Questions to ask yourself:
- We have all been exposed to remote learning through almost the entire year of 2020 and now into 2021. Do you feel remote learning has been successful or harmful to your educational experience?
- Do you feel as though remote learning has caused some setbacks within providing an equitable education? If not specifically to you, to others potentially?
- If you were given a grant (specifically for improving quality of remote learning), how would you use it to make remote learning more equitable?
Remote learning definitely has its benefits and disadvantages. Remote learning is something that will never go away, even when face to face lessons are common again. For example, if there is a snow day and school gets canceled, teachers will most likely want to zoom or use google classroom instead to not fall behind. I wonder if snow days or school being canceled will become extinct ever since remote learning was introduced into our lives. Remote learning can be extremely exhausting for students and even teachers. Most will say that it is even more exhausting than going to class in person. Students and teachers are staring at screen for about six hours a day. This takes a toll on anyone causing a lack of motivation and exhaustion. Students have been finding it much more difficult to concentrate and pay attention when listening through a computer screen. Although, on the other hand, there are some advantages with remote learning. An advantage that I found with remote learning is how flexible it is. I think that most teachers have cut their students a bit more slack through remote learning because of how difficult it can be. Remote learning allows and teaching students to self-discipline. For example, students can learn to become more organized and committed to their academics through remote learning. It allows for better commitment skills along with time management.
An article that many should read is linked below. It is about a child psychiatrist and the health effects that remote learning has on students. You can find this article by clicking the link here. Before reading this article, I have not even thought about the many impacts that remote learning can have on one’s health. In this article, Dr. Dickerson (the psychiatrist) mentioned how a simple stop at a friend’s locker during school time is a detrimental part of the child’s growth. This allows for increasing social skills, making friends, and just gives the student a small break up from their school day. With remote learning, students do not have these special interactions. In fact, they probably are not having any interaction at all during this pandemic. Or at least not enough as they should be. This can drastically impact a child’s growth, especially with their social skills. I wonder if remote learning and isolation can cause a child to obtain social anxiety. Classroom structure is extremely important for students’ success as well. It allows students to focus and stay on task. Without this, students learning outcomes can quickly decline. There is so much screen time going on in a child’s life nowadays. A child will go to school (remotely) for about six hours a day. After this long period of screen time, they will most likely want to relax and have some time for themselves without thinking of school or homework. During this time, most children will either go on their ipads, tablets or watch T.V. This amount of screen time is extremely unhealthy for any human being. Never mind growing children. There has also been a huge uprise in parents seeking mental health services for their families. This is definitely caused by remote learning and all of the screen time that society is obtaining. I wish that there was an alternative for the amount of screen time students are obtaining. It is impacting children and other older student’s overall health greatly. Whether that be mentally or physically.
Here you can find an interesting ted talk about remote learning.
ilobrien 