HOLYOKE, Mass. (WWLP) – Massachusetts teachers have had to rely on technology to educate students during the pandemic.
More students have been learning from home than ever before this year, they say connecting to the software has been the biggest problem. They’re still only doing remote learning in cities like Chicopee, Springfield, and Holyoke.
Owner of Reliable Computer in Holyoke, Dan Deschaine, has been working at his store while at the same time, helping his son Tyler with remote learning. They told us the issues they’ve experienced using the remote learning software.
“I have had some problems with the assignments, technical difficulty with the website. We use Google Classroom. A lot of the assignments won’t let us do our work because it’s like glitched,” said Tyler Deschaine, a fifth-grade student in Holyoke.
“There could be a lot of wasted time. He was waiting to get into one class for 15 minutes, we had to restart his Chromebook and we had to do a couple of things we finally got in but he missed 15 minutes of his class,” Tyler’s father, Dan Deschaine, said.
Deschaine added that connecting to Zoom has been the most common problem due to the servers being overloaded. A lot of people have also had to update their laptop or change out their webcams, so they’re compatible with Skype and Zoom.
Some school districts are allowing their teachers to use different platforms like Google Meet and Zoom for remote learning.