First Year students in Mountmellick Community School are being challenged to put their video editing skills to the test and asked to create uplifting lockdown videos.
Home Economics teacher Mags McLoughlin set the students the challenge and the first video, produced by Sam O’Connor, hits the nail on the head.
With clips of frontline workers operating in his native Mountmellick, Sam shows how we can all beat Covid.
You can check out his video here, while Ms McLoughlin says many of the other First Years will have theirs ready in the coming days and you can follow their progress on the Mountmellick Community School Home Economics Facebook page.
Meanwhile, Mountmellick Community School principal Larry Curtain says that such is the student and parent satisfaction with the current model of remote education from the school, student attendance in class in January 2021 is at a higher level than it was in January 2020.
He said: “When looking at the current teaching and learning practices and associated levels of attendance and engagement in Mountmellick Community School, the phrase every cloud has a silver lining springs to mind.
“Having provided google classroom assignments for all students and online video lessons in all subjects through the Zoom platform to 3rd and 6th year students during the last school lockdown in April/May 2020, management and staff of MCS put plans in place during the last term to cater for a similar delivery to all students in the event of future lockdowns.
“This proactive preparation enabled the school to deliver on-line video lessons to all year groups in all academic subjects from 9 am on day one of the current school closure on the 11th January 2021.
“One of the unexpected by products of the current arrangements in Mountmellick Community School is the manner in which student attendance levels during the past two weeks is at a higher level that it was during January 2020.
“This has been partly explained by the manner in which seasonal common colds and flus in previous years would prevent some student attendance, currently many of these students are able to engage from home while nursing a cold or recovering from a flu.
“Despite the obvious shortcomings of not having students physically in school on a full time basis, nonetheless having up to 100% student attendance in on-line video classes is a remarkable achievement in the current pandemic.”
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