Education during the pandemic is the most unusual and stressful experience for students all around the world. Parents, students, and educators are forced to adopt unconventional methods of learning to fill the gaps in education during the pandemic.
Students in remote villages of India used SMS to communicate about homework, lessons were broadcasted over the radio in remote Himalayan villages and students from urban India attended classes via Zoom. In the U.S., students learned science from YouTube and TikTok videos. While all these gave birth to some exciting new ways to learn, it also revealed some new things about our existing education model.
Things discovered about education during the pandemic:
- Learning can happen anywhere: Learning was never limited to classrooms, even before the pandemic. It took place in a variety of settings like field trips, museums, libraries, and in front of the television screen at home. Once the pandemic happened, people were forced to explore unconventional options to fulfill the learning needs. This is when EdTech became mainstream. The likes of BYJU’S made their educational program available for free during entire lockdown, and it also emerged as the most used e‑learning app during the pandemic.
- Technology has to be accessible in order to be useful: While adopting to online education during the pandemic, we learnt that access to resources was a serious problem. Many students struggled without reliable internet, and without access to personal devices. Luckily, there were few who rose to the occasion and did an excellent job in solving this problem, like VAHDHAM ‘TEAch Me’ initiative, which provided access to digital learning to over 1000 students from remote tea estates in Assam, Darjeeling and Nilgiris.
- There’s more to conventional schools than we realize: Schools are not just centres of education, they are a hub for social interaction, and they are essential in promoting physical and mental well‑being. For students, one of the biggest challenges of education during the pandemic is not online learning, but not being able to see their friends. We often underestimate the role of school in teaching life skills, socialization, and overall well-being of students.
As Byju Raveendran (CEO and Founder, BYJU’S) says, “Schools should not completely go online because values like empathy, teamwork and other life skills are learnt only in a school’s corridors or playgrounds.” (Source: https://www.livemint.com/).
Technology was already set to transform education; the pandemic just accelerated this transition. As we move forward, digital learning methods such as the ones offered by EdTechs will give raise to new models of learning, which- if used in tandem with existing education models- can transform our educational system for the better.
What did you discover about education during the pandemic? Let us know in the comment section below.
