How to Earn Offline Time
Offline Activities
OFFLINE ACTIVITIES & LOG ENTRIES
Many of your teachers on VLA have probably emailed you (or added comments to a unit) asking you to complete an offline activity.
While some students take advantage of this, many do not.
This webpage will hopefully answer all your questions and at the same time, encourage you to submit an offline activity.
What exactly is an Offline Activity or a Log Entry?
For GOVS, students can earn time credit by doing two things:
- Logging into the VLA system and actively working on a unit.
- Completing an Offline Activity.
When students are logged into VLA, they are automatically getting time credit. This shows up in the top left corner of your VLA home page under Online This Week. That number will continually increase everytime you are online actively completing a unit.
BUT -- many of our students complete other activities to get time towards their 25 hours a week minimum. Remember, if you do not get your 25 hours a week, you are considered truant, and can be withdrawn from GOVS.
How to get credit for the offline activity:
The biggest mistake students make is that they enter an offline activity (aka a log entry) but the time they put for the activity overlaps with time they are already online.
Meaning -- let's say you logged into VLA at 9am. You started working on English. Part of your assignment was to read a short story, so you did that. You entered an offline activity in the last question of the unit, but put down 9am-10am for the times. Right there, that overlaps with the time you were signed-in. You can't get double the time credit.
When you complete offline activities, it is always best to make the start-time and end-time during a part of the day when you are not online. Why? To ensure you get the credit. We know you did the work -- we just need to make sure you get the time credit. If you work online from 9am-3pm every day, make the offline activity sometime before 9am or after 3pm. That way there's no overlap.
WAYS TO EARN OFFLINE TIME
Every GOVS student has two "Extra Credit" classes on their schedule: Independent Reading and Documentary/Film. Independent Reading is where you can log time for doing independent reading. Documentary/Film is where you can find links to videos to watch, and then you get time credit for that.
BUT -- as was mentioned above, if you are logged into the VLA system, the log entry will not work.
OFFLINE ACTIVITIES HAVE TO BE ENTERED WITH TIMES THAT YOU ARE NOT ONLINE!
Do you have to do an Independent Reading to get offline time? No!
Do you have to watch a documentary or a film to get offline time? No!
There are a gazillion other ways to get offline time. Some examples are:
- Writing an outline of the VLA notes.
- Writing note-cards for a lesson.
- Doing research for a paper you are writing.
- Completing one of the extra worksheets that are embedded in every VLA lesson.
- Completing one of the activities below via the Offline Activities website!!
Check that website out -- there are a ton of ways you can earn offline time.
But remember -- once you complete the activity, don't forget to enter the Log Entry! CLICK HERE for a video that will show you how to complete the Log Entry.
Reading Corner
This page is designed to help GOVS students with their Independent Reading. Every student has an Independent Reading class in VLA where they can track their weekly hours of reading. This goes towards your 25 hour a week minimum.
Option #1: GOVS Article of the Week
It's election season -- Election Day is coming up next month on November 3, 2020. I don't know about you, but I'm sure sick of all the commercials on TV -- they are all negative it seems! Here's a neat article about an astronaut voting in SPACE!
CLICK HERE to read an article about special voting up in the International Space Station.
After you read the article, answer the following three questions in the Description box of your log entry in the Independent Reading class.
- Who is the audience?
- What is the author's purpose?
- Write a quick summary paragraph (at least four sentences) on the article.
Option #2: Choose an archived article
Need some reading ideas? The link below takes you to a website where there are four years of archived weekly articles.
- Choose an article that interests you.
- Click on the article title (between the quotation marks). Ignore any questions above the article.
- Read the article
- At the end of the article, there are some Possible Response Questions. Choose one of the questions, and answer in the Description box of your log entry in the Independent Reading class.