Update, 9.57am Thursday: The state government announced they would launch a website to assist schools to continue education in the event they are closed.
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The Learning From Home site provides "age-appropriate, curriculum-based learning resources" for early childhood services and primary and secondary school students.
Minister for Education James Merlino said the website would complement existing online resources available to schools, such as the Compass system, which is used to communicate with students and parents, and the FUSE suite of teaching resources.
"We are preparing for every possible scenario during this outbreak to ensure Victorian students in government, independent and Catholic schools continue to learn - that is why Learning From Home is so important."
"Many schools already have a range of tools available to help them teach remotely, and many schools are experienced in supporting student learning online."
"The current advice from the Chief Health Officer and the Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer is that mass school closures are not needed at this stage - if this changes, we won't hesitate to act."
Mr Merlino said the state government was working with internet providers to give students without internet connection at home access to 4G.
Earlier: Teachers in the Wimmera and Ararat are exploring virtual learning for students as they prepare for the possibility that schools could close due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Victorian Education Department has said school closures would be made on the recommendation of the state's chief health Officer.
Horsham West Primary School principal Andrew Parry said the school had a trial run of online learning with years three and four on Tuesday.
"They've been using Google classrooms and Hangouts Meet by Google," he said. "Virtual learning is a space that we've never really explored in the past and that we didn't really see coming."
Mr Parry said the school was lucky to have some tech-savvy staff, including some with their own YouTube channels, implementing the preparation out of necessity, but also creating opportunities.
"The online learning that's going to open up doesn't have to be the normal curriculum either," he said. "(For example) we could encourage students to do measurements by cooking with parents."
Schools have already been required to adopt social distancing measures such as preventing entry to non-essential visitors and cancelling non-essential activities like assemblies, excursions and sports carnivals.
"It's an interesting space at the moment because for us at the moment all the normal interruptions are being taken away so we're able to just function," he said.
Mr Parry said while the mood at the school was "anxious" everyone was being supportive of each other and the children were enjoying the "novelty" of elbow dabs.
"We're all trying to learn social distancing," he said. "It's hard when your first reaction to a visitor to the school is to shake their hand. So we're probably all learning with the students."
"Generally like anything we do with the children we are trying to maintain a really positive environment where the students feel safe and just happy to be at school," Mr Parry said.
Maintaining a sense of positivity has also been important for the community at Ararat North Primary School, according to principal Rick Ellis.
"A degree of routine and normalcy is critical, especially for children," he said. "It's frustrating not knowing when the trigger could be pulled and schools could be closed."
Mr Ellis said the school had a plan in place for online teaching but also a collection of resources such as readers and worksheets for families who did not the internet.
"The hard thing is that teachers can't respond to the students who don't have internet," he said. "For the older kids it is a bit easier because it is more self-directed but for the really young kids we are trying to have minimal guidelines.
"Also clearly there are some parents that don't have great English language skills so we want to make it easy for them too."
Mr Ellis said only a small number of parents had chosen to self isolate their children at this stage and the school was practicing social distancing in the classroom.
"Because we've got additional space being a small school we can move the desks further apart," he said. "The biggest challenge with young children is reducing how close they get to each other.
"We do it by asking in soft ways, emphasising that they need to give each other more personal space rather than saying not to do something."
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