Teachers, students miss physical connect during online classes, state problems of connectivity, exhaustion
Covid-19 pandemic has changed the course of education, forcing everyone to go online. Three months of online schooling has transformed the teacher-student relationship.
From facing technical glitches and learning advanced multimedia teaching aids to not being able to give extra attention to students who require more care and suffering from physical exhaustion, teachers are tackling the new normal of imparting education with a cautious approach. Students too believe that they need more physical attention and the online way of teaching is just not enough for them.
Covid-19 pandemic has changed the course of education, forcing everyone to go online. Three months of online schooling has transformed the teacher-student relationship. For this transformation, having a glitch-free internet connection and electricity at home have become important aspects to continuing online schooling. In June, the government decided not to reopen schools as more institutions joined the online teaching platform.
“Nothing can beat experience of learning at physical classrooms where children come to school and interact with the teachers,” says secondary section coordinator Swapna Nair, Vikhe Patil Memorial School, Lohegaon. While another teacher, Amrapali Khunte from Angel Mickey Minie School, Manjri, said that managing less attentive students becomes quite a challenge when everything is online.
For school teachers, students and parents adjusting to the new set up is turning out to be a completely a new challenge. “Challenges of online teaching double up if you are a parent cum teacher. Handling your child and conducting online classes has become difficult. One needs to make sure that the kid is occupied with work while I take a class,” explains Sayali Shinde, teacher at City International School, Aundh.
“Although we are manage to share lot of information but yes there are set of specific students who needs attention physically and those things are missing in online education,” said Nair
“Although all teachers in my school are tech-savvy, all of them are not used to assist students online. Getting the right platform, solving connectivity issues and ensuring that all methods used for teaching online are working, were few of the hurdles we faced in the beginning, but now we are getting used to it,” said Arti Sharma, teacher at the Army Public School, Kirkee.
Online teaching has increased the workload for teachers and they are more busy than during pre-Covid times. From preparing powerpoint presentations and videos to making e-notes for students, teachers are now having to work 24x7 to get the job done better.
Long breaks/extra curricular activities
While schools are providing long breaks between two online sessions to break the monotony, they have also introduced various extracurricular activities to help students relax. “We conduct quiz and debate competitions online. Our students took part in the Fit India Freedom Run on August 15 as they uploaded virtual run videos,” said Sharma.
Upgrade systems/ data plans
“Normal mobile data connections used to work for the school sessions for the first few weeks, but now stronger bandwidth connections are required. Recently during a unit test my child started his exam via his school web portal but she was not able to submit it as the system crashed due to overload,” said a parent on the condition of anonymity.
Ajay Mehta, whose son Ayan studies at DAV Public School, said, “Earlier, we had just one laptop, but now we have three- one each for two of my children, who study in Class 6 and 8.”
Tiring lectures
Online lectures not only miss the environment of a classroom, but are also physically exhausting for teachers and students.
Manas Arora, a Class 8 student of St Vincent’s School, said, “Attending lectures online is not that interactive as we used to have when we went to school.”
On how online schooling affects students and parents, Booshan Shukla, a child psychiatrist, said, “Some students are happy with online schooling while some who like to be with friends or need physical attention are facing some challenges. There are also cases where schools kept telling parents regarding the problems of their children, but parents denied it. Now, they are realising it when they have to spend five hours with their kids during online classes.”