This post is week 1 of 8 in the #8WeeksofSummer Blog Challenge for educators. The time has come! It is finally summer and most schools our out. But this was a particularly rough year all over the world.
Suddenly out of nowhere we had to lock ourselves in our homes, not go to work, not meet people, be extra careful even when we had to go out to buy food.
Lots of people lost their jobs, lots of people got depressed, lots of people (especially our students) were bored in the house.
Of course, as always, teachers were not like other people and they were of the few people who continued working, even more during these difficult times.
Remote learning and teaching has not been new. A lot of us have been teaching online for years now. I remember myself starting about 10 years ago. I have taught with skype, by telephone, by email.... back then we didn't have so many choices or tools to get by.
Suddenly a lot of teachers were forced to use remote teaching, otherwise they would lose their jobs. Some took this news positively and tried to learn and taught their students with very good results, while others refused to study and learn and did only what was necessary. There were also the people who demoted the whole effort of the ones who did care to learn how all this new stuff would work. As a result, lots of parents do not believe that remote teaching works with lots of negative comments and accusations that teachers get paid while not working. The truth is that remote teaching is double the work and I believe that there will be a long time before people realize it in my country especially.
To come back to my question - My personal takeaway from remote teaching was that a lot of people trusted me with their children, although they had never been in a situation like this before. Trust is everything.
Technically speaking, of course, I have learned a lot more than before. I had already experience with skype and various teaching platforms, like adobe or wiziq and google drive as a place to post material.
This time I experimented with Zoom and webex a lot. I have also used Edmodo, Educandy and Quizlet, creating material for the students in the future as well. Having the chance to create material is fantastic, because what you make is there for the "next generations"
Another takeaway from this lockdown period is that I organised a language exchange among teachers, so I found myself learning Russian, Bulgarian and Spanish in exchange to English, Greek and German.
I also found the chance to learn more. I attended lots of webinars, online courses on subjects not only about teaching, but also advertising and digital identity.
So all in all, it was and still is a fantastic experience. People have to realise what a great chance it is to be able to teach and learn remotely.
How about you? I'd love to see your answers!
2 comments:
Hi Dora,
first of all, let me thank you for taking the time to write your blog entries and share your thoughts in these difficult times. For those of us, who take teaching seriously, I totally agree with you, preparing lessons and teaching has been even more work than before, when we and our students were present in a classroom during lessons.
In addition to teaching, I used to work as a travel designer for a small tour operator based in Italy. Of course, in February the Coronavirus had already started to spread and many people lost their jobs in the tourism sector.
On the other hand, especially in education, many people and among them many teachers were kind enough to share their knowledge about applications and platforms for teachers offering free webinars. I enjoyed the series of webinars offered in Spanish by Laula Caldas and Christian Andrades, who founded "Kumubox", where they shared free material for teachers as well as the videos of their webinars about how to use Genially, Powerpoint and Canvas to create teaching material. They also shared their experience with using these materials during their "online lessons".
Like so many other teachers, I had to stay home and therefore I also enrolled in a course on how to create material for Spanish as a foreign language and I participated in a series of teacher training sessions offered by the Cervantes Institute (focusing on teaching foreign languages online).
I am living in Austria and schools have reopened, although there are many precautions still in place to avoid a spread of the Coronavirus, of course. Next week, the school holidays will start in Vienna as well.
I am also a mother and I think that the homeschooling period was difficult for teachers, parents and students.
Enjoy your holiday,
Natalie
My dear Natalie, it was so nice to hear from you! I didn't know that you have taken up teaching! I always knew that Italian was your big love though! Let's hope we won't have to deal with such a challenging situation again! Take good care of yourself and your family and keep safe!!
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