Hosted by , contributed by Kyriaki_Vakkou on 13 December 2022
The recent COVID-19 crisis caused many problems in daily school management. It appeared that school leadership needed to act under pressure to address the need for online classes and digital content creation.
A school in Croatia adopted a transformative model of leadership to foster capacity building and personal commitment to organizational goals, effort and productivity. All teachers of the school were involved in the creation of materials for their online classes, such as videos, tutorials, worksheets, games, quizzes and presentations. To produce these materials they used various tools and applications for creating and uploading educational content online, such as YouTube, Padlet presentations, online interactive boards, Wizer, Quizlet tests, Kahoot quizzes, and more. In addition, they utilized Google Classroom as the main platform for online learning and they created special assignments for their students. A distribution of work in terms of digital content creation was applied in the school. Specifically, primary education teachers created content for their students from first to fourth grade, and for grades 5th to 8th teachers created content for the subject they teach, including Croatian language, English language, Maths, STEM subjects, History, Geography, Music, Art, Physical Education etc.
Moreover, school leadership ensured that all students had their own tablet for attending their online classes and all families had adequate internet connectivity. All the classes were held online and assignments were provided in real time according to the school timetable.
Students, parents and teachers experienced less stress during distance learning because they had better support by the school administration. The school administration managed to solve all the problems students encountered by inviting them to the school for more direct support. As a result, all classes were held online and assignments were provided in real time according to the school timetable, which made it easier for the students to maintain a sense of routine as if they were still going to school. Moreover, they could contact their teachers through Google Classroom platform if they needed to and school was always open in case of technical issues.