Do You Prefer Online Education or Classroom Life? And Why?
Thanks to the coronavirus, we are forced to switch our lifestyle and working style in a totally different way. The education industry is one of the main place feeling the effect of the pandemic. Teachers and students need to adopt online education, and they need to have lessons on ‘Zoom’, which is a distance learning app, and hand in their homework in ‘Google Classroom’ or ‘Canvas’. As a student, people always ask me which kind of classes I prefer the most——online or in the classroom. Without a doubt, my own belief will always, definitely be ‘in the classroom’.
The first point to consider why classroom life is better is that it can help maintain the quality of education and learning efficiency. The learning schedule of online education can be quite flexible, relaxed and convenient, but on the other hand, it actually offers an opportunity for students to be slothful and inattentive in online lessons. Teachers cannot pay attention to all the students by looking at the electronic screen. Consequently, the teacher will deliberately slow down his/her teaching in order to let all the kids understand the concept. Moreover, it is a must to do experiments for subjects such as Biology, Chemistry and Physics because they can help students know the complicated knowledge more. But if we just stuff the courses onto a tiny little electronic screen, we won’t have the chance to experience the principles behind the experiments ourselves. Classroom teaching will improve these problems, teachers can talk to the children face-to-face and solve their questions quickly. Students can also do experiments instead of watching videos. Therefore, there is evidence of a decline in learning efficiency and education quality while having online learning.
Furthermore, it is the case that adopting online education often can lead to eye diseases such as short sightedness. Studying online means students need to look at the electronic display for a long period of time, According to a research from the University of Toledo, when our eyes receive Blu-ray from the screen, it will damage the retinal cells in our eyes and we may easily have eyestrain. This research proves that there is a detrimental impact on our eyes if we keep looking at the screen for a long time. I am convinced that more and more students will start to wear glasses if online education becomes common. Always using electronic devices is not good for our mental health too, people may get depressed or anxious easily if they have to face the computer or iPad every day.
A final point is, we can keep up the social interaction with people when having classroom life. Social interaction is always important no matter at what time. It can let us have a better mental health, chatting with friends or playing with them face-to-face can lighten our mood. We won’t have ample chance to communicate with our classmates if all the teaching changes to online education.
In a nutshell, teaching quality and efficiency do not have to be compromised with resumption of normal classroom teaching. Moreover, eye diseases can be prevented. In addition, we won’t lose our social interaction which essentially makes us happier. Because of the above reasons, I prefer classroom life to online education.