It is now over a week for our mixed teaching/learning situation during this difficult time when everyone has challenges to accomplish different tasks.
As a class teacher then, now online guide to my chosen and lucky angels, the daily hurdle was hard, challenging and sometimes draining on the psyche. Yes, not all of my learners are able to cope with this just because they don’t have the required technology like android phone, ipad, desktop, laptop or any of those learning tools that some of the lucky few have.
Anyway, given the above situation, I believe that parents could do something valuable for their children’s education by making every effort to have a working mobile phone for an online lesson. However, there are various reasons why some parents are unable to provide their children with such care, simply due to poverty, unemployment, lack of education or motivation to keep up with the current trends in the establishment of education and the provision of learning to hold, especially in this COVID-19 pandemic.
Anyhow, there are pros and cons to distance learning, especially blended learning, for kids and parents alike.
ADVANTAGES
1. Children now have plenty of time to navigate through the different applications to absorb the lessons and apply them in their everyday lives.
2. Parents can see how their children are using their study time. You could even help them budget their time to complete all the tasks at hand without letting other tasks fall by the wayside. Teachers, like me, send their students home a guide to use as a reference so their subjects can be taken for a specific amount of time, including a number of minutes.
3. Children can demonstrate their Internet use skills, such as finding a story to read, a photo to write an essay, and facts about important events in history, especially during the holidays, and other memory exercises in social sciences subjects, just to mention a few.
4. Parents have the time to help their children with their reading and writing tasks, as well as with the difficulties their children encounter in arithmetic, science, and so on.
5. Children also have the time to be more talkative in front of their camera or whatever while answering questions, sharing stories and other activities where speaking is the goal, especially how to express themselves, with confidence minus the interactions of Face to face.
6. Parents usually also have the opportunity to learn, a kind of review of their previous schooling; of course with updated information, changing irrelevant ones to more pertinent ones, especially on science topics, say, number of planets and so on.
7. Children also have the opportunity to become global citizens by learning all about the Internet of Things and collaborating with other learners around the world. Yes, teachers must have a buddy teacher from another country, e.g. B. a science class in the Philippines learning with the science class in the US about the different landscapes in winter and of course the sunny weather in the Philippines. With videos, photos and the like, both learners in these two countries were able to learn a lot from each slide presentation shared via Google Meet, Zoom Meeting and other technological tools for this purpose.
DISADVANTAGE
1. Children without a reliable internet connection are left behind in online learning. However, with available modules; Well, everyone has a chance to learn the concepts, examples, and deep learning once a conscientious teacher implements enrichment or improvement programs for those who need them. Yes, creativity is key to provide all learning opportunities to children facing technological challenges in online learning. Aside from missing out on those gadgets like Android phones, Lappies or desktops, the internet load also becomes a hindrance because who can afford that when the parents are unemployed, in abject poverty and you know what.
2. Parents suffer even more stress when their children are not able to keep up with their peers, neighbors competing with their children and other unequal opportunity scenarios, a sad reality majority in my class belong to this situation where keeping up with the Juans is impossible to do.
3. Kids, the adventurous and everyone, resort to online scams. Yes, there is a group chat where answers to modules are uploaded and a lazybones just copy and paste them and viola getting the perfect score the recognition later as top honors and so on. Oh my god, this pathetic level of education could be a training ground for future leaders who do nothing sensible but magnify themselves and so on.
4. Parents have all the burden when their kids haven’t yet mastered time management, discipline, and honesty in completing their task, let’s say they review classes before going online, answer modules with integrity, and the like.
5. Children have more time to distract themselves with different things on the internet. Yes, some are good at navigating different websites and could be in great danger if they open dangerous websites that are inappropriate for their mental age and corrupt their innocent minds with garbage and other ideologies that could harm them than to help them improve their literacy and arithmetic challenges.
6. Parents have trouble getting their children to answer the modules, especially when they have more than 10 in a week and 4 children have this type of modality. However, in the online class when an Android phone is available, how could they have the same time to attend when they can hardly cope with the weak internet signal, the load and other challenges in a house of needs?
Here we go. If you are free from such challenges then you are lucky to overcome all these challenges and would emerge victorious if you keep learning during this difficult time. However, courage, resilience and perseverance can be our salvation as we face these glaring realities. No matter what challenges stand in our way of teaching/learning, we always expect the best result from our best. Cheer up, always. Stay safe, sane and a saint. Bottom up!
Thanks to Larry Icabandi Nabiong | #Pros #Cons #Distance #Learning #COVID19 #Pandemic
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