The outbreak of the pandemic COVID – 19 started in the month of November at Wuhan in China, but in my wildest dreams I did not imagine that it would hit us so badly. In India, the first case was reported in the month of January in Kerala. Then too, I was under the impression that it would be something like the NIPHA that had affected us last year and could be soon overcome.
On March 8th our school declared holidays for 2 weeks. As the number of reported cases started surging, the seriousness of the situation began to sink into me, when the exams were waived off and all the students got promoted to the next class.
Like a bolt from the blue on 25th of March the Prime Minister, Mr. Narendara Modi announced lockdown till the 27th of April. Everything came to a grinding halt as we were restricted to our homes.
In fact, the whole country came to a standstill. I started to understand the harsh reality that the pandemic was highly contagious.
The teachers of 10th and 12th classes began to panic as all vacation classes got cancelled. The big question that hung like a dagger on our heads was that, “How will we complete our syllabus?”
This is when the center and state governments directed all school managements to initiate online teaching.
This concept was a hard nut to crack in the teaching learning process. Most of the schools did not have the technological expertise and funds to purchase the required devices and applications. Our school began by making the parents to understand the need of the hour. By the cooperation of the parents, students and teachers, school could go ahead by not leaving any stone unturned for providing quality education.
The most suitable platform named OLASH was chosen by our school to reach out to the students and making it user friendly both for students and teachers. We were trained by school management through online meetings and presentations. Then students were also given the necessary information regarding the working of the whole process through online meetings and detailed instructions through circulars.
As most of our school teaching in the classroom is done through smart digital boards, it was not so difficult in doing online classes. Our school management took a wise decision to conduct both recorded video lessons as well as live classes everyday. The recorded video lessons can be played any number of times. The school prepared a roster for teachers to come in to record their classes and also provided the equipment for this purpose. The one good thing about the whole process was that, the editing, animation and mixing was done by experts appointed by our school.
So teachers had to just prepare for their classes and do the recording. This method was to be followed by all the subjects. Those teachers who were not able to come to school due to travel restrictions were given the option of recording their video lessons at home. As we all know necessity is the mother of all inventions, teachers devised various methods to present their recorded lessons in the best and most effective manner. As I cannot reach school, I am doing my biology lessons for secondary and higher secondary using in shot app from home. All of sudden it was a giant leap technologically for teachers, students and parents. Students are given mail id created by school as they can log in only by their admission number and the password provided by school.
Now let me enumerate the advantages and disadvantages of class room teaching and online teaching.
Classroom Learning Advantages
Students can ask questions, discuss issues with fellow students, maps, smart boards demonstration of live experiments, specimens etc.
There is ample opportunity for social interaction, support and access to on-campus student facilities like extracurricular activities, games etc.
Teachers can monitor the weak students closely in a better way along with it correction of notebooks and conduction of assessments can be monitored properly.
School provides the holistic development of a child as it inculcates social, cultural and moral values.
Classroom Learning Disadvantages
Travel time and cost.
Students have to sit through each lecture even if they already know most of the material.
Online Learning Advantages
No need to travel, saving time and money.
You can undertake online learning whenever and wherever you like: early morning, while commuting or eating, during work breaks or in the evening. At home, in coffee shops, or on the train.
Online learning usually includes pre-recorded videos. Sometimes these are simple recordings of lectures with or without accompanying slides.
The speed up videos during easy parts, and slow them down to understand more difficult concepts. One can pause the videos while writing notes or re-watch them as often as necessary. If videos or transcripts can be downloaded to your device you will then have unlimited access to them.
Strikes, emergencies and holidays arising out of unforeseen circumstances etc., will not affect the conduction of classes. Thus the working days are not lost and classes can go on at a regular pace without the fear of losing teaching periods and there is no need to rush with the syllabus.
In the present scenario of this pandemic, we need to maintain social distancing and high level of hygiene, not only this there are travel restrictions in place and no availability of public transport.
School managements are at an advantage because the maintenance cost is reduced, number of teachers and other staff can be reduced, and no transportation is required so again there is cost cutting.
Online Learning Disadvantages
No face-to-face contact with fellow students or course staff.
No student facilities such as laboratories or libraries, practical activities to be done at home, virtual laboratory experiments, reading lists of freely-available papers or temporary subscriptions to journals.
It can be hard to find answers to questions or resolve difficulties, especially when discussion forum participation is low.
You need effective self-motivation.
Lack of extracurricular activities, games etc.
Holistic development is restricted.
Net wok issues
In this mode of education the initial expenditure is more because devices are expensive and in a house where the number of children is more parents find it difficult to cope up because more number of devices is needed.
We can very well equate this transition with the scientific term metamorphosis. Just as the egg of a butterfly changes to caterpillar then to pupa and finally to an adult online teaching will also emerge as an effective medium of instruction and in the present scenario this is the best possible solution.
All said and done the virtual classroom cannot replace the traditional classroom because it is by its very essence or nature not completely ‘real. ‘Teaching on the Internet is teaching in virtual reality, but not in reality.
All parents are technologically not updated so they find it difficult to solve issues related to be the working and usage of various applications.
The same applies to the teachers also.
We can very well equate this transition with the scientific term metamorphosis. Just as the egg of a butterfly changes to caterpillar then to pupa and finally to an adult online teaching will also emerge as an effective medium of instruction and in the present scenario this is the best possible solution.
All said and done the virtual classroom cannot replace the traditional classroom because it is by its very essence or nature not completely ‘real. ‘Teaching on the Internet is teaching in virtual reality, but not in reality.