User:LBrew1/Online communication between school and home

COVID-19
During 2019 the world was put into a state of crisis due to the Coronavirus pandemic, often referred to as COVID-19. This forced a majority of cities across the world to move work and school online. A large majority of schools ranging from elementary schools to universities were forced to move their schooling online. "It is estimated that 1.5 billion students worldwide have been impacted by Covid-19 (Teräs et al. 2020) with much face-to-face teaching rapidly moving to the online environment". Many students and faculty were not prepared for this sudden change to the online format and there were a-lot of challenges that came with this. Julie Apker states in her research article "students at first were largely unprepared for the rapid shift to online-only learning and struggled to adjust, while at the same time they encountered a lack of coping resources (e.g., reduced access to instructors and classmates, lack of counseling and social networks) (Kaufmann, Vallade, & Frisby, 2021; Wang et al., 2020). As COVID-19 evolves, students still encounter stress related to pandemic-impacted learning environments" this change made it hard for students to get appropriate coping resources as many students felt added stress due to the change of online learning and the pandemic in general as many were forced to stay in their homes longer than they are used to. This meant that people were getting cabin fever of sorts and not getting the face to face interaction that many humans need. The move also lead to problems with international students not being able to break the communication barrier online and some of these students felt as though this change drastically effected their ability to communicate questions with professors and get the help that is needed when learning. It is common for there to be language barriers between international students or anyone that is learning in a language that is not their first but when classes were in person it allowed them to have non verbal cues which helped bridge some of these gaps. When students were sent online it made it hard for there to be any other form of communication besides verbal and if you are unfamiliar with certain words learning can be a struggle. This is not even taking into account that people talk differently and it is harder to hear people when they are talking on a video camera vs in person. It also made it hard for people to interrupt class and ask questions. Covid also affected the communication between students who were trying to get help from tutors, between some students having a language barrier and others trying to figure out how to learn via and online platform it made bridging the gap extremely difficult for students.

Who is affected?
Currently, one third of internet users are children or adolescents (Berman & Albright, 2017). Lenhart (2015) indicates that an estimated 71% of adolescents in 2015 reported using Facebook, and that social media use is typically enacted in more than one domain. This quote indicates that a vast majority of internet users are children, making them extremely comfortable with online platforms and technology.