Covid-19 global crisis and its impact on Macedonian education
The Covid-19 crisis has taken a toll on most of the world’s communities. And whilst we struggle to imagine how the situation will progress, there is one part of our community that cannot withstand total shutdown. With around 850 million students out of school worldwide, our small country also struggles to deal with the transition to online learning.
Schools in Macedonia closed on March 11.
The government and the ministry were caught completely unprepared. Never had they thought that they would need to transition to a complete online way of teaching. At the beginning they gave vague recommendations to the teachers to use some alternative way of teaching, so every teacher was and still is left on their own to decide how they will proceed.
Yet a very small percentage of teachers started online training. Not every teacher followed the recommendations given by the ministry. Unfortunately, this is mostly due to the lack of computer knowledge among older teachers, lack of training on using the digital platforms, or lack of motivation to do so probably because of the scarce organization of those in charge. Some teachers have tried using social media, but it is not a very effective or professional way of teaching.
It is also not clear how the participation of the student can be controlled, Students here do not have unique school e-mails, so it is hard to contact them all at once. Also given the standard of living here, not every student has access to a computer or fast internet connection.
After two weeks, some teachers were called to attend a training organized by the Ministry on how to use Microsoft Teams. It seems that this will be the official platform for the online training. But again, no teacher or student has an account yet, so no one, not even those who attended the training can use this platform for now. It is also not clear when the teaching process will start on the platform.
Since the beginning of this unfortunate situation, our platform digitalschool.mk has been used by some of the teachers from my school to post materials, lessons, assignments and quizzes so that they can be available for the students.
Unfortunately, the site has no capacity for online live streaming. And after the support from ETF ended, we were forced to move to a slower and cheaper web hosting plan.
This being said, the platform is of great help to the teachers who are using it and especially to the students. In these troubling times it is crucial that we provide for our students the education that they are unable to access. Our platform, at least, has proven very productive for those teachers who are interested in providing education for their students.
Of course as a country, we face many difficulties when it comes to the transition of online learning and it will take time until we can be confident in our technological capabilities as a body of teachers. But, at the moment we must simply try our best and have in mind the most important aspect of our jobs: our students.
Thanks Maria,
Yes the training was online using Microsoft Teams. Two teacher from each elementary and secondary school were trained, The training should have been recorded, but we still don't have the materials from it. It is not yet clear how dissemination will be organized, and when/if is going to be any training for the students.