Due to COVID-19, students were given the opportunity to do online learning or in person learning for the school year. While in person students are having a normal school year so far, online students are going through their first six weeks of school differently.
Without the guidance and supervision of teachers, students find it hard to stay on track.
“I’m not very skilled at managing my own time that well,” junior Rosalia Nava said.
“Having to schedule stuff out and finish my assignments on time is kind of difficult.”
The Internet has proven to be one of the most difficult aspects of online learning.
“Sometimes things glitch, or or the internet doesn’t work,” junior Savannah Cunningham said. “Something ends up going wrong.”
Often students strategize and organize difficult situations to make them more bearable.
“My plan for making online more manageable is to keep in touch with teachers more, and to act as if I was going in person,” junior Rya Walker said. “Waking up early, doing the work during class, etcetera.”
Despite the troubleshooting and difficulties faced during online learning, it is a catalyst for better learning in the future.
“Online learning is the way of the future,” Social Studies teacher Duston Shepard said. “I can see where this can be used if you are home and can’t come to school because you had an injury or you’re sick. One of the benefits to online learning is it prepares you for college and they way they give lessons online for post secondary education. It takes some adjusting but after a while online learning is second nature.”
The complexity of online school isn’t something students look forward to, however, it’s still a first choice for sophomore Jaydyn Dixon.
“Online school for me is pretty flexible,” Dixon said. “I plan on doing online for the whole school year.”
Teachers are coming up with many strategies to make online learning more efficient and manageable for students.
“I believe that constant communication through many platforms with the students is a big key to success as well as creating an understandable platform where the students do not have to hunt around different websites to do an assignment,” Shepard said. “Keeping everything in canvas and embedding other management software into canvas is more beneficial to our students.”