SHILLONG: The nationwide lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic has reduced households to virtual educational institutions.
With schools unable to function in the lockdown period, they have started giving online classes in order to complete academic syllabi in the face of fast changing scenario where education is seeing distinctive rise in e-learning and teaching is undertaken remotely on digital platforms.
With the aid of technology, whether it is office or school — all can be directly sourced right inside your home and carry on with the same level of tasks even as some are wondering whether this increasing dependence on online learning is going to persist post-pandemic and whether this shift is going to impact the education.
School teachers observed that if they don’t take the online classes then students as well as teachers will be unnecessarily burdened whenever school reopens.
Many such schools in the town, such as, Kendriya Vidyalayas, MBoSE schools, other CBSE and ICSE board schools have already started imparting online classes to their students.
These classes run in line with the academic classroom periods and follow the same timelines and the only difference is that a student partaking the coaching is receiving at the comfort of his/her home instead of what is seen normally inside a classroom.
The BSF Senior Secondary School has started taking online classes of their students since last month immediately after the CBSE has issued an order to promote students to their next standards, respectively.
The teachers of this school is utilizing the newly launched Zoom App by Zoom Video Communications Inc. which allows online meetings, video webinar, conference room, phone system, chatting and much more.
Students of standard ten of this school, who were placed in a group, informed how their teachers use PDF pages of chapters of each subject that go live on the app.
The school uses the popular messenger service provider WhatsApp for class notes and assignments.
For mathematics and other practical classes, the Zoom App provides the same experience of whiteboard and marker pen otherwise used in classrooms.
Students new to this app are seen jotting down the solutions to the exercises of mathematics and science as their teacher is solving them on the live screen using a virtual pen.
Online classes are also being conducted by All Saints Diocesan HS School on WhatsApp.
Appreciating the initiative, Afreen Begum, whose wards are students of class six in this school said, “The online video classes are good and effort made by the teachers to explain the students is excellent and interesting. Explanation follows questions and answers.”
Gunalan Chettiar, a resident of Chennai, working here in a telecom service provider, aid that his children are receiving online education back in the southern city vide a new mobile app, Zoho, that enables educational and training institutes to serve their students online.
He said that the app which provides free classes for all government schools in the country is different from other apps in the market since it does not need the support of additional disintegrated apps such as video content delivery, classroom communication, assignment management tools, video lessons and project creation applications and the class is built on one single platform.
There are also other platforms like Microsoft Teams, which are being used by the private training institutes here as they provide collaboration among peers.
However, not all school students are privileged to experience such online classes.
Plight of rural schools
The state government run schools are lagging behind in conducting such online classes for want of expertise.
Also majority students of these schools, who are from economically weaker section, do not possess smart phones especially those who are from the rural areas.
A teacher of a reputed deficit pattern school of the state government said that majority of the students of government run schools are in the rural areas where they don’t have internet facilities like what we see here in Shillong.
Informing that the students of government schools cannot be compared with their counterparts in the bigger non-government schools here, her counterpart from a private school observed that even government online applications like Diksha, Swayam Prabha, E-pathshala can be hardly used by students due to their economic condition and want of internet.
“The wide disparity between haves and have-nots can be seen in case of online classrooms,” they observed adding that the M-Tabs which were dished out by former Chief Minister Mukul Sangma under Students Digital Learning Aid Scheme are nowhere to be seen.
Students are also seen utilising free online tutoring platforms, such as, Byju’s, Vedantu, Toppr, Meritnation and others to understand subjects as these platforms provides online solutions with explanations and other study materials to students of national level boards.
However, these online classes are not free from network congestions causing several inconveniences in the middle of a session while even forcing teachers to leave them half way in exasperation.
Internet consumption is currently at its pinnacle in the town like anywhere else in the country and there are often complaints of slow speed from many.