The Thirty-sixth Day: 27 April 2020 (157,149 confirmed infected, 24,393 died, in total)

"Welcome to your virtual Google Classroom. This is a new process so don't worry if you are struggling. We will work together to make this a fun learning experience." – Dan’s Teacher

Boris is back to work. The Prime Minister has suffered from the coronavirus and had been put under intensive care and longer recuperation. Now the helmsman is here again. Will this be a turning point for the UK’s anti-virus war?

The Education Minister confirmed that schools would not be opened in a short time. So, from today on, Dan’s school turns to remote teaching through Google Classroom. Teachers give assignments and distribute learning materials on the website, along with instructions to parents on how to use them and how to explain them to children. After pupils finish their schoolwork, parents scan or take pictures to upload to teachers for marking. In a word, its nature is that the teachers first train parents into new teachers, and then parents teach their own children. Well, luckily Dan is only in his Year 2, otherwise if he were in higher class, I am really not so sure whether I can recall that part of memory to act as his teacher.

Chinese primary schools are not reopened yet. The second semester of a school year in China usually starts in February and ends in early July. The Ministry of Education ordered in late January that “schools are suspended but teaching shall not be suspended”. So, teachers in Chinese primary schools are using Internet video conference or streaming tools like DingTalk, Tencent Meeting or YY to carry on their virtual “vis-a-vis” teaching: students can watch and listen to their teachers speaking, and can raise questions and get resolved in a real-time interactive manner.

If that were the method schools chosen here in the UK, my burden could be much eased. Sadly, now I have to work after midnight (thanks to the 7 hours’ time difference between Greenwich Time and Beijing Time) for my company and work through the daytime as my son’s teacher. I just wonder if I work to death, will I be counted as a victim of the coronavirus?