Going Online and Getting Ahead
BY ADMIN PUBLISHED August 7, 2020, UPDATED January 19, 2023
It is often said that where there is a will there is a way and this pandemic gave us one more opportunity to prove it right. After the lockdown, schools were physically shut down.
We connected with our students through the SMS i.e the school management system. Just after two –three days we started taking online classes on MS TEAMS. It was a totally new experience for educators as well as students. Educators knew their subject content but the Netiquettes were new– speaking into a camera, engaging students online ,sustaining student interest and building the virtual connect, required us to reboot the online teaching learning process.
The DPSG ICT team rose to meet the challenge by first researching new tools and systems and then to train the educators of DPSG schools .Their credo was- not to limit our challenges ,but to challenge limits ,made us chart out the road ahead.
The ICT team guided us in making our virtual classroom experience personal, by equipping us with tools to connect better with learners -making learning engaging and shifting a major part of the ownership of learning onto the students with providing Apps like MS Forms, Kahoot, Quizlet, padlet, answer garden and many more.
The ocean of ICT tools and sites such as Geogebra, National Geographic, NSTA (National Science Teaching Association), Discovery Education, e pathshala, Diksha, Vidya Daan, Khan Academy, etc were open for us to utilize.
We learned the various applications and tools of MS Teams to make our learning engagements interactive and effective.It was not an easy task but difficulties helped us to realize our real potential and the enormous support and faith of our mentors inspired us to walk on this path with determination and confidence.
No doubt that post the TEAMS training , our virtual classrooms became better learning engagements, where students were able to express themselves and participate actively in the classroom discussions.
The formative assessments taken through the apps such as MS Forms, kahoot, etc . were exhilarating not only for the students but also for the educators. This new learning journey ,has just begun and sometimes we feel we are in the middle of the woods ,to remind me of the lines of Robert Frost’s immortal poem
“ … The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
Yes—we feel we need to stop and admire the beauty of what is happening around us—but have not the time to let up our endeavour to find our way out of these woods—let’s journey on….
Ms. Shashi Lingwal
TGT Science
