Skibidi Anarchy: Technology in the Post-Pandemic Classroom

Join eSchool News for 12 Days of edtech with the most read and loved stories of 2024. On the 11th Day of edtech, our story focuses on post-pandemic classroom technology.

Key points:

Today's children are built differently. It's the number one recurring theme in conversations with educators at all levels, from the classroom to the district office. It's not just anecdotal either. Everywhere you look, the data backs it up:

• “Eighty-one percent of superintendents agree that concerns about student behavior are worse now than before the pandemic, and 35 percent say the situation has gotten 'significantly' worse.”BEF, 2023)
• “Eighty percent of educators are concerned about student engagement.” (Gradual learning, 2023)
• “On average, students give their school a C+ for making them excited about learning…Perhaps relatedly, students give their school a C+ for teaching them in ways that fit their learning needs unique”. (Gallup, 2023)

Something is broken here. Superintendents see it. The teachers see it. The students see it. So what's going on?

The gamification of incivility

the concept of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.esparklearning.com/blog/a-guide-to-ai-powered-gamification-for-teachers/” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>gamification has existed outside of educational innovations for many years. Countless apps and curriculum publishers have attempted to “make learning fun” with mixed results. But unfortunately it wasn't the educational technology industry that won the race for children's attention: it was social media.

Unfortunately, we are all familiar with what happened next. The screen time generation fell headlong into the dopamine traps that are TikTok, YouTube, instagram, and many more. Instead of opening our children's eyes to new experiences and ways to improve, social media has amplified and incentivized the worst of human nature. Call me a curmudgeon if you must, but the data speaks for itself. Social media has been repeatedly linked to depression, addiction, anxiety, sleep problems, and many other physical and psychological problems.

When schools reopened after the pandemic, they welcomed a legion of students with entirely new vocabularies and worldviews shaped by 30-second video clips. The result was a cohort that lacked the tools to understand the difference between how people act online and how they act in the real world.

The tides are starting to turn

As of this writing, Congress has adopted multiple bills aimed at strengthening COPPA and protecting minors from harmful material on social media platforms. If properly implemented, this legislation would attack the root cause of many of these problems by adding a modernized layer of liability for technology and social media companies.

Schools are also fighting back as best they can by instituting a variety of cell phone bans to reverse downward trends in student inattention and disengagement. State legislatures have become involved, with at least a dozen enact those bans starting in 2024. Teachers across the country have already began to celebrate the application of these policies, citing levels of commitment they have not seen in years (if ever, for those who are new to the profession).

But can we harness that momentum and save what we've already lost? Many believe it is still possible.

The end of one-size-fits-all learning?

Let's be honest about the fact that student engagement requires more than educational technology tools. Ultimately, teachers are the key to resurrecting student engagement levels. But as long as digital learning is part of the educational landscape, the onus will be on publishers to find the sweet spot between meeting legitimate classroom needs and engaging students in ways the old guard no longer does.

The fortuitous rise of artificial intelligence and large language models could not have come at a better time. As schools look to reduce screen time after too many years of hybrid and remote learning models, that time needs to be made even more productive. No, ai is not a cure-all technology, but it opens up intriguing possibilities in the so-far disappointing timeline of so-called “personalized learning.”

You can't take a Generation Alpha student, sit them in front of the same digital learning resource that kids were using 10 years ago, and expect similar results. You know the formula: Students watch an instructional video or read an overview of a concept, complete a simple practice set that may or may not include a game or two, and demonstrate their “mastery” by completing a few multiple-choice questions. The only “customization” involved is too often limited to the order in which lessons are presented.

Personalized learning 2.0

This idea of ​​“personalized learning 2.0” is not about chasing something new and shiny, but about evolving with the times. We need to stop seeing ai as “the future of education” and start thinking about how we can seize the moment to help create more magical moments in the classroom. Perhaps the right educational technology can help open the door enough for teachers to walk through.

The damage caused by modern technology can never be undone, but it can be mitigated. At what point do we take a step back and realize that we can't keep banging our heads against the wall with the same old instructional practices and tools? How many consecutive years of test score stagnation will it take before school systems begin to realize that they are not getting the return on investment they were promised in their six- to seven-figure contracts?

Children today have a different constitution. Let us demand the same from the programs we present to you.

See the previous 12 days of edtech:
1st edtech Day
2nd edtech Day
3rd edtech Day
4th edtech Day
5th edtech Day
6th edtech Day
Seventh day of edtech
Eighth day of edtech
Ninth day of edtech
Tenth day of edtech