Pandemic and Digital Learning
Thesis: “We have been dubious of digital learning as compared to face-to-face experiences. While during this pandemic, the digital learning experiences have been the best option for children, generating immense amount positive outcome”.
Counterargument
Technologies have provided great assistance to the educational department without affecting the students’ academic journey. It provides ease to the teachers in the preparation of quality notes and delivers it to the students through digital platforms that support the course activity. Students are also learning new techniques of communication and widely participate in academic quizzes. Along with ultimate benefits, digital devices are affecting the physical abilities of the students making them less focused on the tasks and learning sessions. Also, teachers are facing network issues, communication barriers, and difficulty in counseling of each student. Due to pause in academic studies at institutes, young children were likely to have excessive use of screens that result in obesity, anxiety, and mental disturbance.
Researchers have blamed the digital technology and surplus screen time for the low interest in the live academic sessions, tasks, and physical activities. While in a general survey, Australian teachers have regarded digital technology accountable for the diversion in the learning environment. Parents blamed screen engagement and the use of digital technology for creating distance in family members and disturbance in behavior. Another research analyzes that about one-third of students spend their time in front of the screen when they are awake. Probably children are relatively spending more time in front of device screens by adopting these habits from their adults that may bring a negative effect on their bodies. The use of digital media and screen will be frequent during the recent pandemic and in the future also, while the researchers have suggested to have control over screen time to avail benefits of the technology and limit the usage.
Although we couldn’t minus the usage of multiple screens from our life, especially in this lockdown. We could minimize screen time that may engage children with physical activities and help to develop cognitive abilities. Technology is ironically affecting the social and personal relationship. Though, parents couldn’t switch off their technical gadgets to have control over their screen usage. They are only able to monitor their children’s screen time and activities. For instance, Restrict the screen time by setting the time limit for viewing the screen, don’t hand over the technical gadgets to the children. It may set them free to view screen for hours and hours without any content restriction. The essential parental duty is to have control over the type of content children are watching, how much time they are going to spend on social media platforms, and in which activities they are engaged in. During this lockdown, teachers and parents both could assess the children in studies and other activities. For instance, parents should actively participate in their learning programs. They should try to understand the few factors; Is the learning material beneficial for children? What are its outcome? How the children are reacting over the tasks assigned by their teachers. If the children are facing any difficulty in tasks, involve with them to figure out the solution. On either side, teachers should design challenging and practical activities to boost learning skills and decrease the use of technical devices to minimize screen time. Beside all these strategies, we can’t limit the digital screen time due to the requirement of today’s world. However, we could make the effective use of these technologies by engaging in self into healthy learning.
Support and evidence
Previously, researchers warned the parents and teachers about the excessive usage of screen and suggested to apply certain practices to have control over the screen time. Since, cut off from the digital world isn’t possible in this Pandemic situation as it may create learning barriers and communication gaps from the outside world. However, we can focus on how we organize the technical learning environment and emphasize on healthy learning with the use of digital technologies. Digital learning is the new feature of educational training and, regarded as the best choice in learning advanced skills and practically applying the gained knowledge in the real-life scenario. Teachers could develop the best quality content and easily communicate with the masses at one go. Also, the students are learning how to make efficient use of new technologies and involve ineffective research while using smart techniques and mediums. In this Pandemic, Gaming has also massively gained popularity at the digital platform. Though; it is used for entertainment purposes while it a healthy activity that involves cognitive thinking and also guides about the possible precautions and safety guidelines for pandemic. Education through digital platforms may be discouraged, but it is the future of the coming generation that should be adopted widely through advanced technologies.
Previously, teachers assigned the reading assignments in the classroom or recommended the chapter for the assignment purpose. Teachers spent hours researching, analyzing, and evaluating to select the best reading and learning material for students. Unfortunately, only 25–90% of the students are interested in the reading material. Reading book prints or notes problem is not in students only; it readily affects other Americans also, who want to spend minimal time in reading. Now the argument is, students wish to have useful and challenging reading material; they aren’t interested in the lengthy write-ups or detailed evidence. Students are learning new facts and associative consequences by focusing their goal tasks while remaining at one place- medium. They can’t switch books to books or gather evidence from especial journals/magazines; they put their faith in the digital medium to gain knowledge. The digital platform deals with masses of information provided in multiple categories; for instance, in the form of audio, text, or image. While, with the smart usage of the internet, we could also learn from other teachers or students. We could also share our information with the masses by publishing it on the interconnected web or only to relevant audiences through personal mail. Students can also interact with digital libraries to gather a wide variety of information for their academic tasks or the working material.
Besides these online book stores, students are more likely to understand things by watching videos. Also, the content creators and prominent personalities take advantage of this feature to communicate their ideas and message to the greater public. In the past year’s YouTube gains popularity over the web text content. It can reach the mass audience through live or recorded video sessions and is considered to be the best part of digital platforms in creating awareness and information. For instance, the Obama election campaign was recorded and daily uploaded on the channel at the time of the election. Hundreds of organizations, president assistant, and the common public are monitoring and viewing this campaign and taking lessons from it. This platform also provides partner shipping with prominent television shows and channels that will benefit the audience to interact with their favorite shows without being bounded by the time or day specification. It gives full authority to the audience to communicate with the people or the content creator by requesting for amendment or more informative video. Also, the audience is allowed to share and like the content that is on their favorite list. The students could take advantage of this facility and may engage themselves in the practical learning and development of new skills. For instance, learning a new technology or switching yourself to the advanced version of the technique. Let suppose; learning mobile application development through flutter technique or connecting a cloud database rather than the relational database. YouTube or online videos have taken learning to the all-new aspect. It is fun learning along with the relevant information and skill-building.digital technology has provided the ease of learning and teaching along with the other facilities. This is the right time to encourage children towards healthy learning and work on future technologies.