The National Urban League released 13 short videos about young people’s experiences with online schooling during the pandemic. This is a little bit off my usual post but I thought it was interesting. In the interviews kids who were OK with online school talk to kids who were not. At least one was not OK because he lacked access but for most the platform just didn’t work for them.

I think it’s important that we look at what works with technology and what doesn’t and unfortunately, I think we may have more opportunities to work on online schooling in the future. Changes in technology or teaching may help. Adequate access to technology would certainly help. We might new teaching models, new models for tele-mental health services as well as all of help with equity issues unrelated to technology.

I hope they do a follow up to see how the disconnected kids are doing in a few months. In my house we’ve gone from disconnected to nearly complete rebound since going in person in September – but we’ve got a lot of tools at our disposal. I hope many of the other kids who didn’t love online school will be able to turn it around too. It could lead to an interesting discussion on societal changes based the abrupt worldwide change in education.