Every house becomes a school now

Manmeet Singh Gill

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, October 30

As the pandemic struck, students, especially of primary and secondary classes, learnt to study on their own during the seven months of lockdown. Relying just on the online platforms for studies, there seems to be no separation between the home time and playtime. By now, most of the students have imbibed the habit of checking their phones early in the morning for any messages from their teachers.

Sifting through videos on different topics and saving the links of the best out of them for future references has become the new normal as taking down notes on paper seems outdated these days. Taking online lessons on a particular topic seems easier to students than going through the notebooks.

“My parents never allowed me to use the family desktop fearing that I might change the settings unintentionally. But now, things have changed. They have bought one for me too,” said Harshpreet, a Class VII student. She said apart from watching videos sent by the teacher she has made a bank of her own from those available online.

Most of the students have already learned the tools required for making an online search. “Initially, it was difficult as using right keywords is very important. But, months of trials and errors, searching for a good source is not a problem anymore,” said Manpreet Singh, a Class XI student.

Even most of the parents, who in the absence of any knowledge about teaching pedagogies, were caught off guard, now seem to have realised that they need to upgrade them. Monica Sharma, parent of a three-year-old said, “It was my daughter’s first year. I suddenly realised how difficult it is to teach a child to write.” She said over the months and with help from Internet and friends, she has managed to acquire quite a few teaching skills.