Hmm. This is a shame. Having read "The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way" by Amanda Ripley, I learned that the United States is the highest spender on technology amongst all OECD countries. You'd think with such a big budget for tech, we'd do a better job of transitioning online. If anything, based on this fact, we should be one of the best equipped in the world for it.
I wonder if that's because of the US' relationship with philanthropy? I have no idea about the rest of the world, but with friends who teach in the US I hear about "[So and so] donated a classroom full of iPads" with no real support or curriculum or what to do in a few years when they're out of date. They donated tech because it's sexier than donating paper and whiteboard markers. All while books are falling apart and they struggle for resources to make photocopies.
I don't know of the source, but when I was in HS in the late 90s each teacher got a computer due to some initiative. None of the teachers knew what to do with it and at the time tech got obsolete quickly. A computer purchased in 1995 was dog-slow compared to what was sold in 1999. We had a "computer lab" built, but no classes or teachers qualified to teach so it was empty most of the time. You can say technology in the classroom is a chicken-and-egg problem, but that assumes technology is some savior and resources weren't better spent on traditional school resources.
I’ve watched school technology budgets get shoved right into the back of the closet. The money gets spent on capital and consultants. The end users, teachers and students, are rarely given instruction on how to use all this tech. No education plan is developed to use this tech. If you’re lucky you’ll get a tech savvy teacher or precocious student who’ll make sense of it.
