Contributed by Orcas Christian School teacher Ron Clause.

When the Orcas Christian School calendar was planned for this academic year, the goal was to get out of school with the state-required 188 days of instruction as efficiently as possible.

Since Labor Day normally affects the start of school, it did not allow for any Snow Days as part of the 2011/12 schedule. The Washington Conference, a subsidiary of the governing body for the system of 6,500 elementary, high schools and universities that OCS is part of, had developed an “E” day plan as an option for schools that used iPads or other electronic instruction as the core part of their curriculum. OCS converted most textbooks and curriculum last year to the iPad system.

Washington State Schools that meet this electronic criteria can offer this option and are approved to provide up to nine days of electronic instruction in case of events like natural disasters, power outages or snow days. Orcas Christian is one of the eight schools in the state that currently meets these requirements.

Students received homework assignments on their school issued iPads along with teacher-provided tutorials, completed their assignments online and returned them to the teacher for comments or to be graded.

The teachers also had the option to present material live and interactively to a student or group of students on particular assignments with visual examples, questions and answers from the group.

“I loved the E  day!”  said Graye Parnell. “I would have preferred not to have any homework but getting it done this way and knowing we don’t have to extend school into the summer break is a terrific tradeoff. It was cool.”