How teachers took the classroom online
They give
lessons on Hangouts
Correct homework on WhatsApp
Turn iPads into whiteboards
‘Ma’am,
ma’am, it’s S’s birthday today,” is a familiar refrain for most school
teachers. It’s usually followed up with everyone singing for S while she sits
there, with an awkward smile plastered on her face. A similar celebration took
place in Shrawasti Ganguli’s virtual classroom recently. The children did sing
happy birthday, but it was over Google Hangouts, and one even brought out a
keyboard to add some flair to the performance.
Ganguli is
the head of the English department in Delhi’s Sanskriti School and has been
conducting classes for students of Class 12, as well as observing classes for
10th graders. “It’s not just about academics,” Ganguli says. “They should have
some routine, especially because everything is so morbid and gloomy right now.”
Teachers and professors across the country are having to adapt to a whole new
mode of teaching. No longer able to waltz into the classrooms, they’re having
to record audio or video sessions, trying not to get too self-conscious about
how they look or sound (yes, teachers get self-conscious too. Who knew?).
Others are holding classes on video conferencing apps like Zoom and Google
Hangouts, dealing with poor connections, infrastructural constraints and the
lack of control over whether students are paying attention or just texting each
other.
Ashwini
Deshpande, professor of economics at Ashoka University has been teaching online
for two weeks now, and has written a piece about her experience. The first
week, she made audio recordings of her lectures and sent them to her students.
“It’s very odd because you’re sitting alone in a room with your iPad and you’re
just speaking. I’ve done episodes of podcasts before, but even then, you’re
being interviewed. Here, I’m just sitting on my own and going on talking,” she
says. “You wonder, should I be beating this point? After all, they can rewind
this if they need to.” Since then, she’s been holding classes through video
conferencing platforms, which has more of a classroom-feel, even though she
misses being able to read their expressions and adapt her teaching style
accordingly.
Though
technology has allowed teaching to continue, the experience of the classroom
cannot be wholly replicated online. Dr Avitoli Zhimo, assistant professor at
the department of anthropology, University of Delhi, says she misses the
debates and discussions that happen in the classroom. “I miss the physical
interactions where they laugh at my sarcasm. I teach social anthropology where
nothing is concrete and finalised, and there’s always room for debate,” says
Zhimo who has made private Facebook groups for each of the papers she teaches
where she holds classes via Facebook Live. Her students ask questions in the
comments, and she leaves the video up for anyone who may have missed it.
One of her
students is Sagarika Rao. The 23-year-old says that while it’s nice to be able
to really pay attention to a lecture without furiously taking handwritten notes
and while really committing to the out-of-bed look, she would much rather be in
the classroom right now. “We can use the comment section to shamelessly
interrupt her, so there is some level of interactivity. But it’s not comparable
to classroom teaching. It’s our last semester, and it’s so sad to think about
the fact that we have already had our last class,” she says.
It’s not just
teaching that’s happening online. Deshpande says she’s held office hours, which
are one-on-one sessions with students virtually. Sanskriti School released
report cards and held result discussions online. And the lockdown doesn’t mean an
end to homework and assignments either, with many institutes using learning
management platforms to make handing in assignments easier. Zhimo says her
inbox was flooded with students sending over assignments, making her not even
want to open it before she switched over to Google Classroom.
Some
educators see this period as providing a gateway to think about education
differently. Satyam Mishra, co-founder of non-profit Project U-turn and a
Global Girls Education fellow teaches maths to kids with special needs in
classes 4 and 9, as well as students preparing for engineering entrance exams.
“Maybe by the end of this, we will be able to develop a Khan Academy of our
own. Using interactive videos and other technology to customise education for
students based on what they need is the next step,” says the Puneresident.
Having lost his trusty whiteboard and marker to a lockdown-struck classroom,
he’s relying on apps like Vittle to explain mathematical concepts using
drawing. His students send their doubts over WhatsApp and he shoots videos of
him solving the question. When they submit homework over WhatsApp, he draws big
ticks on the correct answers and circles the areas they need to work on.
Syed Ali
Nadeem Rezavi, chairman and coordinator of the Centre of Advanced Study,
Department of History at AMU has been livestreaming his lectures on medieval
India on YouTube. It’s not just his students who are watching these, but also
history enthusiasts and students from other universities as well. Not all
teachers are so quick to adapt though, Rezavi adds. “There are people who have
been delivering lectures using the same notes for years. They don’t want these
to be up online.”
To Deshpande,
it’s clear that the best part of college is not the classroom, not for the
students or the teachers. It’s the times spent drinking coffee with your peers,
getting into discussions, sharing ideas, meeting different kinds of people. All
things that get lost in this model of virtual learning, for all its virtues.
Source | Times of India | 5th April 2020
Regards
Mr.
Pralhad Jadhav
Master of
Library & Information Science (NET Qualified)
Senior
Manager @ Knowledge Repository
Khaitan
& Co
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