Before and After

Informational communication technologies have become the norm in most classrooms across America.  Before the pandemic, our district went one-to-one with digital devices for student learning.  Every student in the school district has a Google Chromebook device.  In my classroom, I utilize Google Classroom, Gmail, Google Slides, Google Docs, Google Meets, Padlet, YouTube, iMovie, FinalCutPro, Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, video cameras, and sometimes cell phones (even though they are now banned across our state), Instagram, Facebook, EduBlogs, and probably a multitude of other technology programs and platforms that I am forgetting to name.

I actually took a sabbatical to complete my first M.Ed. Degree and homeschool my own children during the year that we were distance learning during the pandemic.  Even though I did not do much remote teaching myself, I found myself in the new role of a student learning through an online format for the first time.  Some of the advantages I found for myself is that I learned a multitude of new tools that I could incorporate into my teaching and share with my students such as creating a blogspace where students could share their learning reflections.  I learned how to properly set up my LMS space for my students and how to make appropriate learning resources available for them to extend their learning outside of our in-person lessons.  We have been able to incorporate the use of video meetings as a way to reach out to students for tutoring sessions during our study hall blocks and as a way to meet with parents if meeting in person is not possible.  Students have been able to learn how to work collaboratively with many of the technology tools and platforms that we use daily, which makes it possible for them to not only work together in class but also outside of the classroom if necessary.

Even though we all learned a lot through distance learning, there have been many huge disadvantages as well.  Since we have come back together in person, it has been a struggle to get students to come to school, talk to one another, participate in class, use appropriate social skills, to get students to get off of their cell phones, and to relearn how to learn in a group setting.  Students cheat on assignments using the internet more now than they ever did before the pandemic.  AI is only making that easier for them.  Many of them do not want to put forth any type of effort into their courses, because they were used to just passing their classes because everyone in our district was basically allowed to pass during the pandemic. Our state testing scores over the past few years would agree with this assessment.  The students in our school district forgot how to learn or just didn’t care to learn distance learning.

I think that my students prefer a mix of online learning tools and doing things the old-fashioned way with paper, pencils, poster boards, markers, gallery walks, and a cutthroat review game of trashketball.  Most of the students in the district that I work in struggled to keep up even when they had help in the classroom, so giving them the independence to work at their own pace online taught them to just shut down and check out.  There are absolutely students that online learning works for and they probably prefer it, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in our school.  Students crave 1 to 1 attention, in-person socialization and learning groups, and the ability to be able to discuss their learning with each other in a classroom.