During my spring break that I got an email notifying me that school would be online for the rest of the semester due to the Coronavirus. I was excited but questions began to flood my head. How would this affect K-12 schools? How will I have classes online? I never thought that it would be possible for a whole nation to switch to online schooling. How would they get students the resources they need? How will they train all teachers to utilize technology and make it accessible to all students? They were all questions that soon began to get answered.
For me, and many colleges it wasn’t that difficult to transition to online schooling because we already incorporated technology into most of our work. In addition, higher education schools also have the money and resources to supply students with the resources that they need. My online schooling consisted of lecture webchats and prerecorded lectures. I am going to list a few of the resources that made it possible for my college to have an effective transition to online school.
https://medium.com/devops-in-the-trenches/managing-moodle-with-laravel-nova-f327adf76837
The first tool that made it all possible for me was Moodle. Moodle is a home base website where I can access all my classes and my professors can post weekly content and assignments. I access a lot of powerpoints and prerecorded lectures through Moodle, and without it, there would be no structure and organization to everyone’s courses.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zoom-cloud-meetings/id546505307
Zoom is the next resource that has played a big role in making online schooling successful. Zoom is a platform that allows professors and teachers to host live lectures via video chat. The features like letting teachers share their screens or conducting polls, makes it feel just like a normal class. It is definitely a great resource to maintain structure by keeping a daily routine for students.
https://litmus.com/blog/infographic-the-2019-email-client-market-share
Now the last two applications that I am going to mention are ones that most people are familiar with and underestimate the power of them. Email and the internet are both very important applications that are very beneficial throughout online school. Email allows me and other students to have contact with their professors and get further clarification on assignments and material they may not understand. In addition, the internet is the main reason that all of online schooling works, it runs all of the programs that are used to make it successful.
The Coronavirus has made a drastic change to everyone’s daily life and the way that they learn. Here is a video that I made on my daily routine.
Will the coronavirus impact education in the future?
https://www.ashoka.org/en-us/story/everything-you-change-changes-everything
Although shifting to online schooling can be difficult, I always like to look on the positive side of things because with anything negative there is always something positive. With many parents having to homeschool their children now I am hoping as a whole teachers gain more respect because parents understand how difficult the job can be. In addition to this, I know one of the biggest challenges is to provide technology to students if they don’t have any at home, so hopefully, it will draw attention to the digital gap and have people work even harder to fix it. I took the time to find a few articles that discuss ways that the Coronavirus can reshape education. There is one article discussing a few examples of how education can be reshaped click here to read it. Here is another article that I found discussing and explaining more about how Coronavirus can change education. From my experience so far I learned how things can change instantly and that it is important to quickly adapt.
how this will change my classroom
http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/04/27/who-will-teach-computer-science-public-schools-how/
From experiencing the change of education first handed I learned a lot that I plan to bring to my future classroom. First, I learned how quickly things can change, so as a future educator I will always be on my toes and have a backup plan. This is important because you never know when change will happen so if I am always on my toes and have a backup plan it will keep my students calm and collective since I am structured. Another thing that I plan on doing is having flexible classwork. One of the biggest things that this virus has taught me is to always consider every student. I realize that not every student has the same resources as others like technology and internet, so having a flexible classroom will help everyone have the same opportunities. I plan to be flexible by having alternate ways to complete classwork, like having printed copies of work. I can also research organizations that donate or discount technology for my students that may not have any. Lastly, I plan on having flexible hours where students can come into my class before and after school or even during lunch to use class computers so they can stay on top of their work.