Online Schooling or Schooling online?

From childhood, we heard many times that outdoor play is so crucial for kids, but today, when everyone is staying in stress and isolation, outdoor play has taken a backseat. Kids now understand that it’s better to stay at home than going out.

The new academic year has started for many kids and they are getting accustomed to studying online. This pandemic has no doubt changed the education system forever, there is drastic rise in digital learning. Many schools are opting for digital platform to continue their classes.

Though it’s good in a way that kids are not missing out on studies but at the same time we need to see how effective these are for kids. Screen time has increased for kids and kids are learning new rules of class. How effective these classes will be is something we need to see in future.

But in general the effectiveness of online learning varies amongst age groups. For kids studying in higher classes it is quite easy to adapt online classes barring boredom and loss of interest but when it comes to younger kids they generally need a structured environment to study and with online classes half of that structure is gone. They cannot see the teacher and keeping them engaged becomes difficult. To make classes effective schools has to go beyond the normal physical structure, because simply replicating classes won’t serve the purpose so classes has to be made appropriate to the platform.

Apart from kids there are parents to be taken care of as well. Parents who wants there child to be involved every single time, monitoring how many times their child participated in each class and creating a pressure on both, teacher and the child.

Though as parents we keep on telling kids to focus on what teacher is teaching, deep down we know that sitting in front of the screen and listening to someone is quite boring and staying focused is quite difficult. More difficult for younger kids who anyway have small attention span, but still, we parents do what parents need to do. 

Some helicopter parents want to make sure that their child gets full attention (even when the child doesn’t want to say anything), so they are glued next to the child and studying again. 

Many times during these classes I seriously pray things to get normal soon, so that at least kids and teachers can have some uninterrupted time without some hyperactive parent around.

Kids also want parents to go away and leave them alone to learn without two people teaching the same thing and in the process making them confused. 

Today in creative writing class my seven-year-old son wrote a story about how a scientist found a cure of covid 19 and saved the world and I wondered if I am also in his list to get away with. Am I also monitoring him continuously and is it time for me to back off? 

Whatever the case be but one thing is clear it’s not only us adults, even small kids want their freedom back.  

Parents needs to understand that this pandemic has changed physical learning to online learning and what is important is dissemination of knowledge. So they should try to be supporter not the barrier for their child’s education. They don’t want a cosseter around them to increase their trouble. They want to play with their friends without any fear and learn the old way while having fun, so lets not make things even more complicated for kids.

Schools on the other hand needs to included more blended learning options to make education more effective based on the platform being used. There is a need to be creative in educating kids, so schools needs to try more options and I am sure many of them are trying to do that as we speak.

This hasty move might have taken us off-guard but we never know this move to online learning can become a catalyst to create new form of education system. As of now this is new normal for students and kids are adapting to this new normal.