Education Amid Covid-19

Covid-19 has transformed our lives rapidly. Quarantine has been implemented, lots of Company shutdown, employees lose their jobs, work from home set-up, online or modular classes, and uncertainty of the effectiveness of vaccines.

Let's just talk about how is this online classes going on so far and what could be the Outcome of it?

What is online classes mean?

An online class is a course conducted over the Internet. They are generally conducted through a learning management system, in which students can view their course syllabus and academic progress, as well as communicate with fellow students and their course instructor.

On the other hand, modular classes is done thru paperworks,where teacher will print out the courses, instructions and the evaluation.

I had experience being a teacher before. I handled grade 7 students of four(4) sections and grade 9 students of 2 sections. As some people know, we have a theory of multiple intelligences by Howard Gardner.

It's a theory that proposes that people are not born with all of the intelligence they will ever have.This theory challenged the traditional notion that there is one single type of intelligence, sometimes known as “g” for general intelligence, that only focuses on cognitive abilities. To broaden this notion of intelligence, Gardner introduced eight different types of intelligences consisting of: Linguistic, Logical/Mathematical, Spatial, BodilyKinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, and Naturalist. Please see the picture below:

Hence, the theory had shown us that people don't have just a general intelligence but we can have multiple. It also gives us an idea that people are divergent.

Some believe that the unplanned and rapid move to online learning – with no training, insufficient bandwidth, and little preparation – will result in a poor user experience that is unconducive to sustained growth, others believe that a new hybrid model of education will emerge, with significant benefits. “I believe that the integration of information technology in education will be further accelerated and that online education will eventually become an integral component of school education,“ says Wang Tao, Vice President of Tencent Cloud and Vice President of Tencent Education.

Let's take a look on the news of some of its impact .

Some students chose to quit school due to the internet connection problem, limited gadget, noise disturbance, the room is cramped, and the room temperature. The student appears in the picture is named Berna. "I can't focused well on the discussion of my teacher due to the bad internet connection", as she added.

Rep. France Castro, acts teachers party list, agreed to the face-to-face classes because theres a limit in online learning. She also added "no other type of class that can reciprocate the face to face classes. Interaction and socialization is very essential to learning".

Based on my observation here at our Barangay, colleges do online classes and daycare to senior high school do modular.

I have one brother and friends who's in college now. Some teachers do video calling sessions for discussions, oral examination and some performance task.

I can see how difficult it is. They couldn't understand the teacher well due to the bad internet connection. If I am the teacher I would probably do this:

• Make video discussion instead rather than video calling session discussion and sent it to group chats or group page on Facebook. It is accessible to everyone anytime and they will have the chance of rewind it and understand the topic well.

• Topic should be discussed in a simple way as much as possible for the students to comprehend it easily.

• Oral examination should be done atleast once a week. So students can secure load for internet and gadgets for it.

• Provide resources(PDF,PPT or Document)

I have a friend, his name is Earl. He mentioned how hard to understand the topic especially when he is a criminology student. They had to be knowledgeable about law. He admitted that he has an average mind, that he needs the aid of teachers. So I advice him, that he can use YouTube and some other links he can access to help him understand the topic.

Some students have been exposed to Google, YouTube and other learning resources we can online but there are some that are not.

The differences of students can't be attained by online classes.

Modular classes on the other hand, it has somewhat the same with the online classes But they are more on paper works. They also use online resources and share the same problem with the online class since they also need the teachers aid.

Those in the primary school(daycare, kindergarten, and elementary), are I think the most affected on it. They have low attention span and find no motivation to do the school activities since they just do it with the parents or siblings at home unlike than that in the school. Some parents are the one who finished the school's of their children.

What could the education when face to face will come back? Teachers might be having a hard time coping up with the lessons the student have missed during pandemic as well as the students themselves.

What about the newly college graduates? Have they received better education during the pandemic?

Those are just questions I have.

Source:

https://tophat.com/glossary/o/online-class/#:~:text=An%20online%20class%20is%20a%20course%20conducted%20over%20the%20Internet.&text=Online%20classes%20are%20generally%20self,such%20as%20edX%20or%20Coursera.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning/