THERE’S ALWAYS A SILVER LINING

This 2020 has been a very special year full of challenges for everybody, but I am sure I will not be considered mistaken if I assert that teachers are among the most affected.

It’s been many years since many teacher trainers started speaking about education for the 21^st century and the necessary skills that in-service teachers needed to help students to develop. Of course, we had to develop those skills in ourselves first. Nevertheless, many teachers were reluctant to accept that ICT had to be included in our practice. They displayed a panoply of reasons which were not a lie: lack of time, resources, interest, to name a few. Those issues should have been addressed by teachers themselves but also by policies, which were not up to the standards needed. The result was evident. Many teachers were overloaded with demands because they had to learn how to use ICT at the same time they had to plan and prepare lessons using technology. On the other hand, many students did not have the means to attend the virtual lessons they were offered. When students had to connect to the internet, they found that there was only one computer for all the members of the family, they lacked internet connection, they were too young to connect themselves to the internet while parents were out at work, and I could go on enumerating obstacles that hindered their way to successful learning.

A special note should be made about teachers’ efforts to keep the pace of their teaching needs. Not only did they have to plan lessons in a different way but they also had to use their own means to work efficiently. They needed their own internet connection and their own ICT devices. Moreover, if they hadn’t been trained in the use of ICT, they had to attend online workshops and start experiencing their newly acquired knowledge. The positive side could be the fact that they started working collaboratively, thus developing empathy and the capacity to share and work together with others. Some teachers even started working on cross curricular projects.

Cross curricular projects deserve a special paragraph because they are useful and effective to educate learners. Through cross curricular projects we can achieve many aims, for example:

·         make learning significant. Students understand that whatever they learn is useful in real situations in their contexts.

·         help students to develop collaborative skills. They learn to work cooperatively and they understand that individual effort has an effect on the final product the group has to present.

·         help students to learn to state their point of view and defend it.  Students have to discuss courses of action and material to use without the help of a teacher checking every detail.

·         help students to learn to work on active listening.  They have to listen carefully to their classmates’  opinions to give feedback and draw group conclusions to agree on a course of action to fulfil a task. In this way, they become aware of how relevant it is to listen to each other.

·         help students to develop critical, lateral and creative thinking in order to apply the new knowledge acquired to solve the problems presented by teachers. They can even present new problems to be solved by their classmates.

·         encourage ICT creative use to interact with teachers and classmates. Many students are well acquainted with social networks and videogame sites but they don’t know much about the real potential connectivity has for their research works. Designing appropriate tasks, teachers can help students to discover how many tools they have at hand to do research and contact different kind of people online.

·         help students to develop individual responsibility. They have deadlines they need to meet, but they don’t have their teachers checking every single detail. They can consult teachers, but they have to organise their queries to access teachers’ help on the agreed instances. They have to decide together with the members of their groups when the task is complete and apt to be handed in.

All in all, as I am usually a positive thinker, I take this pandemic as a valuable opportunity to grow. Not only will students become more mature, teachers will also learn to evaluate tasks and provide feedback in a different way. Remote teaching and learning provide a wonderful opportunity for growth. Moreover, I think e-learning has come to stay. We will go on working remotely for quite a long time, so let’s make the most of it!