BERLIN - On the morning of April 8, 23 pairs of eyes observed me intently.

They had me on speaker view on the Zoom conferencing platform and I was aware that my students could see every move I made, every wrinkle on my face or whether the collar of my shirt did not sit well.

While I usually pace through the classroom and almost never sit down, since Germany imposed strict measures to stem the spread of coronavirus, I have been glued to my desk at home, about an hour's drive from the university..

For more than three hours, which feels like an eternity for me, I am staring at my laptop screen teaching economic policy. "Corona teaching," colleagues mockingly labelled the new digital teaching format.

What I am doing now as a professor at HMKW, a media University in Berlin, has become the new normal for thousands of teachers in Germany.

Since March 16, schools, including institutes of higher learning as well as kindergartens and childcare centres, have been closed amid the Covid-19 pandemic. While they will officially remain shuttered until April 20, it could be extended for many more weeks.

This has forced schools and universities to switch to distance learning wherever possible.

Although teachers and students have familiarised themselves with conference platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Google Hangout, the real shooting star is Zoom, which was founded in 2011 by former Cisco manager Eric Yuan.

Within weeks of students and teachers going online, the little known Zoom platform became a household name.

Zoom is the top choice when it comes to bringing together large groups of people, like classrooms in a school or university.

Its value more than doubled to the current US$35 billion (S$50 billion), in the wake of the pandemic and a marked increase in users, the benchmark for assessing what a software is worth.

The reason why Zoom, which does not belong to one of the tech giants, is doing so well is in its ease of use.

It works intuitively and users do not need a lot of time to learn its functions. Zoom can manage a large number of attendees and provides a stable communication environment.

It also does not require a user to register before tapping the platform. Once the registered host has sent out a link to invited participants, they simply log in to the web conference.

There are security issues, not the least of which is the vulnerability that allows hackers to access users' webcams.

As much as Zoom has become popular among schools and universities, its success is glossing over the fact that some countries are being left behind in the digital divide.

According to the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) published in November last year, Germany sits in the middle when it comes to the digital competences of its students.

Denmark, South Korea and Finland are faring way better. This is mirrored by the lacklustre use of the €5 billion (S$7.7 billion) provided by the German government in early 2019.

Only a fraction of the money has been withdrawn to modernise the IT infrastructure in the educational sphere.

"Many still consider e-learning an emergency solution - although digital teaching should by now be part of the students' everyday life," says Mr David Meinhard of the German Economic Institute (IW).

"A reliable and comprehensive technical infrastructure is still missing," Mr Meinhard adds. "Teachers in turn lack the necessary skills to teach online."

As a result, schools and universities are now hastily arranging e-learning tutorials to bring teachers up to speed with new digital technologies.

Those lacking basic knowledge in e-teaching have found the self-explanatory software Zoom handy. If a platform appears too complicated or requires loads of registrations and add-ons, users quickly look elsewhere.

One of the technologies to profit from the coronavirus crisis is the German learning platform "sofatutor". The company that was founded as a tiny startup in Berlin 12 years ago is coaching students who need extra help.

Instead of randomly picking tutorials on YouTube that may be of questionable quality, sofatutor offers valuable content.

This approach has helped the company grow to 250 employees and 1.5 million interactions with students monthly.

"Teachers and students can write messages, create files, coordinate appointments. They can give presentations and chat - all digitally," Mr Stephan Bayer, one of the founders of sofatutor, recently said in an interview.

What is happening in the field of education is no different to the situation in the German economy. When asked about the state of digitisation in their companies, managing directors and board members graded their own firm's experience as "satisfactory".

According to findings by Bitkom, an association representing 2,600 digital companies in Germany, the German economy is not in the global top tier of countries that are advanced in tapping digital technologies.

"The coronavirus crisis has shown us very clearly the importance of digital technologies for the economy, administration and society. The crisis is a wake-up call to massively push digitisation now," says Bitkom president Achim Berg.

I was quite impressed by the results of the first online lesson I conducted. Changing teaching methods every 30 minutes kept the audience animated and attentive.

I was able to tap Powerpoint presentations by using the shared screen tool on Zoom, which worked well, and I was even able to organise teamwork by assigning groups of students in so-called digital breakout rooms.

Whether online learning becomes more efficient is to be seen.

This extraordinary spring semester has only just begun.