Ms. Anna, an elementary school teacher, was unsure about how to deliver her regular classes through remote learning after the school announced an immediate shutdown. All sort of questions – will my students understand? Will they suffer from short attention span? How do I make my classes interactive? – were swirling through her mind.
The sudden social distancing protocols have pushed teachers, students and parents alike into venturing into the unknown realm of home schooling through online education.
This unprecedented situation around the world has thrown new challenges in almost every sector, but education seems to be the most affected. The traditional way of face-to-face interaction now must be replaced with distance learning. We know how overwhelming this can get.
That said, there are some incredible resources to make your transition and on-boarding to a remote learning tool a lot easier, if not a piece of cake. 3CX, for instance, offers its pro version, which is compatible for up to 100 users, free for one year to schools.
With 3CX online learning and collaboration tool, you can;
Live stream video for tutoring and for conducting 1 to 1 meetings either with parents or with students who might need extra attention to manage with this new situation.
Chat: The Integrated chat allows you to leave feedback, share documents & ask questions
Whiteboard: The whiteboard aids in the easy understanding of concepts and ideas.
Run a poll: Polling allows teachers to gauge the level of understanding of a topic and lets you organise class quizzes to keep students engaged
Class control: It diminishes the distance by allowing you to enable video to pass the mic using our presenter tool and mute in the middle of a session.
Record classes: The Record feature makes sure that no one misses the class. Unavailable students can watch classes on demand.
And what’s best, it takes just 20 minutes to set-up the application.
Even with all that, we know it’s not going to be easy, especially for kids for whom their school’s physical environment was a solace. But then again, teachers can host a virtual lunch or a birthday party and the interaction that 3CX offers helps teachers and students stay connected even in the gloom of isolation.
Apart from adjusting to the new way of teaching and learning, there are some other deeper concerns that might be affecting teachers and parents such as security, privacy and safety in the online world.
Security: Is the communication encrypted? Can an unauthorised person gain access to the classroom? All these and many more questions stress the importance of security. 3CX being an application for unified communication, security comes as its built-in feature. The web meetings are secured restricting access only through the shared link. 3CX uses a new tunnel encryption functionality to provide end-to-end secure communication
Privacy: 3CX has multi-layered security deployed on its servers that keep every bit of information under lock and key.
Safety: With children being exposed to the internet, every parent and teaching community’s concern is centred around how to safeguard the kids from venturing into unsafe territories. 3CX allows teachers and parents to have ad-hoc meetings with a personal Click2Meet where each concern or safety measures to be taken can be discussed in a 1 to 1 meeting.
For parents who are themselves adjusting to remote working conditions, the challenges of home schooling are hard to deal with. We at NETCorp are doing our best to mitigate the challenges of setting up the 3CX application and getting yourself and your child acquainted with it by providing remote support.
Adapting to these new ways of learning creates challenges, however, by supporting one another and sharing ideas is vital in maintaining positive morale.
If you have any doubts about using 3CX to home school, then please get in touch.
