Schools closed or in the middle of gas and computers and televisions connected more than ever. This was the reality of teaching in Portugal in the last months of the academic year 2019/2020, with COVID-19 not giving a damn. More than four months after the closure of all schools, and with some changes in strategy by the Government in between, SAPO TeK spoke with two teachers to understand the impact of this reality on the daily lives of those who have a mission to teach , whether inside or outside schools.
At the beginning of March this year, with the pandemic taking on more worrying proportions, the Government declared March 16 as the official date for the closure of schools in Portugal. In practical terms, this decision forced teachers, parents and teachers to be confined at home, in a very different reality, with the Telescola being launched at the end of April. Changing teaching and assessment methods, seeing students through screens and managing all new processes were new challenges that teachers at various levels of education had to adapt to.
The challenges with the new teaching method
From Seixal, in Setbal, where she taught 2 years of school at Escola Bsica Nun'lvares, to Odivelas, where she lives, Cludia Alves' day-to-day life changed completely with the COVID-19 pandemic. She, too, with two children at home, the oldest in secondary school, the teacher told SAPO TeK about her experience, revealing that conducting the distance assessment was particularly challenging.
Since I work with students who are still very dependent on the teacher, aged seven to eight, and in a socially disadvantaged neighborhood, it was very difficult to make this assessment. For Cludia Alves, distance is very complicated to understand if the work done by the student, even with help, or by the parents. Only in the most glaring cases was it possible to know if there was any kind of evolution or setback, he considers.
Leaving further south, and in a context of university education, Margarida Pereira talks about the main difficulties in relation to the evaluation method. Making the control of students who are conducting remote assessments compatible with that of data protection legislation was one of the issues highlighted by the professor at the Escola Superior Agrária of the Polytechnic Institute of Beja (IPBeja), with a degree in Agronomy and a PhD in Plant Protection .
The truth is that the issue of cybersecurity was also a topic widely talked about during 100% online teaching. Used by many Portuguese students, Zoom was in the news, not only for its popularity and advantages, but also for security flaws, initially through an FBI warning.
In Portugal, and in mid-April, a 20-year-old youth even went into Zoom sessions without authorization, "with the sole purpose of disturbing its normal functioning", explained the Judiciary Police at the time. On the same day, Fenprof issued a statement asking for more security, stating that it would proceed with a complaint by the Attorney General's Office. Even so, the IPBeja teacher guarantees that the programs and platforms she used corresponded, in general, to what she wanted, using Zoom, with an account through the Science and Technology Foundation, which allowed meetings and classes without any timeout, and the Institute's Moodle platform.