jblife-summer-2020-screen

若
COMMUNITY
COVID-CLOSED SCHOOLS
According to an Arirang news report, over
1.5 billion students in 165 countries (or
87% of schools worldwide) have been
affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and
have had to turn to innovative methods
and cutting edge tools to educate their
children. However, many countries are
not nearly as equipped to deal with
the challenges of online education as
Korea. Up to 30% of students in poor
and minority communities in the US, for
example, do not have access to wireless
Internet or digital devices. But when
the first round of online classes began
in South Korea on April 9, the country
saw nearly 99% of its almost 1 million
registered middle and high school
seniors in attendance.
The biggest stumbling block for online
education appeared early on in systems
that greatly underestimated the number
of simultaneous connections and data
load their servers would need to be able
to handle. But after the initial technical
glitches and connection problems were
addressed, the second round of online
classes, beginning on April 16, focused
on stabilizing the system overall to
accommodate another 4 million students
connecting at the same time.
THE FIRST DAY! (ONLINE)
Online teaching methods vary from
school to school, but most schools were
encouraged to use either the Korea
Education and Research Information
Service (KERIS) website or the Educational
Broadcasting System (EBS) television
programs. Many students received a
shipment of textbooks from their schools,
and EBS showed lectures from those
textbooks at set times during the day.
My first-grader, for example, watched
first grade lessons from her textbooks
from 9-9:30 and 10-10:30am every
morning (second graders were given the
alternating 30-minute block).
My third-grader was given daily lessons
through the KERIS e-Learning website
that combined blog posts, YouTube videos,
and other activities with offline homework
assignments from his textbooks. Parents
were encouraged to send photos of their
children’s homework to the teachers and
“take attendance”.
Most public school teachers have been at
school preparing for the school year since
March 2, the original starting date. This
probably aided the transition to online
education. But now, after only about
a month of online classes, all public
school students (save about 500 schools
in areas with
ongoing cluster
infections) are
back in their
physical school
buildings, with
strict social
distancing rules
in place.
10 Jeonbuk Life Magazine / Summer 2020 • Issue 19