Feature: Palestinian students attend live electronic classes as schools close amid coronavirus spread

Source: Xinhua| 2020-03-18 00:27:42|Editor: huaxia

MIDEAST-GAZA-COVID-19-EDUCATION

A Palestinian teacher gives a lesson to students in a broadcasting radio studio at the Education radio station, in Gaza City, March 16, 2020. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

by Sanaa Kamal

GAZA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The Gaza education ministry has opened live electronic classes for hundreds of thousands of students in the West Bank and Gaza Strip via radio and Facebook, two weeks after the suspension of schools as a precautionary measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

"Every day, we air lessons of Arabic and English languages, maths, science and technology," said Mohammed al-Sharif, director of Educational Radio from Gaza City, adding each subject takes about 25 minutes.

It is a good method for teaching, especially that all lessons were saved on the educational radio website, he noted, adding the online education targets all levels of schools.

According to al-Sharif, the number of viewers for each lesson has reached 2 million only in a few days.

On March 5, the Palestinian Authority declared a state of emergency for one month right after the first COVID-19 case was discovered in the district of Bethlehem.

Palestine has so far recorded 41 cases of coronavirus, with one in Ramallah, one in Nablus, two in Tulkarem and 37 others in Bethlehem, according to Ibrahim Melhem, the Palestinian government's spokesman.

Because of the state of emergency in Palestine, Alaa al-Khatib, a teacher of the Arabic language who was unable to go to school to teach her students, said she felt happier to get involved in the online education.

"It greatly helps to motivate the student toward education," the 25-year-old teacher said, adding the online education allows her to receive immediate feedback from the students.

Meanwhile, Mohammed Totah, a 13-year-old from the blockaded Gaza Strip, spends three hours daily learning his lessons online.

"I have benefited from it a lot and the teacher is teaching me in a good way," Totah said, adding it is his first time to study through Facebook.

   1 2 3 Next  

KEY WORDS:
EXPLORE XINHUANET
010020070750000000000000011100001388887621