I recently came across a WhatsApp video forward of a little girl, (aged about ten or eleven at the most), describing her travails at engaging an online class. Wanting to dismiss it initially, my curiosity got the better of me and I took a casual look at it. What caught my fancy was the confidence the lass exuded and more than anything, her humorous narrative style, replete with onomatopoeia to illustrate the actions, and her exasperation at not being able to deliver the goods and at homework not done.
There she was, chiding the kids who failed to comply with online etiquette about muting/unmuting the audio and activating/deactivating the video when required. Her annoyance is palpable at the presence of parents during her sessions, for instance, a mother brushing her toddler’s teeth and worse, a half-dressed father in the background which drives the class into fits of giggling. There’s also a reference to the games being played behind the scenes and the power play at work with the request by a parent in a respectable position to let his child off the hook, for not paying attention, saying that after all, he’s just a child.
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The girl though, is not convinced as her WhatsApp status with big sounding words belies it. Between calling out the attendance and the distractions, she is aghast to note that the class time is up. Amused, I viewed it a second and a third time! On my third viewing, I was hit by the latent message behind the recounting of her experience. It suddenly seemed like ‘déjà vu’!
Leave alone kids, isn’t this what we have been facing and continue to, on the present virtual landscape? I recall someone citing the case of a student answering his attendance from the cozy confines of his bed, only to be alerted by his good friends that the class was in session and that his video was on! Or the one happily haggling over vegetable prices at the market, unaware that his audio was unmuted! Or even the boy who sleepily told the caller in singular terms to refrain from disturbing him, not realising that it was the teacher he was addressing!
Not to forget the occasions when we have been met with a deadly silence to our questions, leaving us to wonder if we are shooting in the dark! Not that the pasture is greener on the other side for the students, what with network issues and long screen presence that leaves them drained.
And yet, there’s salvation still, for hasn’t technology brought us all, ‘digital immigrants’ and ‘digital natives’ on the same page, despite it having been akin to walking a tightrope.
The present decline in the number of Covid cases has prompted schools and colleges to reopen. With SOPs in place and notices signaling the need to adhere to Covid appropriate behaviour, educational institutions are gearing up to meet the challenges. But with the resurgence of fresh cases reported in many western nations, it would be wise not to throw caution to the wind as the ‘sword of Damocles still hangs over our heads’, more so as our children are yet to be vaccinated.
