Whittle School & Studios has always been committed to creating a ceiling-free education for students. And recently, students and teachers have learned a lot from the launch of our official online learning program.
Whittle emphasizes project-based learning which encourages students to be highly involved in the classroom, to interact cooperatively with teachers and classmates, and to play creativity. It comes as no surprise then that Whittle’s online teaching system requires a lot of resources. Since the Spring Festival, Whittle's IT team has risen to the challenge, putting together short-term and long-term solutions.
According to Anand Padmanabhan, Global Chief of Information and Technology at Whittle, the first stage of online learning involved using Microsoft Teams to help teachers share teaching resources and assign learning tasks. In the second stage, teachers and students began using RingCentral for online video communication. At the same time, Whittle uses a learning management system called "Buzz" to satisfy the need for more advanced teaching management resources such as tracking and analyzing learning data and creating personalized learning models.
Breaking Through School Walls: An Ingenious Online Classroom
When it comes to Whittle’s mission of fostering "lifelong learning," Whittle’s teachers set a good example for students. To provide students with a better online learning experience, teachers have come up with many creative solutions.
Whittle has made many new attempts in teaching online
During Chinese class, teachers inventively created a new project called “Incredible Planet” to help students better understand the planet on which they reside. Students are encouraged to pay attention to COVID-19 while taking the initiative to complete various learning tasks in creative ways. In humanities, students have also been encouraged by English teaches to learn more about the explorers Zheng He and Marco Polo, even posting WeChat Moments for Marco Polo’s travels throughout China. In math class, teachers have explained how math appears in news about COVID-19 and have further encouraged students to connect math to real life events.
Planet Daily, founded by a Chinese language teacher
To adapt this home-based online learning model, art teachers created a space planet exploration program called “Creative Eggshell Planet” that has inspired students to observe the different planets. In STEM classes, the use of Scratch sparked an interest in programming among eighth graders and encouraged them to begin work on their first mini-game.
Drawing planets on eggshells, students develop their graphic language
During this unique period, Whittle's education has given parents more confidence. Though the external environment has led to disruptions in people’s daily lives, Whittle has continued to maintain students’ enthusiasm for learning while encouraging them to develop good habits of thinking and practice. We believe these initiatives will help students calmly cope with the various challenges that may arise as they continue to move towards their goals.
