This pandemic has caused all school to shift gears. I am not an educator, but I am a parent. WE are on unchartered waters and everyone, I mean every single one of us are trying to stay afloat.
I have to admit – CHANGE is never easy for everyone. I dislike change – who doesn’t?! But once we get the hang of it, it seems trivial when you look back. I would like to think that I adjust well under circumstances – but this lock down made me realize that I don’t. This lockdown is proof that everyone is trying to fight the battle that they don’t know of. But we are all coping – coping in our own ways. There is no one clear path to coping as we are all different individuals with different needs.
So yesterday, I finally got to do the tasks needed to be able to receive the orientation link. Let me, tell you – IT WAS NOT EASY. I spent more than two hours doing it and I was irritated and pissed off the whole time. I had to read through a PDF file, watch videos (more than 1), take tests (an essay and true or false) and submit my saved document.
Imagine – a 40 year old doing all those. Sounds fairly easy right? But it was not. I kid you not – it was CHALLENGING. Now, why was it challenging? Simply because I had to go out of my comfort zone. Who does screen shots on a laptop po? I never do that – I can do it with my phone! Who does pasting of all the screenshots to a document? Certainly not me! It was a challenge for me to learn the basics again. I learned that to screen shot on windows, you’ll need to hold the windows button and hit the Print Screen. Then I had to figure out where the screen shots were stored! MY golly, I spent such a long time doing everything! I was so frustrated to be honest, but it had to be done. And when I finally finished the tasks and submitted the homework – I was exhausted.
While ‘resting’ I realized that maybe this was how our parents felt with technology too. They were so used to the manual typewriters and so they typed efficiently and perfectly (to avoid mistakes) they they had to shift to computers eventually. As for us – we belong to the generation that adapted to the change smoothly. I remember having a typing class – I was really excited for it, only for it to be changed into a computer class. I still remember the very nice sound of the keyboard clicking as if it were yesterday. I learned DBase, lotus and wordstar. It was a fun time. And then the internet happened – dial up! I don’t belong to the mIRC chat because we didn’t have computers back them, but when we did – I remember ICQ and Yahoo! Messenger. Transition was really smoother in my opinion. But a transition still.
The activity we were made to do was not a transition – it was a crash course. A literal CRASH COURSE – because I had no time to have a feel of it – I needed to do it IMMEDIATELY at that. But when I finished, I felt so accomplished and proud!
The lesson I learned was that – we really needed to do the activities. We had to learn them somehow – because one day, our kids will ask for help and we can’t look at them with a blank face and say – I don’t know! Now that I know how to do it, I feel better equipped somehow.
So, am I ready for the online distance learning?
NOPE! Not ready at all. But I will support! I will learn. I will do everything I can to help. Because this is how it will be for this school year (and maybe the next) and we need to power through.
We need to adapt.
As they say – THE ONLY THING CONSTANT IN THIS WORLD IS – CHANGE!