What is your experience of taking school’s or college online classes during this lockdown?
Our school was set to begin session from March 11, 2020. A week after class 11th PTM. On 5th March, the books were made available for the session.
On 8th March, UP Government ordered closure of educational institutions, three days after I had bought the books and before reopening of the school.
On March 23, 2020, our first online class began.
- Chemistry, maths and physics and computer class occurred on google classroom, where a link to private video of the school YouTube channel would be posted.
- After watching the video, we were given screenshots of these notes to copy in our Notebooks and mail to respective teachers by 17:00 on the same day.
- Some homework was also given, in the form of questions from the textbook. Since most children hadn’t bought them yet, the teachers tracked down the ones who had, and got images from them circulated.
- The time table was 3 classes of 1 hour each a day, in the order Chemistry, Mathu, EngLang and Physics, CS, Englit, on alternate days. English literature class happened at on WhatsApp initially (audio only, with the teacher reading the text and getting us to underline important stuff.
- Initially, the students attended the classes regularly, but by the next week, only about half the students watched the video (reflected in the view count). Feedback said that the given time was too less for doing all the work thus submission deadline was revised to 20:00.
- A very foolish and useless thing was done, in order to ensure attendance. Now, we had to fill a google form everyday to mark the attendance in every class. The link to the form was posted on class WhatsApp group. Now it’s foolish because it just takes 2min to fill the form. It doesn’t guarantee that the student will watch the video. Besides, fake responses of attendance were rampant. Be it names like Ganesh gaitonde or Pablo Escobar. Everyone was a part of our class.
- A better way would be to put the link to attendance in the video description itself. But such feedback perhaps hurts the microscopic ego of teachers. They also took small 20 point tests on weekends, on google forms. In the form of MCQ. It’s certain that they weren’t fair. Everyone was topping. Inevitably, the teacher issues a warning to the offenders, not quite sure of who they are, but primarily suspecting those with a mischievous history in the school.
For 2.5 months the classes went well. In June, they decided to give a 10-day holiday.
What for? As a preparation leave for exams that they would conduct over the rest of June.
Will the marks be on the report card? No.
Will there be cheating? Undoubtedly.
How will they conduct? Write answers in your Notebooks, click the pictures and mail it.
What I’m not understanding is, that what will they possibly gain from a test where :
- Marks aren’t being put on report cards
- Unfair means cannot be prevented
- They are wasting 10 days in holidays which students will most probably spend playing PUBG, and then 20 days for exams where they’ll cheat and get away with it.
- The small weekly test were still fine because they were enough of a revision and didn’t eat into teaching hours.
The lockdown presently seems indefinitely prolonged. When the schools will be allowed to reopen, and in what manner is unknown. Yet, they decide to take tests, rather than completing syllabus. In one month, they could’ve done at least 2 more chapters in each subject. Then, by the time the schools would’ve opened in July, they would’ve had enough chapters to take a full fledged exam (half yearly). It would’ve made future schedule easier, ie, conducting of pre-boards and completing rest of the syllabus.