Remote classes as a student
This post is going to be a lot more positive than the previous ones. Tuesday was a bank holiday in Spain. Yay! For anyone who reads this and is missing some cultural context, having Tuesday or Thursday off often means that Monday or Friday will be class-free days as well. Great for students, but not always so great for teachers who might need that day for their classes. A great compromise for these situations are remote classes. Classes do take place, but students don't have to be sitting in the classroom.
Remote classes aren't even a new and weird way of teaching anymore. Lockdown took care of that over a year ago. What was once weird became necessary in the span of a week. Suddenly, and whether they liked it or not, schools and teachers and students of all ages had to jump in at the deep end of the 21st century.
Pros and cons of remote classes
The biggest advantage is that you can be anywhere. I doubt anyone disagrees with this part. You can even take remote classes while being on the other side of the world. It's amazing! With asynchronous classes -classes where you don't have to be online at a specific time- even schedule problems disappear. I've had the opportunity to enroll in some courses because they were remote. There were even people from other continents there! If you speak several languages, it opens up a whole new world of learning possibilities.
The biggest con, especially keeping the case of children and teenagers in mind, is discipline. Some people have a lot of it, some don't have any and most have it in very different degrees. You need to be able to focus on the class and do your work in a much more independent way. Nobody is looking over your shoulder to see if you're paying attention or have started playing video games instead. If your camera is off, the teacher doesn't know if you're even actually there until their question is met with silence.
Things to keep in mind as a teacher
First of all, teachers need to be familiar with whatever platform they choose. Actually, the very first step is being somewhat comfortable with using any platform at all. This was a big problem during lockdowns all over the world. There were some teachers with only very basic computer skills. See, this is why keeping up with technology is important. You never know when you might need it without prior announcement.
I was very lucky. I grew up with computers and was allowed to play with one in the mid-90s before computers became a general item in Spanish households. My parents trusted me not to break it, even though I was only five or six years old. None of my friends were even allowed to touch their parents' computers until they were a lot older. By the time I was eight years old, I had one in my bedroom and was teaching myself to type with all ten fingers with the help of what I thought was a cool football videogame where you had to type strings of letters to pass the ball, but was probably an example of gamification for adults. The result? I'm not scared of breaking anything or doing any kind of irreparable damage. If I ever end up breaking anything, I'll figure out how to fix it. Also, I've become my family's 24/7 free tech support.
This is, however, not everybody's case. There are a lot of people who have only ever needed to use computers to write documents and check their email and for whom technology is evolving far too quickly for them to keep up with it. To be fair, it's very difficult to keep up with anything if you feel that blogs and webpages are using a foreign language and are assuming you know what they're talking about. I feel the same way about fashion. The few times I've had to look at fashion sites to get some context for translations left me feeling rather hopeless about ever truly understanding or caring about that field.
Back to classes though because there are two groups of people in a classroom: teachers and students. The youngest generation is not supposed to have any problems with technology. After all, everybody who is currently in high school is growing up in the age of technology, right? It's easy to think like that. However, an internet connection and a computer, whether it's a desktop, a laptop or a tablet, are not universal things, not even in developed countries. Even families who do have access to these things may not have a device for each child. They may have smartphones if they're already fifteen or so, but following a class on a smartphone is a huge pain, especially if you're expected to send typed assignments to your teachers. It's important to remember this because, as an adult, it's very easy to forget the reality of a child.
That said, I love remote classes!
The absolute best part of remote learning is that, as I mentioned earlier, it allows people to attend courses that they would have to skip otherwise. I've attended a few in the past and I'm currently enrolled in one that I wouldn't have time to attend if it were in person. There isn't even a guarantee that an in-person version of it would have taken place in my town.
Then, there's the comfort of being at home wearing "house clothes" and slippers and of knowing that no matter how late a class ends, you're done afterwards. Long tiring commutes disappear and all your energy goes to the class.
Do I think remote learning will disappear? Definitely not! However, I doubt it will replace in-person learning any time soon and, as much as I like online classes, I really hope it doesn't. There's a certain human element missing in online classes. Exchanging ideas does work a lot better in person where you can keep talking while you're going to get a coffee during breaks. In addition, it's often more awkward to ask for clarification through written means, whether it's an email or a forum, than in person during or after a class. Written text often feels a lot more formal than the situation demands. Also, remote learning as an adult is probably very different than as a child or teenager. In any case, whatever way of learning you prefer, don't forget that it's healthy to go out for walks and to meet other people every now and then. As huge and awesome as the internet is, nothing compares to seeing the world in person.
Do you like remote learning? Do you hate it? Have you ever been part of it? Feel free to leave your opinion in the comments.
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