The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led to the majority of public schools being closed nationwide, with Greenwood currently scheduled to be out until May 1st. Students have been assigned online or packet work to complete while out, but without a structured daily schedule, it’s easy to end up with lots of free time and an uncertainty of how to use it when you’ve finished all of your work. If you’re stuck trying to figure out what to do with your time during this pandemic, here are some ideas on how to stay productive from home.

Volunteer Online

The need for volunteer service doesn’t stop in a pandemic. There are plenty of ways to volunteer your time from home for a wide range of causes, from helping researchers find working medicines to transcribing books to make them more accessible. Here are a few of the ways you can volunteer without leaving the house:

• Distributed Proofreaders: Transcribe public domain books to make them available for free online through Project Gutenberg.
• Zooniverse: Identify images or transcribe documents for a variety of research projects in fields like medicine, climate science, and history.
• Smithsonian Transcription Center: Help the Smithsonian museum make its collections more accessible. 
• iNaturalist: Take photos of plants and animals you see to help researchers track population patterns.

Make Something

If you’ve found yourself too busy to make any creative projects in the last few months, now more than ever is a great time to start on them. Some ideas to consider are painting, crocheting, coding, songwriting, or making digital projects like animation.

In addition, the 2020 Congressional Art Competition is currently accepting online submissions of visual art (paintings, photographs, etc, including computer-generated art) for an opportunity to win two airline tickets to Washington, D.C. and have your art displayed in the Capitol building for one year. Second- and third-place winners will have their art displayed in Congressman Brett Guthrie’s office. The competition is accepting submissions until April 28.

Learn Something New

Continuing to learn or experience new things while outside school is important to staving off boredom. Having a more open schedule presents a unique opportunity to learn a new skill or hobby like painting, playing an instrument, or becoming conversational in a new language. There’s a wealth of free resources online to teach you virtually anything you could want to know:

• Duolingo: Learn languages like Spanish, German or Arabic on your own time. Duolingo offers 35 courses for English speakers and ten for native Spanish speakers (including languages like Guarani and Catalan not offered in English-language courses).
• Khan Academy: Courses in math, economics, coding, and more.
• Youtube Learning: A selection of playlists on topics like astronomy, biology, and psychology.
• MusicTheory: Learn music theory. Includes tools to calculate chords and scales.
• SoloLearn: Courses in 13 different programming languages. Also available as an app.

Ultimately, regardless of what you choose to do with your time off, the most important thing to do during the coming weeks as the U.S. climbs toward its peak number of cases is to stay home for the sake of our older or immunocompromised community members. As of the most recent updates, there are 40 confirmed cases in the Barren River district area (consisting of eight counties including Warren County). Staying home helps to contain the further spread of COVID-19 and prevent local hospitals from being overwhelmed.