Cyberschool: Embracing a Year of Virtual Learning
The pandemic we are facing today has affected the lives of many. It has modified the way we interact with one another, the way we live on a daily basis, and has also halted many of our plans and goals for the year. Furthermore, many schools were forced to shift to online classes as the ongoing virus rapidly spreads throughout the whole country. Adapting to this new learning environment may be difficult and stressful for many, including our educators. And the process may also take time since it is the first time for many students. How is your experience with online learning? Any difficulties? Is it fun?
The first few weeks of Cyberschool went smoothly since we were already familiar with the approach of learning, given that we completed the previous school year through Emergency Remote Teaching. But conducting classes online still has a different feel compared to the traditional face to face learning. Even if we have the capacity to learn and work from the comforts of our own home, every student should have the willingness and motivation to study such as choosing a workplace to focus and learn more efficiently, listening to music to help while studying, scheduling study hours, listing tasks and many more. It is also important to interact with other students so that we do not feel isolated from others, helping one another could help us understand our lessons and activities and also increase our productivity when it comes to studying. In the traditional classroom setup, the teachers can monitor the progress and behavior of the students but in online learning, since teachers are much more limited from doing this, many students could have various distractions around them. Nevertheless, we must treat online learning like how we treat real learning at school because our teachers still record our performance and grades in the subjects that we conduct and the grades that the teachers conduct depend on how we perform in their class. Whether we participate during class discussions, show enthusiasm for activities assigned by teachers, the work we submit and considerably more.
Despite the pandemic limiting us from going to school and conducting activities on how we used to, we must embrace and accept this new method of learning. We should not limit the opportunities around us even if our classes are online. Everyday, we must strive to improve our skills and studies so that we may meet our goals and desired plans for this academic year, may it be for our future or for self improvement. Even though this year is like any other year, this one will never come back. The actions that we make and the decisions that we make. Therefore, we must study well so that our hard work would exceed our expectations along with the teachers.
By: Antonio Raphael B. Flores