Atharve Vashishta is a grade 11 student at John G. Diefenbaker Highschool in Calgary, Canada. He attended grade 10 and 11 classes both online and in class during the COVID pandemic. Here are the experiences he shared with Palette under our Learning and Teaching During COVID series.
Here are some issues Atharve went through during the pandemic:
“Distractions due to domestic stimuli such as siblings, chores, ability to focus on other tasks while disregarding school work, feeling that studying from home somehow made the work less important etc. Largely focus and discipline related issues due to the perception of relatively increased freedom. I managed these issues by enforcing self assigned deadlines on myself ahead of school assigned deadlines and chose to study on my own rather than through online classes.”
These are some beneficial things that occurred as well:
“I enjoyed being able to focus on other things and goals during the time I was able to save from not going to unnecessary classes.”
Here are some impacts of COVID on Atharve’s life outside of education:
“I was able to grow as a person and spend time reflecting on myself without the distractions of the “outside world”. I enjoyed and relished that opportunity.”
These are some of the technologies he used for his online experience:
“Laptop, headphones, smartphone, YouTube, Zoom, Desire to Learn Brightspace, Google docs.”
