Teaching at home and at school How to be in two places at once It’s the year 2020 – the setting of several futuristic sci-fi movies like Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, Edge of Tomorrow and Pacific Rim – and it’s getting hard not to feel like we’re in a movie ourselves. Everything seemed to change overnight. While we were once teaching in classes brimming with students (some more than they should have been) and high-fiving with reckless abandon, now, for many of us, our teacher desks have become our dining room tables and our high fives, digital waves. Now, much like the heroes and heroines of these movies, teachers are being called to do what they have always done – be dynamic, resourceful and brave as we take on the challenges that our profession throws at us. One of the many new challenges is: How do I reach my students at home when I am also teaching students in the classroom? The reality (and in my opinion, tragedy) of South African schooling has been highlighted by this pandemic: Different schools and their students can have vastly different levels of access to the resources that they need for learning. In our school, we have found that the resource in highest demand is data. Most of our students have access to a device in their home, but many struggle with access to the internet. In chatting with my teacher friends and other teachers in the edtech community, I have come across a number of different ways to address the issue of teaching those at home while others are at school, and I would like to present some of them to you in order of data required:
28 | Teacha! Magazine
