Inequality in accessibility to education. Everyone is supposed to follow online classes, which is fair. However, not everyone has the ability to easily follow these online classes, especially since they are live, requiring students to play both audio and video.
Zoom made an official statement saying that "25 to 50 Mbps download speeds" is recommended for online meetings. Many people do not have access to high bandwidth internet so, their classes are hilariously bad. And I'm talking about pixelated/blurred video, inability to stream video above 360p and audio cutting every five to ten words.
I feel it's relevant to mention that a friend of mine is following classes on an old smartphone using their neighbour's wifi. I think that online classes are seriously lacking in terms of equal accessibility.
Accessibility via technology. We have 6 hours of classes everyday. On what are we supposed to follow these classes? Having asked around, many students are following classes on their phones! And who is going to blame them? Does every student have a computer to follow classes comfortably? Of course not. And as a result, many students have to stare at their tiny (6" or less) screens for 6 hours a day. And that's not counting screen time for homework.
Prolonged screen exposure, especially with it being THAT small, has various negative health impacts, namely damaged eyesight and sleep issues, to name a few.
Just how long is acceptable for children, or let's say, adults, to spend on their phone daily? Well, sources are conflicting but they all agree that adults should spend less than 2 hours on their phones outside of the office. While we are considering this, students are being expected to write 500 - 700 word essays for GP in a Word document. If they do not have a computer, how is this feasible?
Teacher's internet. It is not fair to only criticise the students' internet as being insufficient for online classes. Teachers tend to have horrible bandwidth, further aggravating the problem of choppy audio and unclear video. In my maths class, the teacher's screen was frozen for 2 whole minutes while he kept on explaining. I am unsure if this is my internet (40 mbps download) or his. Unfortunately, this happens very regularly, especially with maths. Other classes, it does happen but less frequently. It is still a serious hindrance to my learning.
Lack of understanding of teachers with regards to students' issues. We have been told time and time again that "absences are counted". What we have not been told, and what I would like to know, is how these absences are going to count. And, what about children who cannot attend online classes due to electrical or internet problems? I have been keeping track and have had a total of 12 teacher absences primarily due to the aforementioned problems and also due to undisclosed reasons. So, I am very interested in knowing how the school is going to ensure that students who have had electrical, internet or domestic issues are not going to be punished unfairly.
The use of numerous platforms. It is frustrating to have to hop between Google Meet, Classroom and Zoom between periods. It would be better to have a uniform platform (preferably Meet because it has many advantages over Zoom and can collaborate easily with Classroom).
Classes are not interactive. They are now more of a presentation, a show if you will and they rightfully lose students' focus and attention, especially when classes span 3 periods.
Due to the above reasons, there are many people who have told me that they would rather have no online classes than have them in this state but we understand that this is out of the control of the school. Nonetheless, I think this is an important point to note.
Not necessarily overwhelmed. However, I have personally had issues following the corrections due to numerous issues which I mentioned in my reply to the first question.
However, I, and my brother, have had cases where homework is being sent after school hours. It may be just me but this seems rather unfair. I plan my work after school so that I get all the work done in a timely manner. However, someone sending homework at 5pm throws off my entire schedule. For this reason, I have little intention in doing work sent to us via WhatsApp past 3pm, especially if the deadline is the next day.
I would also like to add that the current online schooling is a serious source of burnout for many students. We are trying to fit traditional school onto an online platform. It is not working. Staying glued to our screens for 6+ hours takes a serious mental toll on us students. Compromises need to be made. I have developed further on student burnout below.
Teachers should also not send homework however they please. We are not robots and I don't think it's very nice to have a 50 something page PDF dumped on you. And that's for one subject.
I would like to emphasise. We are humans and we have our limits.
It is generally fine, somewhat average I would say, although I think I should echo the case of being sent homework way after school hours as being detrimental to the proper running of online classes. During times of normal school, we are not supposed to be sent homework at 5pm and online schooling should be no different.
Furthermore, burnout is a recurring problem. We are tired after 6+ hours on our devices, with many of us following 6+ hours on their phones. This is not right or fair. There should be a lower workload for everyone. Also, 3 consecutive periods of a single subject gets boring and monotonous really fast. Along the same lines, teachers fail to make classes interactive.
There are no breaks between periods. We cannot have a copy-pasted timetable from traditional school, in case I have not made that sufficiently clear. Spending 6+ hours on a device (especially a 6" screen) is not a safe practice and the lack of breaks is detrimental to students' and teachers' health.
I believe that everything I mentioned above can be taken into consideration when looking for ways to better the state of online classes.
In addition to the problems mentioned above, I believe that online classes are detrimental to the mental health and wellbeing of students. It is tiring to be glued to a screen for 6 hours a day + the amount of time occupied for homework (which is also given online). I would like to add that I take no tuition yet only close down my device no earlier than 5 pm. Various studies have found a link between excess screen time and poor mental health. This is further exacerbated by the state of the online classes which are not conducive to retention of in formation or constructive learning. I am baffled how the school cannot recognise the negative impact that these online classes are having on students' mental health. Please figure something out already or we may have to ourselves.
To solve a few of the problems mentioned, I came up with a few ideas.
1. Send notes (in pdf form) on the Google Classroom. Notes should not be dictated during class due to students missing out by fault of poor internet connection on their side or the teacher's. Sending pictures of the whiteboard lacks the notes given.
2. Understandably, there is not much which the school could do to resolve the technological divide between students although having notes posted in a single place would be beneficial to them.
3. Once again, this would necessitate sending of notes on Google Classroom so that students can follow more easily than listening to the broken voice of the teacher.
4. Maybe teachers should not be too harsh on students for being late or absent. Understandably though, this has the potential to be abused. Absences should still be noted but teachers should listen to the students and not "bully" them for incurred absences or latenesses.
5. Just use Google Meet. It synchronises with Classroom well, it has no meeting limit. Sometimes we run out of time on zoom (due to a limit on free usage) and have to go through the process of joining a new meeting all over again. It is frustrating and Zoom has no benefits to Classroom.
6. Teachers should not be contacting students outside of class hours. This also has some significance in terms of accessibility. This is a sensible step and even Portugal has laws in place concerning this: "Portuguese lawmakers passed new labor laws which include banning bosses from contacting employees outside working hours." which seems fair.
7. A lesser workload on students should be considered. This would help avoid being flooded with work and would also help them spend less time working on their computer/phone screen. I understand that, under normal circumstances, students would still have a lot of work to do. However, these circumstances are nowhere close to normal. We need to adapt, even if it means less work. I personally tend to suffer from burnout from these classes and I think that maybe a slightly lesser workload would be beneficial to mental health plus would avoid problems like carpal tunnel syndrome, eye fatigue, insomnia and the likes.
8. As a continuation to 7, it may be worth considering re-introducing the 4 day school week. This gives an additional day for rest and homework. Missing out on one day would still lead to an increase in student productivity. Having continuous 5 days is tiring as the stress and fatigue accumulates over these days.
9. Teachers should be given some funding for proper internet. Mr Moharjee had to go buy a new router (or something of the like) and his broadband is unable to sustain these online classes. It is neither fair to the teachers not reasonable that they have to dig out of their own pockets to pay for internet to provide classes. I'm sorry but this just sounds completely unfair and ridiculous. The school needs to figure out how to cater for teachers (and students while we're at it) who do not have the means to provide high quality online classes.
10. Recess should be synchronised so that siblings can eat at the same time. This will help parents out enormously as they won't have to cater for them at different times.
I would really appreciate if the above points and proposed solutions would be taken into account in order to better the state of online classes. As you can see, you can contact me on my email address if you would like to discuss my points further and I would be very willing to help the school enhance the current online learning practices.
Thank you very much for taking the students' voices into consideration and I hope to hear from you soon, if necessary.