CHARLESTON, W.Va. — As another week of remote learning began Monday for Kanawha County Schools, students and parents of West Side Middle School in Charleston got the chance to receive help if they are having technical difficulties with the online platforms.
Teachers and staff at the school held a drive-thru technical support event to help with any issues that are keeping students from completing assignments.
“Most of them have been able to get online OK but those who haven’t, we just want to do a social distanced drive-thru tech support and give them the help they need to make sure all of our kiddos can get online without any barriers,” Hiram Bertoch, a sixth-grade science teacher at West Side Middle School told 580-WCHS.
Kanawha County Schools has been forced to be all online since the beginning of the school year on Sept. 8 due to its designation on the DHHR county alert map.
Bertoch said while the students follow a regular bell schedule online and have the chance to interact with instructors in the first five to ten minutes of class and beyond, it can still bring frustrations when things don’t work out.
“They might have a real easy thing to fix and in your classroom, you can walk over and say ‘this is it, this is what you’re doing wrong.’ When they are at home it can be frustrating because they don’t know what you’re saying and you don’t know what they are seeing,” Bertoch said.
At the event, organizers provided assistance with connectivity issues, logging onto Kanawha County’s Schoology online instruction program Schoology, help with Google Docs, downloading required classroom apps, understanding how to find assignments, and help submitting assignments.
Bertoch believes that Schoology is here to stay in the county school system, even if there is a return to in-person learning.
“We had a pre 9/11 world and a post 9/11 world with changes of things that never went back. I think that will be the case now. All of us are better now at distance learning and all of us are better at Schoology,” he said.
“Even when the kids come back, there will be a lot of things that stay that way.”