As the summer holidays approach, students and teachers will no doubt be looking forward to a well deserved break. Providing an opportunity to recharge the batteries and take a break from the classroom, the holidays are a time when most students have anything other than school work on their minds.
But for Kim Long, an 11 year old student from Cornwall, the boundaries between school and holiday became a little less well defined recently.
Together with his parents, Kim spent 6 months travelling around the world on a holiday that included stops in the USA, the Cook Islands, New Zealand, Australia, Borneo and the Far East.
Thanks to the pioneering use of the latest online learning technology, Kim was still able to attend school and participate in lessons with classmates in the UK so that his education was not interrupted by the experience.
Using a laptop and headset, Kim connected to lessons delivered online from Kernow Cyberschool, an online school operated by Cornwall Council.
“We are part of an educational package for children who, for periods of time, are unable to access mainstream education” explained Dominic Black, Head Teacher at the school.
“Kim was a student at Kernow Cyberschool for six months from September 2008 until March 2009 and was quite an unusual case! His parents took him out of his local primary school for the ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to travel around the world and I felt that this unusual situation offered us the chance to experiment a little with the possibilities of online learning”.
Kim was able to participate in his lessons without any problems using wifi hotspots to connect to the internet. The only issue was that sometimes lessons would begin very early in the morning or finish as late as 1am due to the time difference between the UK and the countries the family visited.
“Kim took the inconvenience of the early mornings well and joined our lessons every week without fail as his parents slept peacefully” continued Dominic. “His attendance and enthusiasm were excellent and he particularly enjoyed the opportunity to mix with other students in the group”.
“Kernow Cyberschool was excellent!” enthused Kim, speaking on his return to the UK. “I didn’t expect to enjoy school while I was travelling, but it turned out to be really good. The teachers were great and I learned as much as I would have at regular school if not more! I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone wanting to try!”.
As communications technology continues to shrink the world, we take a look at some of the options for staying in touch this summer:
The Postcard – not a new technology by any stretch of the imagination, the humble postcard was first used in 1870. While they can sometimes take a while to arrive, a postcard lets you add a personal touch and is sure to make someone smile.
Email – useful for more than inter-office memos, a visit to an internet café lets you send photos and as long winded a story about what a great time you are having as you like to your jealous friends and family back home.
Text Message – whilst not particularly ‘special’, the text message lets you keep in touch instantly. Just be careful of roaming charges while you are abroad.
Facebook – if you can’t bear to miss a thing while you are away, Facebook lets you check who’s doing what, post pictures instantly and send messages to your friends and family. Like texting, be careful of roaming charges if you are accessing through your mobile as some operators charge steep premiums for using the internet whilst abroad.
Twitter – access online or through your phone, Twitter lets you tell the world what you are doing. As long as you can say it all in 140 characters or less.
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