Students at Valley Elementary School in California’s Poway USD stopped simply consuming educational technology during the pandemic shift online. Now, they produce videos and digital books, among other projects, to show evidence of what they’re learning. “We just recently had 4th-graders focused on Black History Month choose a historical figure to highlight and create video presentations for kids in the lower grades,” Principal Ricardo CeceÁ±a says. “They showcased their learning to the rest of the school.”
Across the country, educators like CeceÁ±a are now building on the innovations of the remote and hybrid eras to reach a new normal of more advanced use of educational technology. “It’s opening up classrooms so the learning extends beyond school,” CeceÁ±a says. “It’s not just six hours within the school day where learning occurs. Students Zooming into school, teachers pushing out activities and projects digitally—those are practices we’re going to hold onto.”
Deeper dives
High school teachers in the Winton Woods City School District in Ohio were already pretty tech-savvy prior to COVID. And students in the project-based learning-centered Winton Woods City Schools were also comfortable navigating their classes and assignments in the learning management system with their Chromebooks.
What teachers and students will carry out of the pandemic are more sophisticated uses of the ed-tech tools they relied on during remote instruction, says Jennifer Haller, an instructional technology consultant at the Hamilton County Educational Services Center who has been contracted by Winton Woods’ high school for the last several years. “Even when we were in triage mode, teachers came to realizations about what ed tech can do,” Haller says. “I love when teachers start to say, ‘Maybe I can do this. Maybe we can try that,’ and they take it to another level.”
For instance, teachers now embed voice notes into YouTube videos to guide students on deeper dives into specific details of major events such as the War of 1812. “We used to ask multiple-choice questions at the end to make sure students were watching,” Haller says. “Now, we’re using it at a higher depth of knowledge.”
Winton Woods City Schools’ project-based learning philosophy also facilitates the spread of ed-tech innovations from class to class. When students complete a project, they invite other students and teachers to their presentations. This also encourages deeper collaboration among teachers within their content areas. “Students get very good at speaking in front of people and doing the presentations, so word gets around about the new tools that work,” Haller says.
Haller also has some feedback for ed-tech companies, and that’s to build collaborative functions into their learning tools. For example, the WeVideo platform allows multiple users to edit a video together and CoSpaces allows for collaboration within virtual reality experiences using ClassVR headsets. “If I’m introducing a new tool, the first question students ask is, ‘Can everyone in the group work on this together?’” she says.
Students helping each other
“Districtwide alignment” will be one of the lasting ed-tech impacts of the last two years in Wisconsin’s Muskego-Norway School District, which has been open for in-person instruction since the beginning of the 2020-21 school year.
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That means, for instance, all fourth-grade teachers can be following a similar curriculum at a similar pace, so students are getting the same education in the district’s three elementary schools, says Tony Spence, Muskego-Norway’s chief information officer. The full burden of planning is also reduced as this allows teachers to share lessons more fluidly.
The pandemic also pushed the district to reach its goal of supplying every classroom, from kindergarten through 12th grade, with an identical set of tech tools, including the same projection systems, computers, document cameras, and connectivity. This helps teachers, other educators, and students move seamlessly between classrooms. Another positive outcome is the independence and ownership many students have developed around their learning. One example of this is a substantial growth in peer instruction.
“Students know that if their friends are online and struggling in math, they can log on and help,” Spence says. “Kids are helping others when they don’t have to, and they’re well-placed to teach each other because they know what it’s like to not have the answers.”
Teachers take the lead
Nevada teachers who have been innovating during the pandemic are now getting ESSER-funded stipends to share their ideas as digital ambassadors in a program spearheaded by Jhone Ebert, the state’s superintendent of public instruction.
These teachers are producing podcasts, lessons, templates and other resources that are now available on the Nevada Digital Learning collaborative, a collection of content and professional development sessions that Ebert’s agency created during the pandemic. “These are Nevada teachers building the content and resources based on Nevada standards, so other teachers don’t have to adjust,” Ebert says. “We now have a deeper set of teachers providing support, and that’s not going away.”
The collaborative also contains resources from ed-tech providers such as Discovery Education. It is receiving additional funding from mining and telecommunications companies as well as private philanthropy. These partnerships with the nonprofit and business communities are another innovation that should outlast the pandemic. “All of these public and private philanthropic pieces were marshaled quickly, and I see that continuing,” Ebert says. “Once they understood where the pain points were, they stepped up to provide support.”
Nevada educators will also be building on the relationship-centered use of technology that has emerged during hybrid and remote instruction. That is forcing the state to build out broadband connections in some very rural areas, including on its tribal reservations. “The relationships between students and teachers, between teachers and administrators, between educators and parents, that relationship building is one of the biggest differences we can see from the pandemic,” Ebert says.
