiness, guide decisions about online learning platforms, and access a crowd-sourced repository of K-12 digital content that can be found on the new Keep Michigan Learning website.
We created the Keep Michigan Learning Facebook group as an active community where educators can share resources and best practices in online and blended learning activities. There are currently over 3,700 active members.
Educators supporting students through distance learning now have the opportunity to participate in free sessions in which they can ask questions and seek expert advice from veteran online teachers and instructional designers.
With help from guest experts, Michigan Virtual has created a series of 14 short on-demand webinars (approx. 30 minutes each) that offer tips, tricks, and best practices for remote teaching and learning as well as discussions on policy and whole-school planning.
We have launched the Michigan Cares program to provide over 500 free mental health and SEL lessons for families with support from the state, a series of free online courses for educators created in partnership with MDE, and a blog series on parenting during a pandemic.
Michigan Virtual and SundbergFerar, an internationally recognized, Michigan-based design firm conducted a qualitative research project focused on capturing authentic stories and experiences from administrators, teachers, parents, and students to influence actionable plans moving forward to make the future of education, whether face-to-face, blended, or virtual more impactful for students.
One of the biggest barriers to online education for students with disabilities is the lack of web accessibility. To meet this need, Michigan Virtual has compiled a list of resources that provide guidance on these topics.
