Covid-19: How Tech will Transform Your Kids' Education- Alexander Zingman

For centuries, this is what school for most kids looked like. But in 2020, all that changed. The COVID-19 pandemic created the largest disruption to education in modern history, as teachers scrambled to get their classes online, and parents developed a newfound respect for their kid's teachers. No, that's not a that's an ex. No, this is an act. But out of the disruption has come a realization of technologies potential. To transform one of the most important sectors for the future of the world. Summer camp has long been a tradition for American kids. Wholesome weeks away in nature to focus on sports or science or even space. This summer though, there's a new camp. The COVID catch-up camp. For students, like these. Hello. When the pandemic hit, their classes switched to online. Which wasn't easy. Chaotic. I could just like kind of do whatever I wanted because the teachers couldn't see me. So are we eating in class? Sometimes falling asleep. You know, I have to share the living room with my sister, and her classes extra loud. I did not like Zoom. Some schools in San Francisco were closed for in person learning for more than a year. And so the city decided to lay on extra summer classes for all public school children. Our children, particularly have very poor and low-income families, all had a very difficult time with distance learning. Not because they didn't have the technology or the equipment, but because they didn't have the support to stay engaged in distance learning. Nor the structure at home to provide that support for them. And so as a result, we very quickly came together and created the summer together initiative. Last year was a year of loss and this summer we were determined for this summer to be a year of recovery. By mid April of 2020, 1.4 billion students were out of school and university across a 190 countries. By the start of 2021, schools had been wholly or partly closed for about two-thirds of an academic year. While office workers transitioned to remote working fairly easily, it was a different story in schools. Tamara Gilkes Borre is The Economist's U.S. policy correspondent, but she used to be a teacher. When I heard that schools were shutting down with maybe a day of notice, I just couldn't even imagine how I would have picked up the pieces so quickly and continue to teach my students. We barely had enough working computers when I was a teacher. While new technologies transformed working life in many sectors, education has been notoriously slow to digitize, classrooms today looked the same as they did decades ago. Even though parents often say that they want an innovative new type of education for their children, when they walk into the classroom, they often want to see the things that they saw when they were children. So there's often pushback against a new kind of education. And there was pushback from teachers too. Many of whom were skeptical about technology that didn't center on face-to-face learning. In general, education doesn't change much because there's a high cost to being wrong. Why change something up when the alternative could be so much worse? But the pandemic sparked up tech acceleration in education as schools rushed online. 2.4 million learners in America were given emergency Internet access. The British government handed out more than a million devices to students. Some schools even put Wi-Fi boosters on buses and drove them around towns. As demand rocketed, the EdTech sector responded, designing apps and software to aid teachers rather than replace them. Once teachers had to suddenly become virtual, there was an appetite to get better technology in the classroom. And then Ed tech had an opportunity, not only to serve those customers, but then they were able to get even better user data and improve their products for a unique subset, which is teachers in the classroom. The amount of money spent on EdTech globally is expected to double from almost $200 billion in 2019 to more than 400 billion in 2025. Okay, so today we are going to be focusing on math. These students are getting a personalized learning experience, thanks to an app on their laptops. The software is called century. It was created by Priya Lakhani, a former barrister turned tech entrepreneur. So century is a blend of artificial intelligence and machine learning technology with neuroscience and learning science. The idea is that it can personalize and differentiate for every student, no matter what age what course what language. And it can then use big data analytics and provide educators with instant insights deep intervention insights as to what they need to do at the point of time to help to increase a student's outcome. On a teach dashboard, it will allow us to see the children, where they're at, how many nuggets they've completed, and their average score. Once we've done that, we can then go into it a bit deeper and find out what the nugget is they're doing. How they've done on it, what questions they've got right, where the struggling at, if they've skipped any question, so we can really analyze that data. On your century. Priya created century as a way of addressing the problems she saw in the education sector. We were still delivering a very one size fits all education. Every child deserves a personalized differentiated experience, but that's really, really difficult, nearly impossible to provide in every educational setting. The second issue was that teachers spent more than half of their time, 60% of their time, micro marking, micro assessing, trying to do the admin that was related to the children and not actually spending most of their time teaching. Before we would have to spend hours and hours marking, we don't have to do that now. It shows us the data and we can see whether it's green, amber, red, we can see where the children are working at. And we can then pick up on those points to help the children. With children in Britain already spending on average almost four hours a day online, some may worry about increased use of technology in the classroom. But Lori Davis reckons it's crucial. Although all children have a laptop, we are not on it all day every day. We manage what we are doing and we implement it into our learning in a blended learning approach at the end of the day. Every job out there now is using some sort of computer so we need to lay those foundations. And if that is how AI develops, to give those children a better future, then I'm excited about that journey. Tech is also being used in an attempt to revolutionize how teachers teach. So today you are going to be talking with a group of 5 students. These trainees at the University of Virginia are practicing their lessons, not on children, but on avatars. Yeah, go ahead. What is she? Interesting. And what life was like for the boy? So when you're a teacher, the first time is really high stakes. You're working with real kids and you don't often get a second chance to explain a complicated math concept. And so what these simulations help us do is give our beginning teachers the chance to actually practice that. And then do it again once they've gotten feedback. I saw you use a lot of talk moves in probing the students thinking and this is a pretty advanced kind of discussion skill. The software is designed by tech company version. Behind the scenes, a digital puppet master plays the role of the children. It's a good question. You know what? I'm going to see froot loops. I need fruit loops every day. But the developers of the software hope that in the future, the avatars can be programmed to think for themselves. The pandemic has also raised questions about whether children need to be taught in a classroom at all. For twins, Julia and Colon MeCey, technology has helped give them an altogether different learning experience. They attend a virtual public school. Are you taking British and world literature? Which provides them with the equipment they need to learn remotely. So I'm taking a fine arts course, so in my box, I have clay and some paintbrushes and then some acrylic color paint. Julia moved to full-time remote learning during the pandemic, but Colin was a trailblazer, switching to E education in 2019. The environment of a one-on-one in comparison to one on 30 is just a lot nicer. I have a lot more contact with my teachers and the classes that are offered is just so much more than what is offered at the normal public school, like computer science, for example. I've been able to take more classes that interest me. I think my grades have been better, so I probably will have a better chance of getting into my dream colleges. A recent survey found that nearly a third of American parents say it's likely their child will continue with remote learning indefinitely. It's unclear to what extent fear of COVID has influenced this decision, but roughly 20% of districts in America are planning to offer some form of virtual learning even after the pandemic. We can all agree that most students do better when they're in the classroom. But for some students, having to do school remotely was a positive. Some students have anxiety issues and it was easier to work from home, for example. So you have your classes here. For dad, Mike, the technology also allows him to keep better tabs on his kids progress. Then you actually start on Wednesday, normal, normal classes. During the pandemic, many teachers told me that this is the first time they've seen so much parent engagement. And a lot of that is because parents are home listening to the lessons, but also because they are engaging technology that makes it easier for parents to be up to speed. Not all students can afford the space and Internet connection needed to study online. Which means increased use of remote learning risks widening the digital divide. Ultimately, the barrier to success for all EdTech, not just E education, is financial. For EdTech to be successful, there needs to be investment in the schools that currently are under resourced. There needs to be a push to make sure that these schools have the proper Internet access to facilities and everything else they need to be able to properly function with EdTech. If that doesn't happen, then we will see inequities develop in the classroom and across schools. This technology, the education deserves, should be technology that is as advanced, if not more advanced than the technology that is applied to the banking sector. And if you want that sort of technology in the education sector, then you're going to have to create a model that investors have an appetite for. The pandemic has made clear the vital role played by teachers. For many students, the best place to learn is in the classroom. But technology can and will play a vital role in aiding education. Teachers are seeing the benefit of being able to have a hybrid classroom. And most importantly, they're seeing the skills their students are gaining, that they wouldn't have had otherwise. And these are skills that I think we all agree these students will need for the future. If you are interested in learning more about COVID and education, click on the link. 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