Progeny of online education

    We have seen the rise of digital usage of online platforms in the recent months exponentially increasing to a all time high with webinars, online discussions and the like over internet. As they tell that necessity is the mother of invention, the need of the hour to maintain social distancing and remain safe has necessitated almost all of us including L.K.G students to go online and get familiarised with the tools.

    In this quest of going online and doing digital, how does the teaching world adjust itself if online becomes the norm. Are students really able to understand what is being taught online? Are they even listening? What is their body language? How can we gauge whether an introvert student is able to understand or not? What happened to the sharing values that were previously being taught to children? Has the pandemic changed the norms and values for our children? Can the old, stereotyped teachers adjust to this online technology norms? 

    First in the perspective of students, we need to classify students those with interest and those without interest. Those interested or matured enough to understand the value of education will progress irrespective of online or offline. But what about adolescents? How can they cope up with the connectivity issues, distractions, manipulations and stress? Students will have to be monitored by the parents at home. Has studying from home really helped the student learn better or made it even worse? Are the students disciplined enough to concentrate and learn on their own? Are we pushing our children to use technology devices and help them get addicted to technology and social media right from childhood?

    Teaching is something sacred. It cannot be done by everyone. Having knowledge and teaching are two different things. Having abundant knowledge doesn't necessarily qualify that person as a teacher. A good teacher needs to understand the psychology of his/her student, know about the the strengths and weaknesses, do qualitative discrimination of the understanding capability of the student and accordingly adjust the teaching level so that every student is able to comprehend what is being thought. The body language, eye contact, proximity and exclusiveness in explanation for each student matters in delivering quality education. How can we do this online? The online platform is believed to be better than conventional teaching as it is believed that it gives the opportunity for the student to ask doubts without fear which might not be possible in conventional. What is the guarantee that the student will ask doubts online? Its just an assumption that we are making. But how do we really understand the student mindset who are just online for the sake of attendance and might not really learn anything? How do we make them read? Even constant picking and quizzing online has its limitations. Our syllabus are time bound. Just imagine explaining a concept and quizzing each and every student. How much time does it take? Are we at a leisure to spend such amount of time when we have deadlines to complete the syllabus? Monitoring of students becomes highly unfeasible in online.

    Next comes the problem of money and class. Are all people alike are able to afford technology products and internet? Now, lets consider a family of four. Two working parents and two school going children. The parents are busy with work from home and webinars. The children are taking online classes. This means that the basic requirement in the house is an internet connectivity with good bandwidth and at least 4 technology devices. Now considering the situation in the rural areas, how many families are able to afford this? Then comes the power. Power cuts are very common and how to cope up with this cost? The purpose of education is to make people inclusive in the growth of the country. Are we on the verge to make education more exclusive to the very few by adopting online or are we on the edge of education explosion where everyone is knowledgeable and employable because of online access? Only time will give answers for everything.