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Drawing on biweekly interviews with thirty children from Southern Ontario, Canada, from diverse backgrounds and most of whom were between 8 years old and 15 years old, our paper discusses children's educational experiences when schooling shifted online during the first few months of the pandemic. We focus on the challenges and opportunities that were offered during that time, with a particular focus on how these were significantly shaped by inequality. We address the following key themes, all with attention to related inequalities: shifts in children's engagement with space and time; differential availability of help when faced with challenges in online schooling; missing school friends, peers, and teachers and strategies to remain connected; and finally, how some on- and offline schooling activities, as well as independent, explorative learning, helped the children to enjoy their online schooling.

This paper explores research with children through repeated online video interviews during the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides insight into the geographical and relational affordances provided by online interviewing, including repeated online interviewing, and discusses some of the kinds of unpredictability that can uniquely arise during online interviews. We draw on a qualitative research study conducted with children in Ontario, Canada, that explored their early pandemic experiences. With attention to children's participation, knowledge production and relationality, we reflect on the challenges, advantages and unexpected ethical moments that arose through using online video interviews. We provide a comprehensive reflection on our longitudinal, online research with children during a global crisis by focusing on three areas: building relationships in online interviews; entering and exiting children's worlds; and unexpected ethical challenges of online interviewing. Within these three areas we provide insight into relational dynamics shaped by the online space, how online video interviews with children can provide opportunities for them to share their feelings, the importance of careful planning when exiting research projects, and how online engagements provided relational spaces for understanding, building rapport, finding comfort, listening, and sharing during the early days of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a relational approach, we draw on repeated interviews with a group of 30 diverse children from Ontario to share and reflect on their knowledge, experiences and feelings early in the COVID‐19 pandemic. Prioritising relational interdependence and relational agency, this paper illustrates our participants' embedded engagements with the pandemic and their contribution to the co‐production of knowledge. We emphasise their thoughtful responses to the pandemic; their creative, self‐reflexive strategies for managing a difficult time; and their advice to others. We thus prioritise children's viewpoints and emphasise their relational interconnections with others during a time that was marked by social isolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]