X. X for xterminate

X.

It has been ages since I have visited my blog. The issue has been this virus that has been going around and the problems that it brings. They have closed all schools and the city of Sydney is in lockdown. Students have been forced to stay at home, attempt 'online' education, and learn things on the internet. The real issue is not the students and the children attempting to go to school via the internet but the teachers trying to deliver learning in this way.

How can teachers say they have succeeded as teachers when they are required to teach online? 

Here I am, after three years in a Masters of Teaching course at one of the most advanced institutions in the world and not one single course on how to teach children online. It makes me wonder if the education system that we have is out of date and set in the dark ages. When I was teaching graphic design at Martin College in 2016, our parent company, Study Group, who are based in the United States, made a decision to place the complete program online and asked all the teachers to retrain or get out as they had established a new way of delivering education to young people in a way young people want to learn.

Visionary ideas at the time, Study Group set new rules and new ways of learning and began the process of changing the way graphic design courses are delivered to students by using the iPad, the iPhone and went digital and mobile, re-structured the organisation to allow students and digital natives to learn online. I made the mistake, I think, by not retraining as a digital trainer and decided instead to undertake my Master of Teaching the old traditional way - attend face-to-face tuition at Western Sydney University. I now have to scramble, like everyone else in the education community, and need to go back to the past to learn how to get ready for the future that is has arrived just a little too early considering I only have six months to go.

I feel like the Daleks are taking over and this world has gone mad. The only option now is to "Xterminate" the virus before it exterminates us.  



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