My computer had broken since 2 weeks ago and it made me so hard to take online classes. I found 8 hard points without using computer in online classes.
1 Power point and Word apps. I could use them by my iphone but the screen was too small to check sentences I wrote or put a picture on the powerpoint.
2 Zoom app. It was taugh to watch the screen that a professor shares for students.
3 To submit assignments. Sometimes if a size of a pdf and a word file are big, they can not be sent by my iphone or their size will be small and difficult to see well.
4 Typing is also difficult. When you want to write many papers with an iphone, it would be stressful for you to use small key board of it.
5 Phone capacity. If you install some apps for online classes and tasks, it would consume your phone storage.
6 Memories. When you want to organize files and save tasks, you can not do that into your USB memory stick.
7 if you need to search something quickly, you need to change the window or app and then search it by using an iphone only. Compared to it, if you have both computer and a iphone, you can use both of them at the same time.
8 The quality of the camera. Iphone’s camera is more clear than computer’s one so if you really care about your fashion or if you fail to make up your face, it’s going to be hard time, especially for women.
Overall, I found a computer is very useful tool in current situation.
Thank you for sharing your notices! Because of the current situation, using computer or laptop seems normal or common thing. However, I thought we need to think people who cannot use it for some reasons. I also thought that problem can be a cause of making gap between students who can use it and who cannot use it. Thank you!
This is very interesting, especially 8.
I had thought that it is only advantage to improve the quality of the camera on smartphone, so I did not know such a problem.
By the way, I recommend that you use voice dictation function on your smartphone for 4. I use it in only Japanese because I cannot do in English due to my poor pronunciation. However, I think it’s a piece of cake for Sakura.
This really highlights the digital divide and the problems it poses. Responding to it as an instructor is hard, because I cannot afford to spend large amounts of time helping every student fix their computers (and probably many instructors wouldn’t be able to fix a computer). In order to teach large numbers of students, I’m kind of forced to follow a “sink-or-swim” approach where students have to — on top of everything — fix their computers themselves. With the added difficulty that they cannot invite their friends who are good at fixing computers to help them due to COVID.
I wonder if google drive or Onedrive would help with the file organization problem?
Like Yuma, I’d never thought about 8.