Webex returns!                                                                                     31 May, 2021

We have emailed parents to let you know that Thursday’s LFH tasks are now on the school website. Hopefully, your children have also today accessed some of the online resources allocated to them by their teacher. Some of these are linked to their Thursday LFH tasks.

We hope parents have had a chance to read our Webex at LPS page, as we prepare to ease into online classes from this Wednesday morning.

Have you checked your home internet capacity? We know from 2020 that there was an unprecedented demand for internet during lockdowns. If you’d like to test your capacity to use Webex with your home network (which will vary at different times of day), click on this quick media test.

Our proposed scheduling of class Webex meetings this week will again consider the capacity of the school ICT system to cater for a massive surge of professional users this week and the added load of student access. All DET staff devices must be connected to this system; we have no choice about this.

Classroom teachers will tomorrow send all families an invitation to Webex class meetings for this week. The Webex format for this Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (if needed) will firstly provide classes with the opportunity to revisit our Learning to Learn via Webex behaviour matrix. This mirrors what teachers do in Ready to Learn at the start of each term.

Providing these consistent school-wide expectations will maximise every child’s sense of belonging and participation in these sessions, with teachers encouraging your children to use these protocols when video-conferencing.

As we are inviting the entire class to Webex Essential sessions for this week, teachers are asking for your help to create a ‘class environment’. As parents, you can assist your child to be ‘on time and ready to learn’, just like at school, by:

• Starting to log in five minutes before the meeting time
• Making sure they are dressed for class meetings (no pyjamas please, and that includes parents or grandparents!)
• Ensuring children eat breakfast before or after the meeting (not during)
• Muting your PC for the start of the meeting (we can't have a whole class of children talking at once)
• Staying a discrete distance from the camera as parents (think classroom, not Gogglebox!)
• Understanding that everyone can see what’s in everyone else’s screen span simultaneously when on grid view, even if your child is not speaking
• Keeping toys, pets, toddlers and other distractions out of the meeting, purely because this may take time and attention away from its focus.

This week, teachers who are new to the school will have their first attempts at LPS online Webex classes. In these sessions, as well as connecting with students and reviewing the Behaviours Matrix, the focus will be explaining the LFH tasks that are being uploaded to the website for the rest of this week.

If the lockdown is extended, we already have plans to broaden and increase our Webex sessions. Of course, our expert timetabler Kathy is working on this.

Webex Essential sessions are for students. Parents are reminded that teachers can answer any parent questions via the Sentral teacher mailbox. Teachers will check their mailbox every day and respond to parents as soon as possible, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.

We hope you’ve had a great start to the week and know that you will continue to do a wonderful job of juggling at home!

Please continue reading these important communications, and take care.

Kim