Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, all primary and secondary schools in the Serbian language have organized the online learning. In the beginning, this kind of learning encountered difficulties, but very soon everyone got used to it.
The new school year started in September according to the online system, then depending on the epidemiological situation and the number of infected students, they were given the opportunity to organize lessons with physical presence or online.
For many people, the physical presence learning is a better form of education, while on the other hand, certain teachers consider online learning to be a more modern and better way of acquiring and transmitting knowledge.
The director of the School of Construction and Communication in Gracanica, Dejan Petkovic, says that according to the recommendations of all relevant factors, this vocational high school has successfully organized online lessons. However, he believes that because of the way they work with children, physical presence learning is better.
“In terms of practical training, during the online learning period, practical training was in driving training… Our students train directly, a vehicle – a student – an instructor, so that the practical training is not left behind at all, despite the fact that it is online”, said Petkovic.
The teacher in the school with the largest number of students in the municipality of Gracanica, Danijela Todorovic, is a supporter of the standard way of teaching, because it is the best way for the students to gain knowledge, while it is easier for the teacher to see how much the student knows.
“Online learning does not have a great advantage, the biggest advantage is that now learning continues, and we all know that the word is very important and essential in any communication, especially in working with children, while gaining all the new knowledge that children need, not only for their current status but also for their status later”, said Todorovic.
Teachers and students were soon able to use Google Classroom, by watching the lesson on a separate TV channel, then sending homework through various applications.
Although it was expected differently, the children also wanted to go to school and attend classes with physical presence. Eleven-year-old Luka Stojanovic, a fifth-grader, shares the same opinion.
“For me it is better when I go to school every day, because we are in class, when we are at school, we are more active than online, because during the online learning, the children are more inactive, some attend classes and some do not… When we go to school it is much easier because the teacher explains a lot of things to us, we remember them, and we write them down so that we know those things during the tests”, said the 11-year-old.
Time has also shown that online learning has its drawbacks, because social inequalities have now become more apparent.
For parents of students with poorer financial status, it is a real challenge to provide children with smartphones, laptops, computers, or tablets, especially when there are two or more students in a family. The various options of internet access, and internet quality are part of the unfavorable and aggravating circumstances of attending online lessons.
NGO “Putevima sunca” (Sun Roads) from Gracanica has been working with children for years, and organizes numerous workshops in the field of children’s rights. The director of this organization, Snezana Mihajlovic, says that due to the pandemic, they also had to adapt to the new rules in their work.
“Like everyone else, this pandemic has also caused us problems, we had to postpone or interrupt many activities with children, and we had to cancel some activities, to add some new activities related to the prevention of COVID”, said Mihajlovic.
They also organized numerous online seminars on the topic of peer violence, children’s rights, and the dangers that can be encountered on the internet. Mihajlovic says that she is a supporter of online learning and that this type of learning has many advantages.
“This is not a bad way of learning at all. I can say that Google Classroom is very easy to use, especially when we talk about the teaching staff, for those people who have contact with it for the first time. It is not at all complicated, the MUDL platform is much more complicated. I mean this is by no means an unknown sphere. What’s good here?… It’ s good to have electronic materials where children can come together and watch whatever they want. You can very easily organize an appointment and online lessons, and it is almost like being in a classroom”, said Mihajlovic.
Online learning is nothing new. This method of distance learning has been used in the world for a long time. It started to be implemented in our country only after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This article was realized within the project “Identification of challenges in the learning process of children of non-majority community as a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic” implemented by the Center for Innovation and Development / CFID and funded by Slovak Agency for International Development Cooperation / SlovakAid.
