Sometimes I feel that during this semester, we, the students, have had a lot of excuses made for us.  These mostly come in the form of discussions around how hard it must be to do things over Zoom all the time.  However, that has not really been my experience.  There are certainly challenges that come with transitioning to a new form of learning for both students and teachers but there have also been some benefits, in my opinion.  For example, though it has been difficult to differentiate between classes since I do my classes from the same spot in my room for all of them, not having to drive to the school every day for class has saved me both time and money.  Staring at a computer screen for six to ten hours a day is certainly not good for my eyes, nor is sitting in the terrible office chair at my desk particularly good for my back.  However, being in my own home means I can step away from my computer during class to stretch and give my eyes a break in a way that is much more disruptive in a classroom setting.

 

I haven’t really been able to identify if I’m learning any better or worse than I would be within an actual classroom setting but I have felt a lot freer to fidget without worrying about disrupting other students and since I don’t have to dedicate part f my focus to not fidgeting, I feel I can focus better on the class at hand.  I imagine that this is not the case for everyone in the program.  That for some, the sacrifice of not being in a physical classroom with other students outweighs any of the potential benefits of online learning.

 

In terms of accessibility, Zoom seems to have a lot of different features to help out.  The ability to record lectures and allow students to watch them on their own time or watch them back to re-familiarize themselves with anything they might have missed the first time is incredible and something that I would have found helpful in high school and could still probably use now.  Additionally, the inclusion of closed captioning is wonderful.  Sometimes I have some difficulty processing what’s being said, especially in film and TV so I watch pretty much everything with subtitles and that can help me understand things faster.  I’m sure that having that for lectures would be helpful.  I think that these elements from Zoom could be used as either substitution or as augmentation within the classroom and would be helpful even outside of the pandemic for people with auditory processing disorders or anything that makes it difficult to sit for long periods of time in a classroom.

 

HERE is a curated list of assistive technologies if you’re interested in learning more about how to create an inclusive classroom