by Leidelen Telegrapo
With the rapid spread of COVID-19, everything was put to a sudden halt including education. It became a national issue as to whether or not classes for school year 2020-2021 will still push through since face-to-face setup is impossible. But then the Department of Education was firm about not postponing education as it did numerous preparations in gauging its resources so that the needs of the stakeholders will be met. Despite the delay, classes still opened when October came.
Realizing that education could no longer be confined inside the classroom walls, Malvar Senior High School put in its efforts to somehow elevate how it could deliver education in the time of pandemic. The school secured all essential requirements to apply for Google’s G Suite for Education (now Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals). It is a platform through which easy-to-use tools for education can be found such as Google Classroom, Google Meet, and Google Drive among others.
Upon the approval of its application on July 2020, Malvar SHS was able to provide all its students their individual G Suite accounts that would allow them to virtually connect with their teachers and classmates through Google Classroom and Google Meet. These are the most commonly used tools by teachers and students in their classes.
In the virtual classrooms, teachers and learners have the opportunity to interact with one another through the Google Classroom’s course stream. Teachers can post reminders and announcements for their respective classes. Students, on the other hand, could type their questions or comments. Aside from this, teachers could do a number of things under the class work tab. They could post instructional materials such as self-learning modules, create topics to organize their class work, create and schedule quizzes and the like. Meanwhile, their students could view the assigned tasks to them, attach their outputs and turn them in in a matter of seconds. In the people’s tab, they could see the members of the virtual classroom—all the students enrolled in the subject as well as their teacher, the Master Teacher and the Principal. Finally, the grades tab which is only available for teacher’s accounts provides a summary of the grades students get during a particular grading period. Although there are no virtual classes conducted since the modality of learning is modular, Google Meet proves useful during virtual meetings. Regular monthly as well as emergency and special faculty meetings are held online.
These were just few of the many things G Suite for Education made convenient and easy for students and teachers alike. With everything being done online, Malvar SHS made its initiative to bring something “new” to the “new normal” in education that our situation calls for.
The pandemic is still around the corner. It may have caused everything to change but not our efforts to meet, or even exceed, what we can do to uplift our educational services.
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