CHARLESTON, W.Va. — With the Education Alliance Summit taking place Monday, its CEO and president wants to discuss ways to integrate innovation into West Virginia schools, particularly in dealing with snow days.
Dr. Amelia Courts said that snow days don’t have to be a total waste of a day in terms of learning. She said Kentucky has implemented online education on snow days.
“On days that there is no school and children can’t make it to the building, they enable WiFi in their communities and allow their kids to work on digital packets,” Courts explained.
Courts explained that the use of online innovation as a learning tool is only growing.
“If we think five years from now, ten years from now, we’re not going to be having more and more online learning for our children, I think that we’re fooling ourselves,” Court said. “The opportunity is here; it’s now. We need to go beyond just sticking our toe in the water and make some of these changes.”
Courts did acknowledge some of the challenges with such programs, particularly in poorer communities where there’s no high-speed internet or no internet at all. She pointed out that Kentucky has similar issues and climate to West Virginia and has made it work.
“They have very similar demographics to us. They have similar weather factors, and they’re doing this,” Courts said. “They also have children at home that don’t have internet access so we’re excited to hear how they’ve overcome some of those barriers.”
She said educations leaders from Pennsylvania and all over the country would also be attending the summit. She explained that the younger generation knows how to use modern technology, and in some cases they probably know more than their teachers.
If we think that they’re not innovative; our kids are some of the most innovative in our society,” she said. “All you have to do is walk into an elementary school or a high school and talk to kids and they’ll give you lots of opportunities and examples of ways to innovate.”
The summit will take place 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Monday at the Embassy Suites Charleston. State Superintendent Dr. Michael Martirano and Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin are expected to attend.