Practical lessons from home – the digital learning

“Our Teacher taught us how to use online methods to get more clarity on the concepts from the pedagogy”, Payal, Class XII student from GSSS Nahar (Our Partner Government school in Haryana)

The worldwide outbreak of the coronavirus – COVID-19 may have limited us indoors but has also opened new doors of possibilities. While digital is believed to be the future, we have gotten a glimpse of it through many activities that have taken an online course. The period of lockdown is being utilized to test run different concepts, introduce new methods and adopt the future possibilities.

Dhramveer Kumar, a PGT teacher from GSSS Nahar, Haryana, is regularly interacting with the students through various digital means to keep the curriculum going for the subject of Physics. The use of class wise WhatsApp groups has helped him in keeping touch with his students and delivering his lectures virtually. He believes that even though he misses conducting the practical experimentation lessons in the Physics lab for students, the learning should continue one way or the other. He intends to create a similar experience for the students using the concept of Physics lab through YouTube interactions.

Payal Kumari, a student of Dhramveer from class XII, said, “Ever since the online classes have begun, we have learnt a lot from Dhramveer Sir; and not just in his subject but also about various online tools and usage of different platforms for facilitating education like – Google Forms, YouTube, EDUSAT, etc. We were not aware of these, but this lockdown has actually helped us by familiarizing us with the virtual learning means. Our Teacher taught us how to use online methods to get more clarity on the concepts from the pedagogy. We receive a lot of online content from our teachers on our Class WhatsApp groups that really helps us understand everything that is a part of our syllabus. The online lessons by our teachers and information sources provided by Bharti Foundation have guided us a lot.”

Payal further added, “Dhramveer sir makes videos for us explaining lessons from our course curriculum and send them to us through WhatsApp. We watch those videos and get back to him if we need more clarity.We have regular test on all the concepts that we learn. It almost feels like we are in the classroom only.”

Many parents weren’t adapted to online learning and thus, were not as involved in their child/children’s learning curves. However, after the teachers began to digitally interact with the parents, they started paying attention to their child/children’s studies and understood the value of online education.

Mr. Narender, Principal of the school, said “I am really happy to see that despite the initial hiccups, online education has set its tone. We are regularly taking parents’ feedback to improve wherever we can. The support from Bharti foundation on creation of the WhatsApp groups and online study links has been and continue to be very helpful.”