I am writing this article because I am a teacher and I am a parent too, therefore, I am facing this problem as a teacher and as a parent. Teaching students in a class is much easier and more rewarding for both students and teachers than teaching them online through various tools like zoom, Mircosoft team, etc. The main advantage of teaching students in class is that you can immediately access the outcomes of your teaching and how well the students have adopted from your teaching. You get a full chance to concentrate on all kinds of students whether they are intelligent or not. You can easily change the peace or pitch of your teachings to suit the student's needs accordingly. While all these luxuries of teaching are not present in online teaching.
1) Connectivity Issue- The first problem you face is a connectivity issue because you are sitting at one place with different internet speeds while your students are sitting at different locations with different internet speeds. This problem may not look big to many people living in big cities of India or in developed nations but in I live in a village, here I have access 4G internet but the speed is not reliable. In one minute speed is very good and in the second minute, it stops suddenly. Somedays, it is very frustrating to just start the class, and if class starts then to communicate well with all the students. My son also faces the same problem and misses many of his zoom classes due to poor internet speed.
2) Difference in Technical Knowledge - I have found that online education doesn't support all students equally because many students don't have the sound technical knowledge to use all the features and they don't raise their queries because of the fear of being considered dumb. Therefore, I found that many students prefer to remain silent during online classes than interact. Moreover, popular tools like Zoom provide only 45 minutes for a single meeting out of which 10 to 15 minutes are lost in joining all the students.
3) Less direct interaction between teacher and student- It is very important for students to have direct interaction with their teachers so that teachers can access the real improvements in the performance of a student. When the teacher fails in making this assessment then he can't guide each student accordingly for his betterment. Therefore, many students remain behind in improving their mental ability and becoming good students.
4) Increase of cheating habits - In this corona time, I have seen an increase in the trend of cheating in students including my own son. I will not blame students for it because many of them are not mature enough to decide between right and wrong. In class, teachers educate them about all this but at home, they are alone to do things as they wanted. In the corona times, the schools may be closed but the average scoring of students has increased due to increased cheating by the students.
I hope that soon coronavirus will be gone and we will again see students going to schools then only we can hope to see the real benefit of school education.