Schools closed due to Corona: this is how distance learning worked

After eight weeks of school closure: a 6-point conclusion

After an eight-week break, “Switzerland at the weekend” takes stock of distance education. How did students and parents deal with the pedagogical emergency? Six theses.

kari kälin / switzerland on the weekend

Hooray, hooray, open schools

It is time for confessions. From elementary students, for example. They call the teacher from the balcony: “I never would have thought, but I admit that I am happy to be able to go back to school.” Of course, children of all levels yearn for their goose, analog person-to-person communication. Luna Lanz, a spokesperson for the Orpund high school class near Biel, describes it in a blog post at www.condorcet.chso: “Finally, sitting at my desk again, doing sports at school again, finally doing chemistry experiments and changing the mood of my class teacher. supported Yes, I missed all that in the Corona phase.

>> Corona Virus: all the news live

Home education boom doesn’t happen

The crown crisis has not sparked a boom in parents’ private classes, as Willi Villiger, president of home schooling, says. The association recorded only a minimal increase in membership. Reasons of interest include: Children are not bullied at home. Or: you better learn at home. However, the demand for tips was great. The blog of a mother with experience in home schooling was clicked a thousand times. Around 2,500 children are receiving lifelong education in their own four walls in Switzerland.

Parents are amazed at what schools do.

With the closure, lessons have moved from the school building to the living room. With which parents realize the difficulties that must be overcome in the learning process. Or how quickly children are distracted. That they have to be motivated over and over again. It is not the teacher who is to blame for learning difficulties. This teaching is demanding because teachers must monitor the whole class, but also the progress of individual learning. Who needs pedagogical and didactic skills, well rhythmic lessons with practice and correction phases. Many parents who mutated assistant teachers overnight to reopen the school.

Digitization is still in its infancy.

Let’s be realistic. Overall, we were less than well prepared for the pandemic. And all the associated challenges. See lack of mask. Can we blame schools and teachers for failing to start distance learning around the world on Day 1 after closing? That everyone was confused at their own discretion in the absence of a strategy? Not really One thing is for sure: the competition of the application has increased.

Beat Döbeli, director of the Institute of Media and Schools at Schwyz University of Education, puts it this way: “During this time, many teachers outdid themselves digitally and managed to do what they would not have dared to do recently: a video conference with the whole class making work orders available for a full week on a website or receiving schoolwork and providing individual digital feedback. ” The website www.lernentrotzcorona.ch, co-started by Döbeli, has been clicked almost half a million times since the school closed. The platform offers something like a versatile and digital teaching supply: practical tips for use, but also specific teaching material.

Digital teaching is not a substitute for the classroom.

Is the traditional school being abolished? Have teachers become superfluous if children write solutions on the computer and spit out the corrections? Some politicians expect a digital boost for the post-closing period. This will be possible in part because both teachers and students are better at using computers.

The only thing is that analog teaching is still irreplaceable. Decisive for learning success, as evidenced by the famous study by educational researcher John Hattie of the University of Melbourne, is not the technical team of a school, but the teacher-student relationship. The interaction between people is central. The accumulated feedback to the students, the dialogical support in the learning process is not an anonymous machine. Incidentally, the digital pioneers came to this conclusion. Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Apple founder Steve Jobs raised their children largely without technology. They attended Waldorf schools without digital.

That with the digging between committed and lazy teachers

Yes, they exist. As probably in all companies. The minimalists. They are teachers who had little interaction with their students, covered them with a stack of worksheets at the beginning of the week, and then left them alone. In a state of emergency, deficits can manifest themselves further. However, in conversations with parents, students, and experts, it is clear that the vast majority of teachers did a great job. And received praise for it