Online Education in The Time of The Corona-virus: How Teachers Dealing with Technology

COVID-19 has forced us to create a new model. It is not very simple and it is different from everything we have come to know, but the teachers give it their all because what wins is the desire to continue teaching and guide the educational success of the students.

Schools closed throughout the US and all around the world, but they are actively teaching. Even some institutes have adopted the entire e-learning model, but even before that, this was the almost immediate choice made by some schools and some teachers, who have been involved in digital teaching for years.

Misconception About Digital Devices as Evil

Just a few months before, as had been happening periodically for at least five or six years, digital devices seemed to many people that it was absolute evil and represented cyclically in the newspapers, on TV and on social. Now the “if” has been (finally) abolished and we are racking our brains on the “how”. They are precious and, we have to say, indispensable for the school to stay alive and not stop.

During The COVID-19 Period, Teachers Became Apocalyptic

The apocalyptic manifests a critical attitude towards distance learning initiatives as if it were not foreseen in the teacher’s skills to also have professionalism suitable for creating online teaching paths and this request was yet another forcing of a school system now corrupted by digital and technology. Perhaps this category could belong to those teachers, who have never practiced digital mediums at school in everyday life and have always been a little suspicious and skeptical. But think about the system now, it has completely become online schooling where teachers are playing an apocalyptic role due to the spread of corona. Even so many guardians have chosen online educational platforms to educate their children.

Integrated Teachers

The integrated teachers instead consciously embrace the online lesson because they had been immersed in digital teaching for some time, between a reproach of the apocalyptic and an invective of the parent suffering from various indecision, that is the belief that the past is always better than the present and the future. They are experts in applications, platforms, digital tools, and online communication. They generously offer their skills on social media or on their Youtube channel, inhabiting more or less all available media. Finally, digital, snubbed by colleagues and sometimes even by school leaders, is the frontier that arrives and they were already in it for some time.

Willing Teachers

The third category is that of the willing teachers. They do not feel digital courses, they might have wanted to be before, but too many uncertainties and doubts had always inhibited them. Many of them recognized themselves unprepared for this situation, but it can no longer be postponed and have rolled up their sleeves.

Ultimately, they turned on smartphones and tablets, put on their headphones and flocked to webinars, downloading applications of all kinds, asking for advice and suggestions in professional groups on Facebook. This gives people a lot of confidence. Maybe a little push was needed and that has arrived, to unlock the locks and open the possibilities for developing strategies and didactics so far frozen. They would continue to pursue their skills, their professionalism as teachers who do not exclude learning technologies, both at home and at school, accepting with serenity.

How to Recreate the Atmosphere of Online Classes

In any case, all teachers found themselves having to deal with a school day that is not comparable to the day in attendance at school. For this reason, we cannot expect teachers and students to be in front of a screen for six hours in a row. The teacher who prepares all the activities for distance learning invests a lot of his time and energy in the preparation not only of the materials, which will be personalized for his students but also of the interactions that will have to guide and the feedback that will have to collect. How to understand if the student, who would have been in the fourth row in the classroom, are you actively participating in the proposed work? What to ask and in how much time to students who, even at home, are not on vacation and do not live in a simple situation?