19 minutes
SHAH ALAM: Poor Internet coverage, especially in rural areas, did not hamper the spirit of a teacher in discharging his duty to impart knowledge to his students during the implementation of the home-based teaching and learning (PdPR) method.
Idi Johan Mohd Zohdi, of Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK) Dato Mustafa, Sekinchan, said the PdPR period was a very challenging journey for him and other teachers.
“Our weakness in this rural area is that there is poor Internet access, apart from students not having the means to buy the Internet data with most of them children of farmers, fishermen and labourers,“ he told Bernama.
Idi Johan, 41, said the place he was staying also had Internet coverage problems, forcing him to go to the main road to get better access to ensure the PdPR process could run smoothly.
“When I find an area with good internet coverage, I’ll just stop my car and start the class from the car,” he added.
Apart from that, the mathematics teacher said that to ensure that none of his students lagged behind in their studies, he would go to their houses to pass them their assignments.
“There is a solution to every problem. If I did not get feedback from my students (during the online learning session), I’ll go to their house myself to pass them the assignments. Indirectly, this helps to maintain my good relations with their (students) guardians.
“To facilitate my students to submit the given assignments to me, I divide them into groups based on their respective locality. I will appoint a head, who will collect the assignments,” said Idi Johan, who has been a teacher for 20 years.
Another teacher, Norjilawati Mohd Amin, 36, of SMK Setia Alam, said the challenge during the implementation of PdPR was in terms of getting the satisfaction when teaching, because online learning restricted her movement compared to physical teaching in classrooms.
“The absence of suitable devices among students, to some extent, hampered the PdPR process. Despite growing up in the city, many of them (students) are from low-income families,” she said.
Norjilawati, who teaches moral studies and has been in the service for 12 years, said she had to be creative during the learning sessions to get the students’ attention and focus during PdPR lessons.
“We have to looking for suitable methods to attract students to focus in class. I organised games and used appropriate applications, in addition to carrying out various interesting activities.
“I also developed a Youtube site, ‘LET’S LEARN WITH CIKGU JILA’ to help students understand their lessons and learn the technique of answering questions,” she added. — Bernama
