School in the pandemic: digital teaching and the bans – Thuringia

But Hasse has concerns because when you use YouTube, data always flows into the USA. And that is why students cannot be required to watch videos on YouTube as homework on their private devices, argues Hasse.

For Hagemann, Hasse’s announcement before Easter broke the barrel. He wrote an email to this newspaper, vented his anger and asked what remains of the digital lessons if Hasse always forbids everything.

A few days later, on the phone, his anger is gone again, but his fundamental criticism remains. “If we are no longer allowed to use YouTube, there won’t be much left of the digital lessons,” said Hagemann. He fully understands the privacy concerns. Hagemann also knows what he’s talking about. He is the administrator of the school cloud. He is aware that the American portal can only be a crutch, a makeshift for the transition period until digitization at the school is further than it is currently.

Hate’s communication has a demotivating effect in this situation. It would give the impression that the data protection officer always only says what is not possible. “In the past few months, many young teachers have tried to make lessons as digital as possible. Colleagues fresh from university in particular are shown there that they should use YouTube as a matter of course, ”reports Hagemann. Announcements like Hasse’s were then confusing. Especially since colleagues who come from other federal states would have experienced it differently there.

The fact that the use of videos in distance teaching is now being talked about at all is a huge step forward in the pandemic for Hagemann. “The school cloud is great, no question about it, but it was still under construction last year. To this day we have not been able to use many things at all, ”he explains. That makes the use of emergency solutions inevitable.

Last spring, distance learning at most schools still looked like this: on Mondays, teachers send worksheets to their students by email or they had to pick them up at school. On Fridays the edited sheets were returned to the teachers, who then checked them.

In the first few weeks in particular, online lessons were more of a burden than a blessing last year. “For all sides,” says Hagemann. “All the supervision of the students by us teachers dropped from one day to the next. It all stayed up to the parents. ”Not infrequently, children would have struggled alone with the inadequate technical possibilities during the day. In the evenings, when the parents came home from work, they had to go to school together. that was very frustrating for everyone, ”reports Hagemann.

In the course of the year, the further development of the school cloud made things a little better, but even the best digital distance learning could not replace the personal interaction between students and teachers in classroom teaching.

“What is missing is the feedback,” says Hagemann. In this school year he taught about the material that was planned. “But in the distance lesson I have no feeling for what really stuck with the students.” It is still the case that the students switch off their microphone and camera during the video lesson so that the image is less jittery. “As a result, I can’t see at all who is really following the lesson or who is busy with completely different things. I notice that in the classroom, ”says Hagemann.

In the meantime he has learned his tricks. “I address students surprisingly. If it takes minutes, not just seconds, for the camera and microphone to turn on, then someone was probably distracted. “

In this tense situation it is therefore of little help if the data protection officer gives the impression that he wants to forbid everything. Especially since the teachers were looking for alternatives. “When the video conferencing via the school cloud didn’t work, we wanted to use alternatives. Among other things, a solution from the Technical University of Ilmenau, with servers in Germany. But we were also forbidden to do that, ”reports Hagemann.

He would like the data protection officer to have more open, solution-oriented communication. In an interview with this newspaper, Hasse recently reported that it does exist. Together with the Thuringian Institute for Teacher Training (Thillm), he regularly offers online discussions on data protection and schools. However, Tino Hagemann has not yet received these offers. And it shouldn’t be an isolated case. Another example of the fact that digital communication on the subject of schools is not really running smoothly in times of the pandemic.

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