When Disaster Strikes, Move Your School Online

Abstract

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita displaced thousands of K-12 students and demonstrated that when K-12 schools close unexpectedly and indefinitely, educational chaos results. Events such as deadly flu outbreaks or bioterrorist attacks will have the same impact on education. These possibilities demonstrate the need for state and local officials to begin taking action to ensure that schooling can continue when it is not feasible for students to attend school in person. The development of online learning communities, first to supplement face-to-face instruction and then as a total online replacement, is an uncomplicated and cost effective way to continue schooling without disrupting the learning process. Basically, schools would move online until it was safe to return to school campuses. This article presents a set of guidelines for establishing the infrastructure needed to develop online learning communities and the types of training and support needed to sustain them.