the road to taking the classroom to a screen at a childs home has been far from easy for institutes but the lack of interpersonal exchange that it brings along as well as long hours of screen time are issues that have come up so we spoke to stakeholders dr dakshayini kanna senior principal harvest international school m srinivasan founder and principal gear innovative international school psychologist sulata shenoy who specialises in child psychology and christobelle joseph teacher and columnist to understand the situation and see how best middle ground can be achieveddr dakshayini kannatraining teachers who were not techsavvy was quite a taskwhen the lockdown was announced the teachers had left all the resources they use in class at school they came home and there was a complete dearth of resources but within a day or two everything fell into place we have teachers in the age group of 2865 training them was a task because many were not even techsavvy what makes a classroom complete is the interaction with teachers and students and we had to make that happenm srinivasanmaintaining social distancing among children is a challengewhat happens if schools dont reopen for the next six months do we leave children to do nothing who has said that the biggest challenge of enforcing the new normal of hygiene and social distancing is with children so even if we reach a stage of zero covid19 cases in the state and schools can reopen there should not be a rush to function five days in the week dr sulata shenoysubstituting human interaction with a screen will have an impactmy concern is that children are missing out on the psychological and social aspects of being in school i have seen children with anxiety because their social lives have been changed human interaction has a tremendous impact on the developing brain and when you substitute that with a screen we dont know what the impact of that will be in futurechristobelle josephinitially i was worried about the length of online classesi am a digitaladdiction warrior so it was difficult for me to accept online classes initially parents were going crazy demanding it and threatening to withhold fees if it didnt start many schools are going the extra length to think about the wellness aspect that is primary right now in that respect i was worried about the length of classes in all though they are doing about four hours in a day which is under the who prescribed limitwatch bangalore times webinar on the effect of the pandemic on education and the way forward