From the virtual to the real with new normal norms

From the virtual to the real with new normal norms

With much relief and happiness we’re breaking this to you that learners of grades 9th through 12th are coming back to school with due permission from the government. As the situation is looking up and the risks of infection have come down, we hope confinement is over and our schools will brighten up with leaners’ shuffling in the school corridors, running in the playground and, most importantly, holding real books in their hands. The screen and the distance standing between an educator and a learner will go away and we’ll connect once again on a human level, and if you’re wondering if we’re putting our children at risk, here’s why we think we should open.

1. Connection: Education is one of the fields which demands human interaction as it is a dynamic area giving rise to dynamic questions and solutions. With online education, due to the absence of visual, and sometimes verbal inputs, teachers were always left in doubt whether or not a student has learnt a topic. Now that they’re back, we’ll be able to reconnect.

2. Better assessment: With online classes, another big hurdle was making a fair assessment of the learner’s abilities. Since examinations were held online with the learner taking the test from home, proctoring became less authentic and less fair. With schools starting again, assessments will regain their authenticity and validity.

3. Poor connectivity: Poor connectivity stood as a hindrance to teaching-learning many occasions. Sometimes the teacher’s voice broke making it impossible for the learner to understand and respond to the teacher’s question. Students would go in and out of a session because of the unstable network.

While we did have some advantages in the online mode, education did not reach its intended audience, and schools restarting will solve this main issue. We hope, there is no third wave and learning will not be affected in any way anymore.