Learning with technology: new experiences for indonesian children during COVID-19

Technology, which was previously considered a negative influence on children, has turned out to be the only solution for the education sector during the Covid-19 pandemic. The education system has experienced a shift from face-to-face learning at school to technology-based home learning as a result of social and physical distancing policies implementation. This study aims to describe the experience of elementary school children during online learning without the presence of professional teachers and peer community who can instigate their competitive spirit. This paper describes the parents’ difficulties and obstacles as they are demanded to substitute the role of professional teachers for their children. A qualitative descriptive approach is applied in this study with offline and online interview techniques as data collection instruments. The data were collected from elementary school children with different backgrounds to explore their experiences of online learning. This paper focuses on the perspective of children in learning online during the pandemic in several schools in one city, as well as the experiences of their parents who are demanded to become teachers. This study concludes that technology, which is a prerequisite for online learning, actually creates hindrance for children. Children are stressed, refuse to study, lose enthusiasm for learning, and lose structured time dimension. All of those are because they learn individually and not communally. Further research is needed to explore the perceptions of students at different levels of education during the pandemic