Due to technological advancement, there are always pre-warnings of incoming/expected natural disasters, and countries tend to prepare for it. But the current world pandemic never gave a warning.
The covid-19 disaster did hit the world hard and forced everyone to stay at home. As a way of curbing the spread before vaccines are found.
Education is one of the most crucial sectors of the world to be affected.
Schools shut their doors to kids. Preparing to start teaching and learning online. Something, many haven’t done before.
Now, parents have to ensure their children don’t forget what they have learnt completely.
Schools do not want their students to fall behind. So, the question becomes, how do you make use of technology in learning that you weren’t prepared for?
Many parents are already complaining that their children have forgotten all they have learnt before schools were shut.
It is vital for schools to take the right steps and become present in the lives of its students at a crucial time as this. Any school that fails to make proper plan for its students to keep learning at this time, has failed in realizing its goal.
Many schools have not been experimenting virtual teaching, so when this covid-19 forced people all over the world to stay at home, most schools became lost, not knowing how to start.
It is important that in this age of technology, schools make some areas of learning virtual in order to keep its students up do date with technology.
If students had several interaction with virtual classroom in the past then the schools would not have been stranded during this period.
Setting up a virtual teaching app for the school would familiarized the students,parents and teachers with how virtual classroom works.
Giving and submitting homework and test online, holding short classes online and sharing information with parents and students online are some of the many ways schools can make use of e-learning.
How schools can help its students learn during covid-19
• decide what app to use for live video teaching and inform parents to download it.
• find the best app that is good for online test (CBT) and talk parents and student through how it works. I use Spectrum app in my school and we give timed test and classwork with it
•prepare the programe as though its normal school calendar and activities. Consider breaks, mid-term test and breaks and final assessment at the end of a three months period
• keeping attendance of students that are constantly present and those that are not and try to carry everyone along.
As a school you can decide for your teachers to be present in school at least twice a week for the live classes where you can all be connected to one wifi source and other days just share worksheet with your students.
Without a doubt, the school will need to charge a reasonable amount for this because, virtual teaching are not exactly cheap but will also consider the financial difficulty of many families during this time of covid-19 crisis.
If you find your path, you can sail your way through this difficult time where e-learning has proved to be important all over the world.
For the teachers and the students.
Education101today 