The challenges with teaching and learning online might not be what you think.

That, from the Manager of the McDowell Foundation, which provides funding grants for teacher-led Saskatchewan research.

Ellen Whiteman says a virtual event Monday evening highlights the work of educator and researcher Kelsey Shields who is looking at the shift to online learning during the pandemic and what the challenges are.

Whiteman explains that many people think the big challenge would be learning the new technologies to bring everyone in to a virtual classroom, but for teachers the biggest challenge was, and remains to be, how to engage the students and have them connect to what they are learning and to each other.

What Shields found was that a lot of the professional development offered to teachers was focused on how to use Zoom or how to upload materials, with not as much on the relationship aspect.

(CJWW)