A greater part of students and teachers will follow the new 2020/2021 school year from a distance, that is, through the National Platform for online teaching www.schools.mk, as was highlighted at the presentation, which is easy to use and for which 1600 teacher have been trained, who will then train other teachers – their colleagues.
The Ministry of Education and Science last weekend sent user passwords to schools for access to the platform, but yesterday it was unavailable for logging in. The Ministry announced that testing its optimization is constantly being worked on in order for it to be fully functional by October 1.
The platform has been developed in cooperation with FINKI and it is estimated that it will be used by 260 000 students and approximately 25 000 teachers from primary and secondary schools. The content is available in five teaching languages (Macedonian, Albanian, Turkish, Serbian, and Bosnian), and is created in such a way that the students themselves can supplement and upgrade it.
Nikola Delevski, a professor of physics in the secondary school “Nikola Karev” in Strumica, in a statement for CIVIL Media, says that with the newly-created situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic we have to focus our attention to our personal health and the health of the students. In his opinion, care should be shown towards the students, which besides education includes a reduction of the risk to the physical and mental health of students and that without health, any kind of teaching is useless.
“Online teaching is a challenge and a reassessment of the education models. It is a challenge because of its newness and the multifaceted simplification of the transfer of knowledge, where the reassessment is also because of the different work conditions of both the teachers and students and because of the additional need of creative solutions and applicability of the teaching material. Online teaching has an opportunity to be not just a replacement, but rather rebirth of education, but only if we are persistent in the initial period and the results are maintained in the long – term– as a vision of the future and as an opportunity for improvements in the educational system on the built system” says professor Delevski.
The impact of online teaching on students varies, which in his opinion is to be expected because it concerns students from different environments and with different views, who come from different structures.
“Still, all students in some way have accepted the newly-created situation in the learning process, satisfied, because the risks to their health have been minimized and have showed better results because these generations of students are kids of a digital era and that was not a challenge for them” adds Delevski.
Delevski highlighted that the new situation with the online teaching is a great challenge, but it also motivates a more orderly, more systematic, and organized way of working with the students.
“This is an opportunity for a collective change of the educational process, as has been the case throughout history in similar situations. Of course, the shortened class duration and the absence of the special, physical factor, can be of use to us if we direct them towards leading the students through shortened, but key paths to improvement, where quality prevails over quantity” adds Delevski.
In regards to his experience with online teaching so far, professor Delevski highlighted that with the announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic and the interruption of physical presence teaching in schools, a period in which every teacher managed to find their own way for the teaching process to continue followed.
“It is too early for an objective insight into the online teaching, but the experience so far announces hard work and patience by teachers, attention and adaptation by students and sufficient space for mutual successful communication. However, online teaching is possible and gives positive results. Namely, students regularly followed classes and carried out their assigned tasks, certainly with rare exceptions. Students contacted easier, were more regular in their homework and achieved better results, as the process allows learning according to their own pace. Regarding the relationship between teachers and students, I can reply on my behalf. More specifically, my relationship with the students is based on mutual respect and understanding, which is necessary for creating a positive atmosphere for conveying knowledge and, of course, work that produces results. In that way, I did not notice changes during the online teaching”, says Delevski.
Delevski says that the National Platform for distance learning is something that was requested by all involved in the educational process and that after the conducted surveys, up to 98% of the surveyed parents, students, teachers and principals had requested a unified National Platform for distance learning that will enable learning in one and only way.
“Every change is difficult at the beginning, since a certain comfort zone has to be left. What gives hope is that in the recent period teachers have shown great awareness, worked day and night and all of them successfully mastered it. It is practical and functional, the best thing that has happened in the education during the pandemic, and this is just the beginning. It is being developed and will be developed according to the demands of the teachers and students. The platform is useful, simple to use, simply organized, and will be easy for the students to use, through a link they will immediately access the class. In addition, it will serve also for promoting the professional development of the teachers, digital skills of the students, following the activity of both students and teacher, which will prevent improvised assessment. This will be an opportunity for creating the future of a diverse education, which will request a mixture between the old, traditional learning and the new, virtual”, adds Delevski.
Angela Petrovska
Translation: N. Cvetkovska
