We keep hearing about the importance of flattening the curve of the COVID-19 outbreak. For those of us who work in academia, we have seen another curve begin to flatten since the pandemic has forced us to make sudden shifts to digital teaching and learning. The learning curve, when it comes to faculty, staff, students, and parents using digital resources, has flattened quickly as everyone has had to quickly learn to use tools they had never used before.

At Ravenscroft, as soon as the first COVID-19 case showed up in North Carolina, we canceled a scheduled school day and used that time to train teachers on the digital tools we deemed most essential to our virtual teaching environment. Faculty had time to work with their divisions and departments on how to teach their discipline(s) online, and they were trained on Google Meet for virtual class meetings, Padlet for class discussions, Screencastify for pre-recording lessons, and Google Forms for assessments. When it came to adopting new innovations, it no longer mattered whether someone was an early adopter or a laggard. We were in an unprecedented situation that required everyone in our community to jump in new (virtual) waters and learn to swim.

The first week of virtual classes was not perfect–we knew it wouldn’t be, and perfection was definitely not the expectation. But, our community dove in, and even teachers who rarely used digital tools and resources were navigating them by the end of the first week.

After our first two weeks of virtual school, we realized adjustments needed to be made to our schedule and our approach, and new online resources needed to be added to our tool belts. This will continue to be the case as issues arise around administering final exams virtually, virtual graduations, etc. If we can find a comforting prospect in any of this, it is that, once we return to our brick and mortar classrooms, we will all return with more confidence and skills in the use of digital tools.