Living with Covid 19 at ISLN.

 Author: Amira Sdairiya

The corona virus isn’t simply a public- health issue; it is also a learning opportunity.

Students, professors and all the staff are affected. So let’s talk about this situation in our institution, ISLN. In order to control the virus’s spread, our institution has closed several times to keep us safe, but there were certain drawbacks, as I can see.

Our safety was somewhat assured, but I’m not sure this was the case of our learning. Actually this closure may have affected certain students, and online learning may not have been the ideal option for many of them. Obviously families were more likely to indicate that they were unable to provide such learning opportunities for their children, and although ISLN did it best to provide e-learning activities for every single student, it was difficult to achieve equal chances for everyone. But, even in this difficult situation, our institution made significant attempts to continue our studies, and not simply waste time. But, let’s be honest. Online learning did have some benefits for our students, for example, it improved virtual communication and collaboration and it increased time flexibility. In comparison to traditional learning. Online learning allowed students to communicate with their professors more frequently. 

We all know that education at ISLN has altered tremendously as a result of this virus, and the sudden transition away from our classrooms to remaining at home and learning online wasn’t easy for all of us, but it served as a motivator for us to work harder. Personally I have to admit that staying away from classrooms and studying at home kind of made me a little lazier at times, but being aware that everyone was working hard to keep our education going was always my motivation to be more responsible and study more.

Teachers at ISLN were also infected with this virus, prior to e-learning, they had to assume the risk of coming to work in these conditions, even though they knew they had a high risk of contracting the virus, let alone the threat to their families, but they came nevertheless. As a result, everyone was making sacrifices.

We can say that transitioning to online learning wasn’t simple for some of them, especially the digital gap. And despite having no pedagogical training for online settings, they were expected to teach online, so you should be aware that some teachers had extremely difficult problems in their work.

We returned to our classrooms at ISLN after the epidemic, and our institution’s safe guarding was a priority, as it had always been.  They devised effective ways to keep us safe, and equipped us with adequate security measures. They set certain stringent guidelines for us to observe, and despite the fact that some students were careless and irresponsible, everyone working at ISLN did their best to raise awareness of the threat, and encourage us to be cautious and protect themselves, our professors, family friends.

Another problem is that at ISLN, there were several situations where some teachers and students were infected with the virus, which made the administration even more cautious. They decided to close the institution for a few days to sterilize it and keep the virus away from us. I am happy to report that everyone in ISLN felt comfortable because they were putting in a lot of work to find a good compromise between our studies and our safety.

In conclusion, even though these two years have been difficult, this virus has taught us responsibility and made us aware of the efforts that ISLN has done to keep us safe. So please, take care of everyone and be glad that they were taking care of us to feel safe, and the least we can do is thank our professors and administrators for all their efforts.