Learning through Zoom during the last several months has been very interesting and felt extremely unusual. I first started using zoom at the beginning of March before most people when I was in a 14 day quarantine, and the first time I had used zoom felt very odd because it was weird seeing all my classmates and the classroom through my laptop in my living room couch. It took me about a week to start getting used to zoom and learning how to properly use the app, and since then learning through zoom has not been a particularly huge challenge.
In my opinion, learning online is not ideal, however during the Covid-19 situation, it is very understandable why we must learn online. The best part of learning online was that it gave me more flexibility on how to schedule my day. I felt that workload did not decrease or increase more than before the school closure, however I was able to take more breaks between classes and span the amount of work I do throughout the day rather than a short period of time. Also, learning online was great because I could wake up a lot later than usual, and there were also a couple of days where I woke up 10 minutes before school starts rather than waking up nearly 2 hours before having to commute to school.
Distance Learning has had it’s ups and downs for sure. The transition from seeing my friends from school everyday to only seeing them through a computer screen if they were in my class has been challenging for me. Another issue I came across was that initially there were many issues with the timetables as they were adjusted quite often, trying to find the perfect balance between period length and number of periods per day. I know that an issue everyone has come across at some point is having a poor internet connection and missing out an important detail in your zoom class. Distractions are also a big issue too, like videogames and social media, but it isn’t as big of an issue as some may think as all it takes is to keep on schedule and ignore any notifications. I usually put my phone on silent and keep it away from me to deter this.
However, attending classes from home also has its positives. Firstly, you can stay in comfortable clothing that you would wear around the house instead of having to dress up as though you are going to school.
Cinar Topbas, Grade 10
Although learning online had its ups and downs, it was overall
the right choice considering how much the Covid-19 virus had
spread around Malta and the world. Even during the beginning of February, it never came to my mind that we would all one day be away from school for such a long duration of time learning online, however health professionals know best what we should do to protect ourselves.
Although there were a few benefits of learning online, there were many disadvantages of online learning. The main issue I found was that the quality of education was not as good as before the school closure, mainly because it did not feel like I was learning through a classroom. The best part of learning in a classroom is the physical presence of teachers, and how they can make use of a proper whiteboard and easily teach us new concepts. I found it harder to focus when learning online due to the lack of a school atmosphere and a proper classroom, and felt there were always problems with zoom such as internet issues or audio not working when learning online.
Michael Samaha, Grade 11
Remote Learning – As I view it