South Korea's new school year begins with online classes
  • 4 years ago
중3•고3 오늘 사상초유 온라인 개학…'화면 속' 선생님 만난다

After being pushed back three times and by a month due to the coronavirus outbreak, it's finally back to school day here in South Korea.
Middle and high school seniors started school today, but classes were online.
This unprecedented move will be applied gradually for all grades throughout this month.
Day one of online schooling - here's Eum Jiyoung.
The first day of school has been postponed four times due to the coronavirus outbreak. Now that it's finally here, students start their day with the teacher checking attendance through a real time video-chatting platform.
"We have been practicing online classes through various apps, and since students are good with technology, they are adapting to the system fast."
This unprecedented move began on Thursday for students in their final years of middle and high school. Classes for other grades will gradually start later this month for elementary, middle and high schools nationwide.
At Dosun High School, more than 160 third grade students are participating in online classes on Thursday.
"Rather than gathering in their classrooms as usual, students are instead huddling around their PCs or tablets at home, learning online."
How the remote classes are carried out varies from school to school.
Some classes use live lectures through video conferencing software. In other classes, teachers set assignments for students.
In this class, students are watching the video made by their teacher and are sharing instant feedback using online chatting.
In other schools, students watch videos made by Korea's public education broadcaster EBS as part of their online classes.
EBS has been offering interactive live online classes for all grades. It has secured simultaneous connections for up to 3 million people for its website and is monitoring its server traffic in real-time.
"95 percent of the students reacted positively to the services that we offer, saying that the live lectures are high quality."
He added that he expects schools to continue utilizing online classes to supplement their teaching even after students return to the classroom.
Eum Ji-young, Arirang News.
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