){kind=logo}
){kind=icon}
){kind=logo}
){kind=icon}
“Virtual education seemed distant to many of us; we had to lose our fear and dare to use technological and pedagogical tools in a virtual way to get the class going.”
Elementary education was taken by surprise to suspend face-to-face classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There was great uncertainty among teachers, families, and society about how to continue the students’ education. Virtual education seemed a distant concept to many as it was mainly offered in higher education institutions and not in elementary education. Many digital migrants, teachers, managers, supervisors, and directors at school had to overcome their fears and dare to use virtual pedagogical tools to respond to the pandemic challenges.
As a third-grade teacher at an elementary school, I decided to use available virtual applications and platforms to establish communication and accompany the students in my class to offer them meaningful and relevant learning. When using a virtual medium, it is especially important to respect student privacy and information security a priority.
“Everyone grows when curiosity, imagination, and creativity are promoted as factors of citizen transformation to face the educational challenges brought by the pandemic.”
Methodological proposal to teach a remote class
-
I continually look for video material suitable to offer children at their educational level, which helps them develop critical thinking skills and invites them to reflect. For Spanish speakers, I recommend the SEP (Secretary of Public Education) videos on YouTube channel Aprende en Casa (Learn at Home). On the website, Once TV (Channel Eleven TV), you find high-quality, in-demand educational videos created by the National Polytechnic Institute. Ingenio TV (Ingenuity TV) contains many resources that we can download and use in class.
-
We had sessions on the Zoom platform Monday through Friday for forty minutes, where kids received the meeting’s ID and password through WhatsApp. The first 10 minutes are icebreakers because the children like to chat with their classmates and catch up with each other while the other students are connecting. The next 10 minutes are for reading digital books, then 10 minutes of doing activities, 5 minutes of evaluation, and 5 minutes to assign and explain the homework and say goodbye. There were more than thirty sessions where we celebrated the Children’s Day and Teacher’s Day with festivities from their homes where the students played and listened to music.
-
We used photographic evidence placed in Google Drive digital folders for the follow-up and evaluation of homework and projects. At first, the children uploaded their texts with their parents’ help daily, but many managed to do this autonomously.
Most popular activities in class
These activities are part of the 2011 curriculum produced by the Mexican Secretary of Public Education (SEP).
-
Create riddles. As a social practice using descriptive language, the students described household objects with a maximum of five characteristics. Then, the classmates tried to identify the item the student was telling.
-
Lost numbers. It is an activity related to addition and multiplication. Each student completed the missing number in a series and placed the possible answer in a box or board from home. The teacher asked the other classmates to confirm it. If the answer was incorrect, we all corrected it.
-
Magnetism. With a magnet’s use, the students touched and explored various surfaces in their homes and found that it remained attached to some. They recorded in a natural sciences book which surfaces the magnet attracted and which ones it did not. When they were in class, the children reported the surfaces they had tried, such as a table, a glass, their notebooks, screws and screwdrivers, stoves, refrigerators, and others.
-
Recycled toys. With their parents’ help, the children used old materials from their homes and built different items such as a robot, an airplane, boats, clothes for dolls, and furniture, among others. They presented them in class, explaining the procedure they had followed, the possible uses, and the materials used.
-
Family meal. As an assignment, the children helped in the preparation of food for a meal at home. They identified the recipes’ characteristics and function and recorded in their notebooks the recipes for the main dinner. In the virtual class, the students reported these in turns. This activity relates to the content of Block V that has social language activity for writing instructions.
These activities remind students of the importance of listening, participating in turns, making comments to enrich the class, and treating their classmates as they would like to be treated.
Achieved learning
It is gratifying to perceive the students’ interest in participating in classes. Fifteen minutes before beginning, the children were already asking for the password to enter the course. Something that proved very productive was that they could create a session for the class because Zoom is an intuitive and easy-to-use platform. At first, with their relatives’ help, they learned from errors caused by network and logistical failures. This experience drew their attention to the factors that influence our meeting virtually and led them to learn empathy when they perceived the technological difficulties that others were having. I told them that this was part of everyone’s learning, that it was necessary to respect and tolerate those who had more difficulty.
Given the situation that we are experiencing with the pandemic, the most valuable thing has been to learn together with the children, involving the families who can offer solution alternatives based on their experiences and academic training. Everyone grows when curiosity, imagination, and creativity are promoted as factors of citizen transformation, resulting in the ability to confront the current challenges demanded by society.
Reflection
The imminent challenge is to reduce the verbal, passive, and transmissive class time, where the educator speaks, and the children only listen (Freire, 1969). The students must investigate their environments and share their work through an exhibition or video. The goal is to use new resources to write texts, do experiments and science projects, and solve mathematical challenges with the support and collaboration of their relatives. The idea is to raise awareness of the importance of the parent’s and relatives’ presence in the activities of their children, taking advantage of the variety of software on the Internet, making it an opportunity for interacti
ve learning.
The process of transition to an education supported by the implementation of virtual tools permits flexibility in developing schedules and content. Hence, a rupture of paradigms and teaching methodologies occurs, where the use of applications facilitates the students’ learning.
About the author
Francisco Javier Arce Peralta (javierarcep@hotmail.com) is a teacher in Teaching and Educational Innovation. He holds a Ph.D. in Critical Pedagogy and Popular Education from the McLaren Institute of Critical Pedagogy in Ensenada, BC, Mexico. He is a member of Escritores Sudcalifornianos Asociación Civil (Sudcalifornianos Civil Writers Association) since 2017 and belongs to the movement, “Poets of the World.”
References
Freire, P. (1969). La educación como práctica de la libertad (Education as a practice of freedom) (fourth edition, 2007 ed.). (S. Araújo Olivera, Trad.) México: Siglo XXI.
SEP. (2011). Programa de Estudios de Educación Básica, Guía para el tercer grado, Educación primaria. México: CONALITEG.
Editing by Rubí Román (rubi.roman@tec.mx) – Observatory of Educational Innovation
Translation by Daniel Wetta.
){kind=icon}
){kind=icon}
This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
)