Teachers are delivering lectures online, and students are listening to them from home.
For teachers, delivering lectures in the classrooms (face to face) is the normal. They are trained for it. Some of them may not be good in pedagogy, average in language skills, peculiar pronunciations, and may have an accent etc.
In real classrooms, it is the world where they have always belonged.
In the new normal, they have to deliver a lecture staring at a camera, and not being able to make eye contact with their students, and not being able to see the body language and assess the attentivity etc.
The students,on the other hand are listening to the lecture in the comfort of their homes, but the teacher does not know if they are keenly listening and absorbing, or just hearing. Are they being distracted?
Are the parents also listening in, and trying to make their judgements and form opinions about the teachers? Will they make statements or expressions that will influence and create students’ new opinions about their teachers. Will the teacher be criticised? Is that fair?
Teachers are never used to parents sitting alongside their children in regular classrooms.
In the new normal the teachers are conscious about possibly being watched and assessed by parents .
That can make a difference in their how effective a teaching-learning session can be.
Let us not criticise or be judgemental about these teachers who are using technology for the first time. They will get used to it and will become proficient at it, given some training and practise.
For most of us it is normal to be in conversation with friends and fellow professionals, lecture to an audience, if you are regular speaker at events, but I am sure talking to a camera and microphone, knowing fully well, that it is being broadcasted live, is something we have to get used to. I would be telling a lie, if I said otherwise
No doubt that use of technology in Education is inevitable and can make teaching-learning processes more effective.
The blended model will be the new normal. The teachers and educators understand it.
Let us give them time and opportunity, and empathy so that the new normal in education will happen and be sustainable to all stakeholders.
