The year 2020 is special. There was a dream about 2020 in books, governments, schools, nations, board rooms, individuals, travellers, influencers etc., And 2020 was a real big surprise. We have still couple of months left. There are somethings that happened so fast and unexpected. I thought of writing them down.
In Short 2020 so far
It all started slow. During end of 2019 the news started to come in from china about an unknown virus. Then the news of it spreading slowly. The WHO saying, it is not a pandemic, no need to worry. By mid march we had roughly 110 cases in India. Already there was lot of confusion and protest happening due to CAA/NRC during the same time. And then came the sudden lockdown from 25th March to 14th April. We started to work from home. Roads became empty and deserted, An unusual scene in India. Schools went into the summer vacation. We started preparing for Ramzan month. We completed the entire Ramzan inside our home and offered the Eid prayers in our home. My Kids came back, School re opened and remote schooling started. We became an indoor generation, we work, we play, we pray, we cook, we eat, we teach, we do school activities, we watch news, we shop & we communicate all from our indoors. The unlock phase started slowly and still we are indoors most of the time. The numbers are alarming 7400000+.
Planning the school work
In the past my day mostly looked like, get up in the morning, do my morning rituals, go to office, do the work and get back to home. My kids day looked like same and they went to school. But now we wake up and do the morning rituals but stay at home. The day starts for me at 9:00. Each of the kid has remote school session at different times. Each day school sends lot of work for the parents to do. We have to keep a track of what was assigned, what was downloaded, what was completed, what was scanned & what has been submitted to school. My inkjet printer became a mini printing press. And we have to motivate the kids to do those school work. While kids felt they are in some kind of infinite holidays.
Internet setup at home
My internet setup at home was done for watching Netflix and accessing internet from the mobile devices. Once in a while the connection would die and comeback after hours of outage. Once the work from home started, the number of simultaneous video streaming for office calls, school classes, Netflix sessions & skype calls went over the top. My poor tplink router gave up and I had to upgrade the router, internet plan and keep a backup mobile internet. And pray everyday, that the internet should live up. In addition to this, there are devices from every WIFI generation 802.11(b/g/n/ac). All fighting with one another for bandwidth. And the strange thing is MS teams complains about a poor network connection while everyone is happy with the connection.
Kids 24/7
The pandemic made me understand the reason they invented school. Home schooling is way harder than I ever imagined. I can write a full post on this topic alone. Let me write only the important ones here. I can feel the pain when they ask “when will the schools open again?”. Because kids have lot of energy and when you lock them up in closed space, it is really harsh on them. They are not amused by the tv shows, YouTube, mobiles and iPad any more. They start to play inside the home, constantly shouting, breaking things, switch off internet, complaining about one another, dancing, fighting and the list goes on. The adults have to compete with buddha when it comes to patience and peace.
Online Security
In the past my mother, spouse & kids accessed the internet only for youtube, netflix & some internet apps from their android/ios phones. Even though it is not completely secure. To some extent I feel it is a manageable situation. Now the school started conducting online classes in chrome. I gave a laptop for this purpose. Now laptop + windows + chrome browser + eager user(kids) is a security nightmare. They learned very quickly the full internet is available in this environment. And started experimenting. For eg
-
I saw bounced emails. one of my kid tried to communicate with his friend via email. without knowing how.
-
They know all my pin codes (even if it is of 6 digits).
-
They started to communicate in the private chat during online class.
-
When I say don’t do something just because the computer is asking you to do. For eg “Click here to scan your computer” kind of malicious ads. And the result is they demand privacy now and asking why they have to take permission to do something online.
-
They are competing with one another in going the extra mile.
-
Fortunately the little ones are my informers. I am not sure when they would become partner in crime
.
We are trying to sit behind them during online sessions and keep a watch. But one wrong click can infect our entire network.
Online Classes
The online class is another big challenge. The kids are not used to it, the parents are not used to it and the teachers are not used to it. Online class is more like the debates that Arnab conducts in the Republic tv. In the strange layout, everyone gets a 50×50 pixel digital frame and a big canvas for the PowerPoint presentation. Kids cannot keep the attention and focus. There are 2 teachers in a session, one to teach and the other one to mute unwanted noise. While the teacher is trying to explain something, there is constant cross talk by the students. And on top of that the parents are constantly watching what is being taught. I feel really bad for the teachers. This format/medium is not a sustainable model for any one of them.
Life goes on
And life goes on, one day at a time. I pray to God every day this should finish and we should get back to normal life soon. Will we…
Ferose Blog 