PUNE: With children stuck at home due to coronavirus lockdown, several schools in the city are conducting online lectures for their students in virtual classrooms. While many schools had begun such classes soon after the schools were declared holidays, many others started after the complete lockdown.
“We have been conducting online lectures for all classes, and we will also be conducting our final examinations online in the next week,” said Milind Naik, Jnana Prabodhini Prashala Principal.
The teachers at the school record lectures, which are accessed by the students at home on their computers, tablets or smartphones. Naik also said that the school was ready to guide and support in case any other school is interested in following the model.
The Army Public School, Ghorpadi has also started online classes for the class XII students. Every morning, the students and the teachers come online on a social media app, and around two interactive lectures are organised in real-time.
While some schools are conducting classes, others have also given activities to their children for learning at home.
“We did not want to make this lockdown period more stressful by burdening our students with more classes. So we have given them assignments, sufficient for a couple of weeks. These activity-based learning assignments will also increase the involvement of parents in their children’s learning process,” said Joel Edwin, the Bishop’s School Principal.
He also said that the school has been uploading video messages by former students, songs performed by the students, etc. to help keep the students’ morale high in these times.
The Global Indian International School has also put in place teaching techniques, including the launch of virtual classrooms for home-based learning. The virtual classes are very easy to be operated by students of age-groups from five to 18 years.
EuroKids International has also rolled out several new initiatives. For pre-school children, EuroKids and Kangaroo Kids’ curriculum team is sharing structured activities that parents can use. For the K-12 children, that is the mainline schools - EuroSchool and Billabong High, conduct live classes through video conferencing and recorded sessions for the new academic year along with digital textbooks, Q&A sessions and home assignments.
