H1N1, the name the Swine Flu is also known by, continues to make an impact on communities across the world.  As school has started across the United States, many families are seeing the predictions by health organization personnel hit home.  In California, Dr. Horton, the head of the Department of Public Health has published studies that predict peak absenteeism of 30% in schools.  This has led many government officials to call for school closures in the event of an H1N1 outbreak in a school district.  While many school districts have backed off of plans to actually shut schools unless they see fairly large numbers of students with the flu, there have been school closures.

Articles such as this one from Associated press drive home the point:

SPOKANE, Wash. – Washington State University is in the midst of a swine flu outbreak since classes started last month, with 2,500 people contacting student health to report flu-like symptoms and officials handing out flu kits around campus.

The US government in cooperation with some of the largest school technology companies in the industry has discussed plans for “Continuity of Learning” in the event that large scale school closures are needed.  Pearson Corporation put out a press release recently:

August 24, 2009 – As announced by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today,
the education and technology company Pearson has developed a “Continuity of Learning” plan to
continue students’ education if school attendance is disrupted due to the H1N1 virus or other crisis events.

This led us at Connected Information Systems to consider the role products like ours could play in the same scenario.  At the highest level, it is difficult to conceive regular schooling taking place if there were massive school closures.  While parents would struggle with how to provide basic care for their children, the constraints of daily life would present multiple challenges to families that may prevent most “learning” from being possible.  I believe that the more important consideration is how will all these children “catch up” with school work.  Will teachers keep lesson plans and assignments accessible to absent students?

Let’s paint a picture.  First, if the State of California predictions are accurate, almost 1/3 of any class may be sick and unable to undertake most activities considered to be “learning”.  However, the normal run of H1N1 is likely to be under a week and most school closures would be double or triple that to allow the virus to not be passed from child to child.  But, it is likely that even after a school closure, many more students and teachers will continue to contract the disease from sources outside of school.  Thus, the flu season will create many interruptions for individual students and unless proper planning is in place, will create inequities in access to learning materials and opportunities.  If a child is absent for a week, in addition to the possibility of a school closing for three weeks on top of that, four weeks of schooling may be lost to the disease.  In a normal semester based school term, this represent almost 1/3 of the time available to teach and may be impossible to “make up” given the way schools generally operate.  While H1N1 is today’s issue, the possibility of more influenza outbreaks in the future needs to be considered too.  So, I applaud the government putting plans into action that might address the shortcomings of our current system of education.

The main point of this post is to consider how products like Connected.info might help.  My first thought is that the extension of a school community into the digital realm makes dealing with many of the issues presented by a school closure potentially addressable. The ability to use technology to safely communicate with others involved in the learning process can be a huge help in being able to keep the learning process going during a flu outbreak.  Consider the range of technologies employed by digital community services like Connected.info:

• Video Sharing
• Document Sharing
• weblogs (blogs)
• wikis
• Discussion Forums
• Various forms of messaging including mobile messaging

All of these technologies can foster communication and collaboration without physical proximity.  This would be key in an environment where students are not able to interact face to face due to the threat of exposure to a flu virus.  For example, let’s walk through the process of delivering a lesson to a group of students through digital means.  Assuming that most content available to a school was geared to a brick and mortar environment, a teacher would need to find an appropriate digital substitute.  Using podcast creation tools, the teacher could create a lesson that combined multiple media types into a video that could be delivered through a digital community medium in the form of an assignment.  Connected.info can also make sure that parents or care providers are also made aware of the availability of the lesson.

Students could view the lesson and undertake any follow on assignments at a time which is convenient for them or in the case of a child who is ill, feasible for them.  Using the other technologies such as a discussion forum, the students can post questions and comments on the lesson and read other students’ posts or those of the teacher.  The students can submit their assignments to the teacher using the digital community as well.

Why couldn’t a school system simply employ things like email in combination with parent and student portals available in most student management systems?  While portals can provide information access, most do not offer bi-directional communication tools such as discussion forums and wikis.  One way information flow is helpful in the sense that it is better than the absence of information, but the collaborative work required in a school setting requires bi-directionality to the information flow.

Available technologies now allow for much of the learning process to continue in the event of a flu outbreak that closes off traditional schooling.  One aspect of the “solution” that we have not discussed is the creation of the digital community itself.  Simply relying on the adhoc friend networks of a Facebook or MySpace would not be practical for most schools.  Setting aside privacy and security concerns for a moment, we need to think about the need for a digital community that maps completely to the school’s structure.  All students enrolled in a class section of Freshman English in Period 2 with Mr. Johnson as the teacher must be able to see Mr. Johnson’s digital assignment.  All parents of those students must be informed of the lesson and assignment.  Thus, only a digital community like Connected.info which is integrated into the student management system would be a reasonable approach to addressing the flu outbreak scenario.

Returning to the issue of security and privacy, any solution leveraged by a school must comply with applicable federal and state laws – CIPA, COPPA, and FERPA for example.  Most broad based digital community systems do not take these laws into consideration for the most part.  COPPA for example, requires physical verification of parental consent before a user under the age of 13 can use an online system which leverages personal information about the user.  If you are a Facebook or MySpace user, you know that all that is required is that a user enter a birthdate which shows them to be over 13 (or 16 sometimes).  No parental consent or age verification is required.

What is required in the event of an H1N1 outbreak is that schools are able to leverage a digital community service which is designed to both reflect the needs of an educational process, but also integrates with existing management systems.  Anything else falls short of meeting the challenges of an epidemic.

I have one last point to make about the use of digital technology in the event of an epidemic with respect to the government’s policy on Internet access.  Most of us who use the Internet on a regular basis have accepted that the monies paid to an Internet Service Provider are ones we are willing to bear.  The benefits of access are seen as worth the price for the most part.  However, consider the difference between the FCC’s role in allocating frequency bandwidth for TV broadcasters and the limited role any government agency plays in promoting the availability of Internet access.  In the TV space, everyone has the option of simply buying a TV and an antenna and watching the available programming without paying anyone.  Some people choose to opt into a cable TV or satellite TV service in order to gain access to more content.  However, there is a viable free choice.

With respect to the Internet, there is no free access choice available in the United States for the most part.  In some cities, the generosity of the local government (San Francisco) or a corporation like Google (Mountain View) has made wireless access available.  My opinion is that a person should be able to purchase a computer and a network access device and then be able to get on the Internet without paying for access.  That access can be at a lower bandwidth than typical broadband services (3-6Mbps), but there should be a free option.  Coupled with the availability of low cost netbook style laptop computer for less than $200, this would put widespread Internet access into the hands of many households who currently can not afford access.

Or, perhaps, mobile devices hold more promise.  Many more people now own cell phones than have computers.  As these devices gain more capability, perhaps Internet access in times of emergency such as a flu pandemic could be provided more practically by cell phones.  In any case, without a comprehensive approach to a reasonable Internet access policy, even solutions such as Connected.info will not be able to address the need.

As always, we welcome your comments.