Online Education During the Lockdown of Corona Virus

The spread of coronavirus (Covid-19) has been jeopardizing everything since its first appearance in the city of Wuhan, China. All sectors are jammed whether its provision of food or exportation of oil around the world. But the most calamitous and viciously attacked is the education sector; the places are now desolate once there were smiling faces playing around.

The pandemic coronavirus has approximately impacted over 1,087,569 people and suddenly the idea of online education system has taken a new boom. A National online learning platform has put forward the idea of launching a program to give online education to about 180 million students of primary and secondary age group. The world University rankings suggest that by 2030, 63 percent of the well-known institutes will provide degrees by giving online education. But the questions remain same about the kind of impacts it will put on the minds as well as the problems of the student for whom this whole system is being designed.

The first and foremost problem of any student who face, is the provision of basic facilities such as computers and high-speed internet. Majority of people especially of the developing countries such as India or Bangladesh cannot afford these machines and technology. As stated by Statista Website, India has the most internet users with 560 million, a second largest number after china in the world but in 2017 only 34% population of India had access to the internet. Therefore, the kids` online education system in India seems in determinant for few decades after current corona virus attack.

Similarly, the second greatest problem regarding the online education, is the required help for children to use the machines and this could only be possible if parents assist their child in logging in to an app or clicking at correct place in device. When we discuss about online teaching then there are two major group of parents exists, one who works in service sectors and can face grapple to find proper child care. And others are those who do not have the proper information regarding the usage of a computer. When Jane Gatewood, Vice Provost for Global Engagement at New York State University of Rochester, was asked to comment on the idea of emphasis on online education system due to Covid-19 outbreak; he said that giving online education is same as watching a video rather than visiting a place.

According to an Australian vice-chancellor, there is no alternative of face-to-face interaction and it can never be replaced by any other technological means. The school, college on any university in the world not only provide the academic education but it also gives the chance to students to learn many different things from each other such as, the way to dress up; the way to speak and it also provide the medium for kid to understand the human psychology which helps them for future.

However, many countries are still looking Covid-19 as the game changer in educational field. In china, 125 million Chinese have been facilitated to learning material through the medium of television broadcasts to moderate this widespread of coronavirus. In Lebanon, students are sending their videos of physical training as a homework to the teachers. According to one student`s parent, his kid spent three hours while shooting, editing and sending the video, whereas, the kid took only couple of minutes to record his sports exercise.  

In Pakistan, the government has initiated the working model of online education at university level. In this regard the ex-Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif launched the “Prime Minister’s Laptop Scheme” in 2013-2014, to distribute 100,000 laptops to different universities across Pakistan. In 2018, The Higher Education Commission Pakistan and Coursera offered 8000 free online courses from many international universities such as Cornell, Princeton and Stanford universities. Since, the government announced to carry on the online educational activities, majority of students complained about slow internet on different platforms of social media such as Facebook and twitter.

On twitter, one student requested the government of Pakistan to provide them better internet connection while other tweeted about the lack of mobile network in the city of Chitral. It is noticeable that the kind of experiment to provide digital education is not much successful or might be the worst ever in the history of Pakistan.

In the end, it is evident that due to pandemic Covid-19 education innovation is getting a huge attention to itself and different countries have also started it to test at different levels such as school, college or universities. But the most important part of this testing area would be the impact of results which will hit an individual`s mind. But in this tense environment where people are in lockdown situation due to the unlimited killing by coronavirus it is better to at least implement this system for temporary basis to not to harm future of any kid.

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