We all have been affected by the current COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic has shown no mercy all over the world irrespective of their Class, GDP, Poverty, marginalisation, children or students; each of them has had and is having unbearable pain that’s arriving out of its consequence. Everyone of us is facing different kinds of problem according to our status, class, health or finance. However, students, mostly children, have been suffering more irrespective of their status. It is quite obvious one can ask whose parents are well off, are getting enough facilities to overcome the current situation but here we should think not just keeping in mind of finance but well being of children and their overall development which can only be achieved when we as a society, educater or government see and analyse each facets and multiple dimensions at the same time.
With the advent of the pandemic, shift towards a digitalized system has been catalyzed. The changes that were already happening in colleges and universities have now been catapult to classes happening on the web and various platforms being used to trace academic growth of students. It is important to notes as schools and colleges found out a way to interact with the students at home.
To identify the problems faced during the online education in the time of Covid-19 pandemic and the ways to resolve them. These problems are faced by students of different age groups. Sometime problems are technical and other time they are non- technical related with resources, funds and economic issues. We need to find better solution then we can get maximum benefits from online classes or e-learning.
India has 300(total – 4000)major cities as of 2021 and 7935 towns were in the census 2011 since then 2774 towns have been included as of now, so looking at the towns the population consist of 377 million roughly 31.16% of the country, to acknowledge the fact that providing internet facility in the towns is a bigger challenge than we see. Proper hardware and software, during the pandemic one the major issues faced was that when the schools & colleges started teaching online there was a lack of equipment in nearly about every household if we look at the figures out of 100 only 3.13 homes have personal computers & out of 100 people only 1.34 households have broadband connection, how will we get to 98.56?
Knowledge to use computers, mobile phones and their basic functionality, the government and the private sector both need to setup institutes where basic knowledge about the technology should be taught irrespective of the educational & professional background one is from.
Balance between technical knowledge and emotional intelligence is the need of an hour,school based mental health professionals can provide direct support to students who are potentially at risk for emotional issues by helping to implement systematic screenings. While each school-based helping profession’s ultimate goal is to facilitate the optimal development of each child, there is a differentiation in roles that each specialist takes.
For instance, within the screening process teachers are the professionals who are the most knowledgeable about students’ general behaviors because they have the most contact with students daily. As a result, observant teachers may be able to detect subtle changes in children’s daily mood, habits, and school-based practices.
UNICEF DATA :
More than 1 billion children are at risk of falling behind due to school closures aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19. To keep the world’s children learning, countries have been implementing remote education programmes. Yet many of the world’s children – particularly those in poorer households – do not have internet access, personal computers, TVs or even radio at home, amplifying the effects of existing learning inequalities. Students lacking access to the technologies needed for home-based learning have limited means to continue their education. As a result, many face the risk of never returning to school, undoing years of progress made in education around the world.
– Dhairya Mahadev
