In these days, most of the students are now involved in online schooling. Yet, some of the students, even the writer of this blog himself was struggling with it. But there are also ways of coping with these struggles. In this article, I will enumerate some of the ways on how to cope up with online schooling.
Why online schooling?
Many students are used to face-to-face schooling. However, in the first months of the year 2020, there was a contagious virus that spreads throughout the world quite fast, in which everybody was forced to stay at their houses all day long to prevent being infected. This is the reason why many businesses closed and even schools are now empty of students. In this time, we are now at the age where we can connect to people in distance without going to their place personally. All thanks to the internet, we are now connected. Also, because of the internet, some of the businesses were opened. Also in schools, they now use the internet to connect to each other, at least virtually. All the schools are having no choice but to continue their system online through the internet making online schooling mandatory.
Home Study: Online schooling vs Homeschooling
Online schooling can also be related to homeschooling. This is because studying and schooling both take place at home. However, there are differences between homeschooling and online schooling.
Homeschooling is usually done by parents, which means, you don't have to enrol at schools since your parents themselves will provide the education for you. Your parents will manage what you need to learn, they have control of how many topics and subjects you need to study. The parents also will keep an eye when everything is too much for their children. They are also in charge of scheduling the time for study and family bonding according to their will.
On the other hand, online schooling is when you are enrolled in a school but you are studying at home. Here, it is not the parents that have a control on your studies, but the teachers in school. They have to teach the students based on the system their superiors have provided. Their schedules do not always go according to the plans of the family of the students.
Because of this, it is expected that problems may occur in online classes and the student will struggle on how to cope up with these problems.
The technology upgrades but not the system.
The school keeps on upgrading their technology to provide the needs of the student, especially for the online classes. These are online learning platforms for student and technologies like computers. However, it is also proven that the school system we are using does not really upgrade but still uses an old-fashioned way of educating students. This is the reason why students are usually pressured on heavy loads of subjects and topics to study, a lot of assignments, and pressured on getting a high grade until they burst. Students are more pressured than before because of the upgrading of digital technologies like smartphones and computers, making them more immersive with it for their leisure time. Therefore, like technology upgrades, the school system must also upgrade.
Few countries tried to upgrade their old fashioned school system. Let's take Finland as an example. It is declared that Finland has the best educational system in the world. They planned to get rid of a lot of major subjects and decided to educate their students more with the needed subjects (reading, writing, arithmetic) and some subject depending on what they want to be when they grow up. In the Philippines, there's what we called "Alternative Learning System" which is reserved for people with disabilities and dropouts from the basic education system. Here, the student can decide on his schedule and it is done at community centres instead of schools. It is also self-instructional and not textbook-based.
Most countries and schools still followed the old school system. So, there will still be a lot of major problems that the student may encounter. It is better when these problems are told out loud instead of hiding it.
What to do when problems arrive?
There are a lot of problems that the student will encounter in online classes. I am going to mention some of these problems and I will try my best to provide a bit of advice in coping up with them.
When you are at home, it is possible that your parents will give you some chores or commands to do, and you have to obey them. The problem is that when you are being commanded while you are still in online classes. Of course, it will bother your concentration in classes. In these instances, my advice is that you have to tell your parents about your class schedule. You should tell them that they must not bother you on these class hours to concentrate at your classes. Also, another option is to do online schooling under the supervision of your parents so that they will always know that you are still in your classes and you must not be bothered.
Some of the teachers are still on their meanest character when they are dealing with students. These cases cause pressure to their students as if they are embarrassed by their teachers in their houses. For example, if the project was late, it will not be accepted. When this teacher was at this kind of behaviour, you have to inform your parents immediately. After you informed them about this teacher, you have to do online classes with that specific teacher under the supervision of your parent. It is also advisable to record the moment when the teacher is mean with your camera or with the app on your laptop and tell it to your parents and your principal. I'm sure that your parents will take an action on the teacher's misbehaviour to prevent it to go further.
If your internet connectivity is not going well, you have to inform your parents as well. It is very important to manage your internet usage, especially when your internet connectivity is relying only on data. If that is the case, you have to reserve your internet usage only for online classes. This is because surfing the internet consumes a lot of your data. It is best to use your internet data wisely.
There are also cases wherein the laptop or the computer of the student does not work properly and it has major issues with it. So, my advice is that before the online classes, you have to inform your parents about the computer. Tell them to check it whether it has issues or not. Also, if your computer is just provided by the government or just an affordable one, you have to use the computer only for online classes. Games in these kinds of computer are discouraged and leisure time is also not recommended. When your computer shuts down unexpectedly very often, you have to save your works in your computer every 5 minutes of your progress and if possible, modify the auto-recovery settings on your app and make it 5 minutes to auto-save the work.
For you to be alright in some kind of projects, you have to tell the teacher your available materials for the project. Tell him what is lacking and the teacher may make considerations. Afterwards, tell your parents about what is needed for the project and they will provide them for you accordingly. Teachers should also be very considerate in these times. Because of the pandemic, all access to the outside world is very limited, so the provision of project materials will also be very limited. This must also be considered.
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These are some of the major problems that most students face in online classes. There will be more problems to mention. So the comment section will be opened on stating your other problems, it will be addressed well on this article and be updated from time to time.
Please state your concerns in the comment section below........
