Online Classes, Smart phones & high speed internet

Syed Rubia Hamid
Education is a teaching learning process and the focus has to be on nurturing the talent of a children. Education is imparted through two different ways, i.e., formal and informal. While the formal education means learning in a class room, the informal education is learning through distance mode. The unprecedented lockdown due to breakout of corona virus has forced both the children and the teachers to switch over to informal education. Online mode of education has become a new norm of education due to unprecedented lockdown imposed after the breakout of COVID-19 in March this year. True it is that online mode of education has brought back smiles to the gloomy faces within the boundary wall of the residential houses, but the challenges thrown up by the online mode of education to both teachers are student are very huge. Though online mode of education is a new experience in Kashmir but both teachers and as well as the students are trying hard to overcome the challenges in the absence of high speed internet facility. The low speed 2 G internet facility has almost reduced the mechanism of online classes to a futile exercise as the access to smart phone for the students enrolled with government run schools has also become a bigger issue which deserves immediate attention and intervention of the government. Irrefutable fact is that smart phones are very rarely available to students of poor families and more so in remote rural areas of Jammu & Kashmir.
Since smart phones and the high speed internet connectivity are the basic pre-requisites for making the online mode of education a success in the lockdown period, it is for the government to address the basic issues of concern particularly the access to smart phones and high speed internet facility as otherwise the practice of online classes is not serving the purpose with which this exercise has been initiated.
Though teachers are deeply concerned about the students who miss online classes due to their inability to have access to smart phone, but helplessness can end only if the government takes some measures for the availability of smart phones to children for the lockdown period as there is no other alternative course of action for connection of all the students with the online classes. Teachers have to cover the syllabus but online classes won’t serve the purpose if majority of the students miss the classes for the reasons of their inability to have access to smart phones. The suspension of online classes after suspension of 2 G internet facilities in Kashmir has given the government an ample opportunity to think about the future of majority of those students who miss online classes for the reasons of not having smart phones in their hands. Since smart phones and the high speed internet connectivity are the basic pre-requisites for making the online mode of education a success in the lockdown period, it is for the government to address the basic issues of concern particularly the access to smart phones and high speed internet facility as otherwise the practice of online classes is not serving the purpose with which this exercise has been initiated.
(The author is a school teacher by profession. Views are her own)