Pandemic has passed but extreme weather events are steadily tightening their grip, underscoring the need to switch to online classes from time to time and tweak the teaching technique accordingly.
Online classes are here to stay, the principals of several schools told The Telegraph, and the delivery of content has to be innovative to grab the attention of students sitting in front of screens at home.
Online classes started during the Covid-induced lockdown four years ago. And they can’t be dispensed with even two years after society came out of the pandemic’s shadow because of prolonged periods of extreme heat every summer.
“Teachers and parents need to understand this,” the principal of a school said.
Last Thursday, many private schools decided to switch to online classes, after the government announced early summer vacation in schools run or aided by it.
This is the third year in a row that schools had to shut down and switch to online classes because of the searing heat, followed by a government order.
Many more private schools decided to go online over the weekend.
Between Friday and Saturday, a host of institutions decided to go online — including Loreto House, Loreto Day School Elliot Road, South Point, Birla High School (till Class V), Sushila Birla Girls’ School (till Class V), Birla High School Mukundapur (till Class V) and Shri Shikshayatan School (till Class V).
Before that the La Martiniere schools, St James’ School, St Thomas’ Boys’ School, St Thomas’ Girls’ School and St Augustine’s Day School had announced their decision to switch to online classes.
The Heritage School, which had started its new academic session in the third week of March, has declared summer holidays.
“The summer will only get hotter over the years. To continue with education
we have to be dependent on online platforms and invest more in it,” said Terence Ireland, principal, St James’ School.
While schools have tweaked their timetables, parents, too, need to make arrangements to ensure a seamless class environment for their children at home.
Diviya Johri, a deputy general manager in a private company, has applied for permission to work from home for a week. Her son is in Upper Nursery and her daughter goes to a Montessori school.
“My son will have online classes and my daughter’s school has brought forward the timings. So my husband (who is a businessman) and I have decided to take turns to stay at home during this period. For an online class, a parent has to be there because the help cannot handle the laptop,” the resident of Alipore said.
“While parents are making adjustments, it is crucial that teachers plan their sessions in advance to ensure that online teaching is effective,” a principal said.
The teachers need to ensure that the content is delivered in a way that it is absorbed by the children, another principal said.
“Children’s attention span is decreasing and the screen is not new to them. So the teachers have to utilise the limited time available. They need to use apps, videos or digital media to convey the major points of a text and grab the attention of the students,” said Rupkatha Sarkar, principal, La Martiniere for Girls.
“We have to accept that work from home now applies to children as well.”
Sarkar stressed that while interacting with senior students, teachers should use the screen time to help the learners hone their “higher order” thinking skills.
“Reading of the text can be done by the students themselves,” she said.
The principal of a CBSE school in south Calcutta said online teaching needs to be “pictorial, and more aural than oral”.
Officials at a number of schools pointed out how they were forced to change their routines repeatedly in a span of a fortnight.
“First we made a timetable for the new academic session. We had to change that after rolling out the summer timings, and now a third timetable has been prepared for online classes,” said Jessica Gomes Surana, principal, Loreto Day School Elliot Road.
