As the school year ends, it’s time to evaluate how we did leading into the “technological utopia” of online learning.

After all, numerous tech companies pitch educational institutions every year with the “solution” to all of education’s woes. Just throw more technology at kids. Specifically, theirs.

Well, this year was a time to see how well that worked out.

It would be unfair to fully evaluate its merit based on the environmental conditions; mainly, the entire world locked down in a global pandemic where everyone’s stress level was through the roof. That and no infrastructure to initially support it (even Google had to rapidly develop features to deal with the needs of schools).

However, it became the perfect backdrop to actually test whether online learning works. After all, everyone needed to participate.

First, the good:

• Some students really thrived in this environment. They weren’t distracted by their peers, could work at their own pace, take breaks as needed, move around while lessons were happening and didn’t feel anxiety about being in a school building
• Classroom management issues were at a minimum
• A lot of us became comfortable with pushing technological tools to their limit and learned how to leverage it
• Levels of empathy and understanding were at an all time high

Now, the negative:

• See above about the infrastructure not being in place, involving teams of people trying to build this plane as they were flying
• From an educator’s point of view, you logged in and stared at icons for hours on end as students didn’t have their webcams on. To give a semblance of what this is like, video call someone and have them turn off their camera and not respond to anything you say. Do this every day for months on end.
• To piggyback on the above, visual cues that you normally get in social interactions are lost
• In many instances, so were audio cues (I would conference one-on-one with students and many were more comfortable with their mics/cameras on in those situations)
• Many districts moved to an accelerated timeline and everyone felt rushed
• Policy makers felt that an online environment should merely be a reflection of an in-class one and instituted parameters to make it so… unfortunately, it doesn’t translate well… or at all
• Plagiarism: students weren’t even hiding it by the end
• We threw this on them expecting them to act like adults throughout the process. We projected our own ideals and what we would do without fully understanding the psychology of a young person. A young person whose brain isn’t fully developed.
• In their own feedback, they wonder why no one ever asked them what they thought of school closures and the pivoting back and forth, why people spoke for them and didn’t value their opinions.

All this to say, this year was a mess.

A fully online environment does work for some, but like everything, it wasn’t for everyone. In this case, it wasn’t for the majority who were forced to participate in it.

From my perspective, every wrong decision you could make in its implementation was done. Perhaps with time and better understanding of what we learned, it could be better… but it’s going to be really hard to get young people on board. They’ve done it and it’s left a bad taste.

This isn’t a slam against using technology in the classroom. Leveraged correctly, it’s a huge benefit… as a tool. Not an end of itself.

I, for one, am glad this online year is done. While I’ve had the pleasure of teaching some incredible young people, people who have thankfully really enjoyed my classes, I’ll be really glad to see them in person next year.

Hopefully.