Online Conundrum

Well it seems to me you are comparing apples to oranges as in-person teaching is more effective than on-line teaching...so it seems to me you should be more concerned with effective teaching than your carbon footprint...If you are reducing your carbon footprint at the expense of your students learning, I think your priorities are misplaced...At some point further reduction of GHG at the expense of quality of life issues becomes a moot point....

"When physically in school, students can concentrate better because there are fewer distractions and fewer opportunities to leave the class than at home. ... Student completion rates of teacher-led classes are almost 5x higher than online learning."Sep 23, 2020

https://students4sc.org/2020/09/23/the-virtual-divide-online-vs-in-person-learning-in-fall-2020/

"Students who struggle will likely struggle more online"

https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/03/23/how-effective-is-online-learning-what-the.html

It depends upon whether the equipment being used for <...preparation...> and <...teaching...> is powered by the energy stored in fossil fuel or from new solar input, more than anything.

There is a school of thought that states that <...email...> is not suitable for collaborative working, better tools having now taken over.

I think that the statement "creating an email takes as much resources as of making a sheet of paper" would be VERY, VERY dependent upon how one does the analysis. If you take all materials, processes, energy, transportation, etc. involved in both computer manufacture and electricity production and weigh that against the total number of emails sent by the average computer then the statement might be valid.

If you assume that you were going to have a computer anyway and assume that the electrical grid already exists then I would not accept the idea that the "incremental consumption" of sending a few ones and zeros down the wire consumes as many resources as making a sheet of paper.

If in your "semi-rural part of India" it is necessary to provide students with computers that they did not already have and have them turn them on consuming electricity that they otherwise would not have consumed then the analysis would be pushed in the general direction of the statement being true. If you look at the United States where the kids are already wasting spending hours on line per day playing computer games then the analysis would be pushed in the general direction of the statement being false.

On a side note, India seems to stand out has a country that has put a lot of effort into publishing college level educational material on YouTube. Thank you India.

You can replace online gaming with endless hours spent on social media sites in our case.

On a serious note, a no. of students actually had to buy new mobile phones/tabs/computers etc just to be able access online sessions.

Can we factor in the server and other IT infrastructure at the backend? They seem to multiply every year.

If you are going to factor in the carbon cost of electricity for the computers the students are using you need to offset that by any carbon used to transport said students to and from school, along with the additional carbon footprint, if any, of the unoccupied school vs. the occupied school.

...and the carbon cost of building a school versus not building it...

Where does one stop (rhetorical question - NNTR)?

...and the carbon cost of having children versus not having them...

And the carbon footprint of the children breathing, thus turning carbohydrates to co2 and removing O2 from the air thus depleting the O2 and increasing the CO2 hence the term oxygen thieves for morons so would that make them oxy mororns?

Er, um, whatever.