How Has The School Changed to Adapt to the COVID-19 Pandemic?

By L. Mizne

Recently, the COVID-19 - a type of coronavirus - has been quickly spreading around the world, and has now been declared a pandemic. Due to this, St Paul’s has transitioned to a virtual learning environment, something very different, and yet, in some ways, similar to our ordinary school days. 
Some subjects opted for teaching in ways students are used to, such as firefly and email - which made the online lesson similar to the normal school lessons. Others decided to use different platforms which have exciting new features that have helped virtual learning be the best it can be!  
Luckily, the school has already implemented a variety of different online tools that can be used for this purpose exactly. Microsoft TEAMS is one of the platforms used, equipped with great features that really help making the transition from a physical learning environment to a virtual learning environment seamless. Some of the online lessons have been through TEAMS video calls, where the teachers can share their screens with pupils while speaking to them as well. Students have said they benefitted enormously from this, especially if the lesson was on a difficult topic which required a lot of explaining.  

During the first week, pupils commented that they found some of the sites used by many classes at the same time quite slow, as some of the pages were not loading. However, IT quickly fixed this and by the next week, when everybody had gotten a bit more used to the new tools, less problems were encountered. Students from various years have commented that the communication between them and their teachers was very good and similar to their normal school day. 
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The school does not yet know when classes will resume, but due to the implementation of these great tools, we know that everything will turn out just fine; rest assured that the school will continue to provide us with the best learning possible during this pandemic. ​