President of the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) , Pedro Shepherd.
Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) President, Pedro Shepherd, says teachers were ready for yesterday’s start of online classes at public primary and secondary schools island-wide.
Shepherd said most teachers are equipped with electronic devices and they used the delayed reopening of schools for Term 2 to prepare their lessons.
“I think teachers were ready. I would say that teachers were ready because we had some extra time to prepare, so in terms of the lessons and so on, teachers were prepared.”
He added: “Most teachers had devices, most children had devices, but what has happened and what I noticed between last week and today [Monday] that some persons said that their devices broke down, for whatever reason or wasn’t functioning and so they came to get a government device. Whether accurate or not I am not sure, but there were a lot of people who said the device their child was using before is not working any longer and so they need a new device. Other than that, I believe that we would have been prepared in terms of the distribution of devices.”
Shepherd is optimistic any technical kinks experienced on the first day of virtual school will be ironed out by Friday.
“By the end of the week, we should have all those little kinks out of the way where cameras are not functioning or microphones not working, children not being able to see teachers or teachers not being able to see students. By the end of the week, I believe the ITCs [Information Technology Co-ordinators], along with the teachers, should be able to have those kinks out of the way and we should be sailing from next week.”