How I Keep Learning During The Pandemic
The Story Of My Learning Journey
This story begins around March or April 2020, when all schools in my country were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, my school started to hold online classes instead of classes at school. At first all the students were happy, because they thought that the online class would be easy. After a few months passed, the fun turned to gloom. They think online classes are useless. They think that classes in schools as usual should be implemented.
But, those are their thoughts, not mine
For me, online classes are something very extraordinary. Online classes are a huge advantage for me. Let me tell you the reason.
The Reason
Since online classes, I have a lot of free time. Compared to studying at school during normal times, I have far more free time during online classes. There are several groups of people who take advantage of this free time. First, the group that uses their time to continue their long-time sleeping (hibernation, haha). Second, the group that uses their free time to play games. Third, groups that use their time to learn, explore and develop themselves. I am part of the third group, who use their free time to study and develop themselves.
There are so many things I do with this free time. I started to dive into programming and also studied university-level math, even though I was still a high school student. actually, I’ve studied programming and computer science for a long time, but I never had enough time to go into it. However, since the pandemic, I have had so much free time to learn programming that in 1 year, I have created a website and an application that I was very impressed when I saw it. I can even make games that I thought were impossible to do.
So, if you feel that online classes from school are useless, try to find other learning resources. In addition, try to explore yourself, discover your talents, and find out, what you really like. Education is not about learning at school, but about learning anywhere, anytime and from anyone. As an Indonesian student, I am familiar with the concept of “Merdeka Belajar” which means freedom of learning. This concept means that students should not be bound by the complicated rules of the old education system, not limit themselves in learning, and develop themselves, both in knowledge and personal character. Although this concept has not been fully implemented in my country,I hope this concept can change the way we view education.
Learning Resources
If you’re interested in learning programming, here are some free resources you can use:
- Web Programming : W3CSchools
- Computer Programming and Machine Learning : freecodecamp
- Game Programming : CS50 course
- Programming with Python from beginner to Expert level : Real Python
If you are not interested in programming, no problem. there is also a platform where you can learn almost anything, from economics, marketing, programming, machine learning, design, music, and more. Here are some examples:
- Coursera, The platform created by a computer science expert and adjunct professor at Stanford University.
- edX, which is the result of a partnership between Harvard University and MIT.
On this platform, you can learn everything from the experts, such as lecturers, practitioners, and engineers from well-known companies like Google.
As I said before, apart from studying programming, I also started studying university-level mathematics. After a long search, I found MIT OpencourseWare, which also known as MIT OCW.
Here you can study like an MIT student. You can study math, physics, biology, law, social science, computer science, and more. And did you know, all of this you can get completely free of charge. Of course studying at MIT OCW is not as good as being an MIT student (Massachusetts Institute Technology), but the lessons you get at MIT OCW are exactly the same lessons as an MIT student. That’s because basically, the material at MIT OCW is a recording of the lecture process at MIT. Good isn’t it?
There are also other learning resources such as labXchange, a place where you can learn a lot, and even — in some lessons — you can do hands-on experiments.
if you want to relearn school lessons, you can do it at Khan Academy. This platform is a learning resource that has been widely used all over the world.
Does That Mean We Only Learn, But Ignore Social Interactions?
No, of course not. With technology that is very advanced as it is now, it is actually easy for us to interact with other people, even though physical interaction cannot be done. I myself have joined several programming communities to help me in learning and to create social interactions between us. Not so bad right?
So, that’s how I learned during the pandemic. What I want to say is, make the best use of the free time you have. Maybe you will never get an opportunity like this again. You can use your free time to study whatever you want, and there are tons of learning resources that you can use.
Thankyou to read my story, goodbye!
