Education Technology
Article | July 27, 2022
In 2021, Class, a virtual classroom app that combines with Zoom, neared unicorn status after receiving funding from SoftBank Vision Fund II. But, with just 10 months and a string of top edtech U.S. investors to back it up, the app’s spectacular rise only speaks to the boom in online education in the past two years.
Online learning has changed. It went from centering around accessibility to becoming the primary delivery method almost overnight. So when it comes to screen time, this newest addition to our already screen-filled lives is uninvited. Especially for children, it only meant that screen time was highly monitored during lockdown. And that change came with struggles. Between configuring the technicalities of accessing online classrooms and figuring out how to engage students, teachers have faced an uphill battle all along.
There is plenty of research to suggest that too much screen time has negative health implications, but education has to continue at all costs. 2021 was full of stories of students finding creative ways of avoiding classes or not attending them. One 8-year-old found a loophole in Zoom’s app last year that locked her out of her Zoom class. Even Zoom’s technical team failed to find the issue. It led to a goose chase into discovering that the child was locking herself out by inputting the wrong password over 20 times.
Screen Time Vs Screen-Tied
Screen time has five types: television, video games, social media, music, and reading. The key is not just to regulate screen time but also the content that is being consumed. Technology may have evolved, but our ability to use it for long durations and to conduct sensory tasks like learning over the internet hasn’t. Between education, video-games, social media and TV, distribution meant calibrating what type of content should be consumed in order to reduce the negative impact.
Approximately 75% of all teenagers own a smartphone today. In addition, a majority of young adults report video games as their go-to activity in their free time. While research on the use of video games may be inconclusive, prolonged exposure is nevertheless known to rewire developing brains. There’s also a high risk to susceptible minds with regards to unfiltered and harmful messages from social media, which is a massive source of increased screen time for children and teenagers.
All these issues call for a meaningful control of screen time. But in a sea of endless information and uninterrupted content, how do you identify the right balance?
Culling Unnecessary Content
For educators, the aim is clear: to balance screen time so precariously that children do not lose their will to learn or play. Parents and educational institutions must identify the following objectives through the content they are letting their families consume:
Developing digital skills to prepare children for higher education and digital careers
Raising digital citizens that use online mediums to contribute to their communities
Exposing learners to new ideas and concepts in a safe context
Acquiring creative skills, interpersonal expression, and etiquette for engagement online
There is no dearth of educational content online, but it is important to achieve a balance between the educational and the entertainment consumption of learners. On occasion, both can be combined through interactive shows and programs that do not expose learners to addictive behaviors.
Designating screen-free times, activities, and even locations like meals, traveling, or bedrooms can help learners build a habit of controlling their screen time.
To Wrap It Up
There is no doubt that the pandemic provided online learning with a much-needed shot in the arm. This also means that screen time has exponentially increased. Thanks to both virtual schools and a complete lockdown on going outside, young learners were left with no option but to turn to their screens. Whether to connect to their peers, attend classes, or spend their free time, learners are faced with a barrage of screen time that can affect their ability to navigate a post-pandemic world. Parents and educators must take it upon themselves to lay down the guidelines that drive the harmonious use of electronics without encouraging total dependence on them.
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Online Education
Article | July 19, 2022
When designing education programs for adults, you cannot avoid the fact that you need to design experiences for them. What other education forms could be better than storytelling, gamification, task orientation, and instant rewards, which could be offered by VR gaming? Imagine if all existing flat-lecture videos were converted into a 3D interactive gaming environment. Let's say, for example, on Massive Open Online Courses platforms, such as Coursera and edX, they start offering VR classrooms. When you connect to the classroom, you would be able to see other students around you and chat with them in natural languages and hear them in the natural languages; as a plus, there could be a prompt translator to support cross-cultural communication.
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Education Technology
Article | August 4, 2022
Teacher burnout has become a massive challenge for many educational institutions. According to the National Education Association, 55% of the teachers surveyed are considering quitting their profession much earlier than planned. Over 600,000 teachers have already quit in the span of 2020 and 2021. Educational institutions must prepare to identify burnout and ensure teachers successfully create an inclusive, engaging learning experience.
Recognizing the Signs of Teacher Burnout
Laurie Santos, a professor at Yale University and a cognitive scientist, says that burnout has three major symptoms.
Being Emotionally Exhausted
Emotional exhaustion is when a person feels exhausted and burned out even after a full night’s sleep.
Depersonalizing
Santos equates depersonalizing with feeling high levels of cynicism towards others. Individuals who are depersonalizing often feel annoyed at people requesting them to doing something that is part of their regular role. This frustration signals burnout.
Reduced Personal Efficacy
When an individual feels like she isn’t making a difference or she isn’t doing her job well, a sort of disenchantment sets in. To the individual, it may feel like they aren’t being effective at their work, and this is a sign of burnout.
How Teachers Can Reduce Burnout
Teacher burnout must be treated as a serious issue. Educational institutions and teachers should team up to ensure they don’t undergo burnout. Here are some ways to do that:
Don’t Ignore It
Organizations must have a system in place so teachers can seek the help they need to treat their burnout symptoms. A lot of teachers tend to ignore negative emotions in order to keep working, but this is the wrong approach. Just as screen time must be regulated for children, teachers need to regulate their workloads. Instead of sweeping it under the rug, acknowledge it and treat it so you can bounce back higher.
Don’t Attach Your Identity to Your Job
Santos says that burnout is sometimes a result of being unable to separate your identity from your job. This is something that happens a lot with educators. A way to treat it is to spend off time with friends, engage in hobbies unrelated to your profession, or invest more energy in other life roles, like being a parent.
To Conclude
In the age of remote learning, teachers and educators must be careful not to let their love of teaching hurt their physical and mental health. As a profession, teaching tends to take its toll. When you combine that with teacher shortages and cases of overwork, education becomes a high risk, high turnover industry.
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Education Technology
Article | December 21, 2021
We’ve heard a lot about the role of technology in pandemic education, and for good reason: Digital solutions enabled school communities to maintain learning through uncertainty and interruption none of us could have imagined.
However, the triumphs of edtech have been paired with critical challenges. Since the pandemic closed schools in March 2020, school districts have invested in getting students access to computing devices and the internet.
Technology-hesitant teachers became technology-proficient as they learned to navigate remote teaching and learning in impromptu virtual classrooms. Still, with all of the progress we made in digital learning, the interruption of the face-to-face social aspects of the classroom experience resulted in the students finishing the 2020-2021 school year four to five months behind in reading and math on average, according to a recent study from McKinsey & Company.
We’re starting to see the promise of digital learning take hold; teachers can use software to differentiate and personalize instruction. But we can’t stop here. Over the last 18 months, “technology” has been a synonym for “virtual,” where many kids felt isolated, sitting behind a device and craving connection with their peers and teachers.
We now have the opportunity to take what we have learned and use it to usher in a new era of education — one that is powered to a meaningful degree by technology yet centered on human connection, and one where we reject the false choice between engaging software and an incredible teacher. As we return to school this fall, we can blend the best of technology with the best of the classroom experience.
HMH recently shared results of our annual Educator Confidence Report, and the findings provide critical insights into the characteristics that should define the post-pandemic classroom.
Over 1,200 front-line educators from across the U.S. responded, and while optimism has fallen (only 38% of educators reported a somewhat positive or positive view of the state of their profession), confidence in the mastery and benefit of learning technologies is on the rise.
We’re moving from digital promise to digital proof. Despite a tumultuous year, teachers’ current views on technology provide a bright spot, paving the way for more purposeful use of digital solutions.
Educator confidence in using edtech is at an all-time high since we began this survey seven years ago, with 66% of teachers very or extremely confident in their abilities. Many credit their experience of being thrown into the deep end in March 2020. Today, a nearly unanimous 95% of teachers have experienced the benefits of edtech, and 77% believe tech will help them be more effective teachers post-pandemic.
Of critical importance is the type of benefit teachers are experiencing. 81% report at least one of the following top three benefits, all of which are highly student-centric: improved student engagement; differentiated, individualized instruction; and flexible access to instructional content.
Despite technology playing a larger and more effective role, educators report that there are still critical barriers to access and efficacy that must be addressed, including lack of devices and internet access. 57% of educators also indicated that lack of student engagement with tech is a major barrier. More than half told us that the lack of time to plan for integrating digital resources into instruction was a top challenge.
Students’ emotional well-being is educators’ top concern
We all recognize that at the center of teaching and learning is the strong connection built and nurtured between teacher and student, which serves as the foundation for academic and social-emotional growth and drives engagement. We cannot let technology that breaks that connection and isolates students obscure that critical relationship, and data from this year’s survey is an important harbinger.
Among educators, 58% are concerned that students will demonstrate increased social-emotional needs after the pandemic, and social-emotional needs broadly remained the top concern this year (ahead of teachers’ own salaries and concerns about students falling behind). In addition, 82% of educators believe a well-crafted, fully integrated social-emotional learning (SEL) program will have an impact.
Ultimately, to begin to recover and transition into our “post-pandemic instructional model,” we can benefit from a best-of-both-worlds approach that fuses the power of technology with the tried-and-true social gathering of the classroom — “high-tech” working in a mutually reinforcing way with “high-touch.”
Educators’ unique experiences shed light on what the classroom of the future will look like
Technology alone will not usher in education’s new era. It is critical that we leverage digital solutions with a community-oriented, connected and human mindset.
At HMH, we strive for an edtech ecosystem that drives engagement, not isolation; for solutions that offer actionable data and insights that allow teachers to differentiate instruction, not simply “a page under glass”; for innovations that do not add to educators’ full plates, but rather extend their capabilities and give them time to focus on the social-emotional needs of their students.
We heard loud and clear that educators believe in the potential of technology to accomplish these goals — 82% of educators believe customized learning for every student will transform learning and teaching in the future, and 75% believe technology solutions that connect instruction and assessment on one platform will be essential to this transformation.
Edtech’s potential has been unlocked at an exponential rate over the past year, but the future of the classroom is not merely high-tech. It is high-touch, too.
When we asked educators what they are most looking forward to post-pandemic, the answer was clear — being together with their student community: 80% cited interacting face-to-face with students, 74% said more student engagement and 63% noted student collaboration opportunities.
The passionate discussion around in-person versus digital learning is too often shortsighted in its creation of a strict binary — digital or analog. But our greatest success will come from embracing the fact that these are not opposing forces; they are complementary force multipliers.
We’ve lost a great deal over the last year, but we’ve also gained important ground — and we can continue that momentum. As a society, we will continue to assess the health risks before us and navigate an increasingly hybrid world that includes our workplaces, neighborhoods and, of course, our schools.
I believe that as we do ultimately return to our school buildings, we’ll be ready to usher in a new era of learning, one powered by tech and innovation but forever defined by the community of teachers and students at its heart.
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