Things to consider about on-line learning for the doubtful

Many parents witnessed worrisome, inconsistent remote learning scenarios during COVID, especially since Ontario had the longest ‘at home’ quarantine plan. I taught during the quarantine on-line with TDSB and learned a lot. With so many different learning styles, some benefited from and others suffered from remote learning. Such a long time away from the bricks and mortar school affected all students in different ways. Getting back to the school they left and expecting it to be the same would surprise and disappoint. 

 

It is assumed remote learning is best only for older students but I have experience to say that isn’t necessarily the case. The most important variable in remote learning for the young is parent involvement. Primary students use tablets in school all the time and children at this age are brave and intuitive. Tablets are powerful computers presented in a basic, pleasing configuration allowing easy interaction. Being a former Apple employee, I am skilled in using, instructing the use of and troubleshooting devices, especially in remote teaching situations, I encourage primary students to use tablets in on-line classes. 

 

Some parents feel tablets are just for playing games and nothing else. That belief fosters the ‘games only’ attitude in the children because they rarely get opportunities to use their tablets in any other way. When they start, they love to experiment, which sometimes looks silly. However, once they see what they can do, (parents and students), attitudes will die down, in my experience, and realization will dawn….. tablets are merely important tools.

 

The ‘games only attitude’  saddens me because if that is the case, those believers have no idea they are sitting on a mountain of knowledge. Education these days is no longer memorizing information and regurgitating it. Instead we live in the information age … it is all around us. We as educators must teach our students how to find/evaluate/use all we have available to us. We can’t ignore our tablets and let them sit in a corner gathering dust.

 

After retirement, I started tutoring by visiting students’ homes. Having been born and raised in Toronto, I have seen the many ways in which it has changed over the years, mostly for the worst, sad to say. One of those ways is traffic. Toronto has the reputation for being the worse city in all of North America for the most construction and traffic issues. Driving to students’ home took away so much of my energy, there was less to share with students. I personally prefer on-line tutoring because the teacher’s, parent’s and child’s day is less disrupted waiting for the tutor to arrive.  The face-to-face learning is happening at school so on-line tutoring can support  at home. 

 

I think about the times students were away from home on a family trip but didn’t want to miss their tutoring lesson. They brought their iPads with them and participated anyway, sometimes in the car on the way to a destination or even visiting family across the world. Anywhere there is internet, classes can continue. Amazing!!

 

Hbms

22/01/24