On remote learning in a pandemic, in rural Indonesia

Here's the New York Times story from Richard C. Paddock and Dera Menra Sijabat, under the headline, "When Learning Is Really Remote: Students Climb Trees and Travel Miles for a Cell Signal."

On school days, the three teenage students hop on a motorbike and ride to their personal study hall: a spot along a narrow road outside the Indonesian village of Kenalan where they can get a stable cellphone signal. 

Sitting on the shoulder of the road, they do their lessons on smartphones and a single laptop as cars and motorbikes zip by. The three students — two sisters and their 15-year-old aunt — have been studying this way on the island of Java since March, when Indonesia closed its schools and universities to contain the coronavirus. 

“When the school ordered us to study at home I was confused because we don’t have a signal at home,” said one of the girls, Siti Salma Putri Salsabila, 13.

The travails of these students, and others like them, have come to symbolize the hardships faced by millions of schoolchildren across the Indonesian archipelago. Officials have shuttered schools and implemented remote learning, but internet and cellphone service is limited and many students lack smartphones and computers.