Student Voices: My Experience of Virtual School

We invited two students from std. 5 to share their experience of online classes during this global pandemic. At the end of the First Term of Virtual School, here they share their honest and candid opinion.

By Priyal Shah | Std. V B

During the lockdown, I had been wondering when my school would reopen. One day, in the school group, my teacher sent a message that the school management had decided to start online classes. I was surprised. But I was also overjoyed and worried. I was overjoyed as we couldn’t go to school but at least we could see our friends’ faces during the online classes. I was also worried because I thought in school there was a whiteboard on which teachers wrote notes. Would I be able to see on a small screen? Would I be able to learn and study on such a small screen? 

I can say honestly, that my personal experience during online classes was a positive one. I would like to share my experiences of online classes which was from July to November with some examples. I was connected to Zoom cloud meetings just for two hours every day. Every day there were two lectures for two different subjects. Our school teachers’ main purpose perhaps was to ensure that our precious year doesn’t get wasted. 

Whatever the teacher taught me, my concepts became clear, She taught lessons by sharing her screen to show us notes that she made on presentation slides. Whenever she takes a topic she puts a lot of effort into clearing our doubts. I didn’t have a textbook, so she showed the textbook page on her screen. She showed various kinds of attractive pictures related to the subject too. She also gave us tasks and assessments as homework. This helped in clearing concepts.

Very soon, a formative assessment was going to be taken on Google Forms. I was worried how I would take a test in Google Forms. This was a new experience for me. In school, there were written tests and it was easy to attempt those. However, after doing it a few times I realise it is very easy to take a test in Google Forms – almost like taking an IQ test.

My teacher not only taught me subjects like  Maths, EVS and Languages but also creative subjects like Craft, Drawing, I.T., Story Read Alouds, Creative Writing and even P.T. Teacher also sent us many videos that she had made of each and every subject. I could watch the videos peacefully and note down the important points that I want. Not only did the teacher teach us every day, she also conducted competitions like recitation, singing, drawing and craft competition. Among all these competitions, I liked the singing competition the most. In this event, the highlight was that students had to prepare a song with their own lyrics on the given topic. It was an online competition. I could make up my mind, write the song and join this joyful competition from my home.

I want to give one last example of an activity we did for EVS. There was a lesson named Constituents of Food. The teacher gave students an amazing online activity related to this lesson. The teacher called out roll numbers from 1-10, 11-20 and so on. Each set of 10 students were asked to bring at least three food items that contained constituents like proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins or minerals. We had to also say a few sentences about it. This was a mind-blowing activity. The teacher had planned many such activities for other subjects too.

Very soon it was time for our assessments. This time it was a written test. I had to create a PDF of the written worksheet. The teacher taught us how to do this and share it with her over Whatsapp. Overall, it was a new and nice experience for me. I was looking forward to learning more new concepts. But now I am waiting for school to reopen as I want to see my friends and teachers LIVE and not just on a screen.  

By Krina Anam | Std. V A

Today, I would like to share my virtual school experience. I will start with the first day of online learning. On the first day of my online class, I was very excited to see my friends and teachers after a long time. I was really very confused how to keep the audio on mute and how to keep the video on. Teacher guided us and I gradually learnt how to do it. I am very happy because I could at last use my mother’s phone – otherwise she was very strict and would not allow me to spend much time on the phone.

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Overall, my online class experience was good. The thing which I liked was that I got a chance to learn about technology. Due to COVID-19, many students are at their native place and it is only because of technology that they are able to attend the online classes.

I would also like to share some of my negative experiences with a virtual school. I faced some problems like not being able to hear the teacher’s voice clearly, network issues and calls dropping. The hard work done by our teachers must be appreciated. But I prefer offline (face-to-face) classes because in online classes, eye contact with the teacher is not possible. I miss the classroom learning environment which is not possible in the virtual class. Sometimes some people enter with fake names and unnecessarily disturb the class too. 

Finally, I want to conclude by saying that considering the current situation, online classes are the best option. Even though there are many disadvantages of virtual school, we have to focus and keep studying.

(All the art work shared here has been done by school students during their online art periods)