The Coronavirus or the COVID-19 disease, pandemic or crisis, declared by the WHO as a public health emergency of international concern on January 30/2020, has become the most notorious event of our decade; it affects large numbers of people in different countries and continents. According to the UNESCO (the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization), the COVID-19 outbreak has impacted more than 1.5 billion of children around the world, from that we can conclude that this virus is not a trivial matter, as most people think, but, it is a real issue that can took the life of people we love if we don’t respect government’s instructions “People please, we still want to breath”.

The COVID-19 has impacted several sectors and industries such as “Education”. In fact, more than 165 countries have closed schools nationwide (suspension of traditional classes) and it’s uncertain when they will reopen, here, all education ministers have reacted and scale up measures and approaches to ensure learning continuity. This wasn’t that big of an issue for developed countries that are familiar with online schooling, but the struggle is more important and visible in developing or underdeveloped countries. Some European countries have opted for not going back to school this year, as a result student will automatically pass while maintaining online classes. Others, have preferred to leave it up to fate, continue remote education and hope for a soon emancipation from the catastrophe, so students would be able to go through with exams the traditional way. “And here we go back to the constant battle that students of developing or underdeveloped educational system face in order to get some kind of global recognition for their degrees“. We see that education in lights of these recent events is as important as the healthcare system and/or the economy, therefore we have to believe that the more people respect the rules put out by the World Health Organization, the sooner we will be able to be freed from our invisible shackles and deal with the deteriorating economy, educational and health care system.

Let’s talk positively now the ministries of education, the teaching teams (teachers, directors, trainers, etc.) have taken the initiatives and measures necessary to preserve the distance teaching link between students-teachers. Concretely, these initiatives are supporting national efforts to ensure a perfect educational continuity, aiming to maintain the knowledge already acquired, while allowing the completion of the school and university course which is coming to the end. Also, the achievement of these objectives involved research and the implementation of adequate tools in a minimum period of one to two weeks. For this, academies and teaching centers rely on a list of digital educational resources (platforms, web networks and applications), dedicated to distance-teaching and distance-learning such as: Zoom, Micro Teams, Google Classroom, Moodle, E-learning, Schoology, … in order to provide social care and interaction during periods of school closure. We cannot neglect students’ efforts: to stay focused to attend sessions that are sometimes long. The administrators also make efforts to train both students and teachers in the use of the platforms, and the teachers themselves try to adapt, and get into the habit of continuing the course sessions in good conditions, even if it’s different from the face-to-face courses.

But behind the positive there is a negative we cannot ignore the fact that students are not used to distance learning and how to deal with the new applications, students living in rural areas are struggling with network data that is very weak or almost no data. We are students too, we are under pressure even more than before we study the whole day, we could sometimes have extra hours and we have to work on our projects during night. Moreover, financially not all students can spend an amount of money in order to have network access; especially in this crisis. We can note that just a minority of countries have been able to provide free or low-cost access to these platforms, through the mobile telephone networks of communication operators: Orange, Telecom, China mobile Communications …

We are faced to an unprecedented spread of the virus which is forcing many schools to close worldwide. The solutions taken at the level of the different countries are only temporary and the devices can only be provisional to avoid the bad scenario of a blank year, however working online or working alone will never replace the presence of our teachers. It should therefore not last too long, especially for classes which have exams at the end of the year which cannot afford to be too late. We appreciate these efforts, as young; we can manage ourselves, but a question that arises: what to do for students, who do not have internet or do not even have the technical and financial resources to continue their studies at distance? They are not a minority to neglect; they also have the right to have good conditions, therefore an internet for all or a deserved success!!

The COVID-19 opened our eyes to sectors that we have ignored, to outdated methods, to the role of people we didn’t see before, on simple things we gave no value, but above all on solidarity that demonstrates our humanity. YES, we don’t know what will happen in the next few days, but we know that we are there for each other.

Thank you COVID-19, you are just making us more powerful!

#Stay-at-home   #Be-positive

Authors

• EL YAZIDI Hind
• HIKIOUI Saida
• JAMAL Firdaous
• FARHI Meryam
• HAFED Salwa

Resources

• https://news.itu.int/covid-19-how-digital-learning-solutions-are-taking-shape/
• https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019