Positive early returns for Virtual Day, according to administrator

The Pascack Valley High School District just had two virtual days. While not much feedback has been gathered yet, the limited amount of feedback that the administration has received has been fairly positive, according to one of the district’s top administrators.

There were quite a few technology glitches, echoing the email server crash during the virtual day two years ago.

“We were quickly able to diagnose what the issue was and then blast out a note to everyone,” said Dr. Barry Bachenheimer, the Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment in the Pascack Valley High School District. “It’s nice having email and Twitter as two ways to get it out there.”

The technology glitches were solved quickly, the main problem being a Google Chrome update that many students did not have, Bachenheimer said.

Despite the problems, according to teacher feedback, the district has accomplished its goals with the two virtual school days.

“[The teachers] thought that the day had a relaxed vibe to it but at the same time was engaging, a nice change of pace,” said Bachenheimer.

The first virtual school day at Pascack Valley was specifically for a snow day. The day ultimately did not count as an official school day because the facilities were not open. This time, the goal was not to replace snow days but rather to give students and teachers a chance to be more relaxed and experiment with different teaching methods.

Most students opted to stay at home to complete their work rather than come to school. Many tweeted their opinion on the virtual days using the hashtags #pvvirtual or simply, and more commonly, #virtualday.

“We take feedback seriously. It’s part of the reason we counted it as attendance for the Pascack Period,” Bachenheimer said.

See more student tweets in the “Student Tweets” article published yesterday.