This was Never Digital Learning


This Was Never Digital Learning

Written by Brian Costello

Princeton Hive


You may have recently read an opinion piece on a popular newspaper site that stated that the results were in from digital learning and it didn’t work.  This statement was not only insulting, but it was wholeheartedly false.  Regardless of your experience with children learning at home and educators teaching from home, the families pressing through to help, and the kids that did everything they could during this pandemic.  We did not try and fail at digital learning, we struggled together to navigate through an emergency situation that taught us many important lessons going forward. 


Before getting to the core of those lessons and how we can move forward, let’s start with the idea that this was digital learning.  Educators were given hours at most to create, prepare, distribute, and facilitate a plan for students to be able to continue their education when schools closed down.  Most of them were expecting that to last two or three weeks at most.  Not only were they given a very short amount of time to create this experience, but they were also given very limited access to many of their traditionally used resources, and were in desperate need of quick training and learning.  Most teachers across the world turned from classroom educators to digital MacGyvers overnight with the expectation being that we would simply conjure accessible, meaningful, digital experiences for every kid.  Yet, despite the high expectations and massive learning curve for many educators, they embraced digital tools, became Zoom experts, and managed to produce a learning experience (yes, it could be better and we will get to that) out of determination and willingness to learn new things. 


In addition, our students are generally underprepared for digital learning on a mass scale.  If you have ever entered into a fully digital learning experience, it comes with a course that is solely designed to help you acclimate yourself to a new way of learning, of working, and of managing your time.  How many of our students had that? We take for granted that these digital natives will be experts in digital learning because they can live their lives in this space outside of school.  For many, the fact that they pushed on and navigated through both this drastically new and unexpected experience is a testament to their strength. Let us also not forget the parents who learned tools, learned how to do math again for the first time in 20 years, or just didn’t lose their minds trying to help their kids 24/7. 


This was NOT an experiment in digital learning, but a digital bandaid placed over a massive trauma to help us survive and regroup.  Now, however, we are tasked with the regrouping part.  If and when we find ourselves in this situation again, what will we do? How will we improve this experience? Surely another bandaid will not be acceptable.  We need to learn and understand digital learning now. It might not be our only option, but we had better learn to get it right.


Here are some things that resonate for me with digital learning: 


  1. The digital divide is a massive problem.  I won’t regurgitate statistics for you, there has been plenty of research showing it exists not only in North America but around the world.  The internet has become our lifeline to the world.  Without access to reliable, effective internet, we are left with a severe disadvantage from our peers. WIthout functional devices, we are left with the same problem.  Access to the internet and functional devices should be a priority for people around the world. If education is considered the great equalizer in the journey of life, the internet is the new vehicle upon which we travel.

  2. Poverty matters. It would be easy to ignore this, but while some of my students had parents home, enough to eat, and a secure place to live, others did not.  Some of my students had parents that were essential workers.  Some of my students (at 14) were working in roles that saw them become “essential” during the pandemic. I had students with poor technology, students with concerns about housing, students whose parents were ill. If we really want to create opportunities for digital learning as an equalizer in the world, we must be willing and able to address issues of poverty. 

  3. We cannot expect kids to do things that adults would not be able to do without offering them opportunities to learn how.  I have completed two master’s programs, primarily online. Both came with an intro class that was designed to teach us how to be successful in the digital learning format.  If we expect digital learning to work, we need to help build structures for parents and kids that will afford them that same learning opportunity.  There are not many high school kids who know how to manage their time effectively, even fewer grade-schoolers.  Learning both the technical skills and personal skills to be successful should be part of the process. 

     

  4. Educators need to continue learning to navigate the digital world to be successful.  If and when we return to the regular classroom we cannot simply turn our backs on these lessons. The way we teach was thrust into a new direction. A global pandemic did in minutes what many educators could not accomplish in a lifetime, mass incorporation of technology into our education system.  It is not time to take a step backward, but to build a better, more equitable, more accessible system going forward.  



Digital learning will be a part of the world’s learning experiences in some way as we go forward.  Education has the opportunity to make a stronger, more equitable, more sustainable future. Princeton Hive is here for that future. It is the future we were envisioning before all this started and it is one that we aspire to help build through our ongoing work both individually and collectively as a team. 



Comments

  1. Thank you. One side of the equity issue that you failed to address was the state's where teachers were not allowed to introduce new content. At the high school level this immediately undercut the effort because what we were allowed to do became meaningless to about 90% of the students.

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