28 Days Later

Nevermind Billie Eilish; Cillian Murphy is the ultimate bad guy. I'm reminded of the classic film 28 Days Later as we turn nearly 28 days into this school year. Maybe this is a time to reflect back on how technology has supported our learning back at school.

Renewed Enthusiasm?

I am feeling a renewed sense of enthusiasm from teachers. Maybe this came from their lock down experiences of supporting their students, their own kids learning or their own professional development in developing the skills needed to support both of the above. 

I'm seeing teachers with new skills and a sense of confidence in digital tools. They've seen first hand that its not just waffle from "early adaptors" that some of these tools go a long way to supporting learning.

Schools may also have relaxed their ICT policies a little to allow students to continue to use personal devices (BYOD) in the classroom and this may drive further adaption.

If it's not online...

All of sudden back around March 12th, everything had to work online. Phones became some students main access point for learning at home and parents dusted off old laptops for their kids to use with SeeSaw or engage in online meetings. Anything that wasn't online was off the agenda. Some students had time to get books; others did not. 

This pushed teachers (and many other organisations) to get everything online. Schools who already were half way down the road on their digital resources found themselves empowered to plough on with learning as best they could. It turned into a pedagogical problem more so than a technical one.  Other schools were not as lucky. 

New challenges

Now I'm finding new problems with online learning that are popping their heads up in the real world. Is the new digital divide a choice between prioritising digital work over paper work? There's health and safety considerations now over each pedagogical choice and this is a little bizarre. We've stampers where we used to use pens and we're thinking about a paperless classroom and how that can be achieved. Some people (ridiculously) say Bill Gates has a secret agenda in this Covid pandemic and I agree; he always wanted the world to go paperless ;)

"The paperless office, like artificial intelligence, is one of those ‘any day now’ phenomena that somehow never seem to actually arrive." - Bill Gates (1999)

Coda

I'm very positive about changes in attitude towards digital learning but new challenges are rising up. Managing students digital workload and task setting will certainly be my focus over the next 28 Days and I'll report back on how that is progressing.

How has your first 28 days been?

Steve