By Cayla Bamberger, The Hechinger Report  

When the coronavirus pandemic first struck and classes shifted online last spring, Sophia Joffe was in 11th grade. Her private school in Toronto, Ontario, had made the transition admirably well, she thought, but she wondered what online tools existed to supplement her studies, and how she’d find the best options. She was also curious how students were faring in other schools.  

“I remember thinking that the school systems must have a great list of recommended online learning,” she said. “But I was wrong.”  

Joffe saw an entrepreneurial opportunity. She invested $19 — the cost of hosting a website — and created eLearn.fyi, a database of more than 300 online learning tools, in tables clearly organized by grade level and subject matter, including a civics curriculum founded by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and engineering lessons on how to build a robotic arm.  

Joffe’s database answered a pandemic-era demand: About a quarter of families and teachers want more online instructions and resources to help them use digital learning tools, according to a recent NewSchools Venture Fund-Gallup poll. By October, her database had more than 500 unique visitors from more than 40 countries, and plenty of options to meet their individualized needs.  

“Everyone’s a different learner,” said Joffe, “and that’s often overlooked in online learning.” 

Other student entrepreneurs have applied their hard-earned wisdom to improving virtual school, too. A team of students from INCubatoredu, a high school entrepreneurship program based in Illinois, reworked their business Trashbots to make robotics and coding accessible and provide hands-on STEM education at home. A ninth grader in South Florida, working with the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, a national program for low-income youth, developed an app to bridge the communication gap between teachers and Spanish-speaking parents. 

Learning tools can take many forms, like websites and apps, virtual tutorials and programs, and online games and videos. And because of the range of resources, students and the adults who supervise them (whether teachers or parents) need guidance on how to assess which are the best materials for which purposes. Joffe had to use her own experience with online learning to make her selections for the database.  

While watching TV in her free time, Joffe was struck by another idea: a ‘Netflix of online learning’ that could recommend digital resources to users. “I read that Netflix personalizes their recommendations based on 75,000 categories or more,” she said, “and I thought, if we could take that level of personalization and technology to online learning, it could transform the world.”  

“Our governments need to be working in partnership with tech companies to put the Netflix of online learning into action,” she added. “I don’t understand why that isn’t happening — now.” 

Many experts have the same question. They generally agree that high-quality online resources can support individualized instruction, and most school administrators and teachers think such offerings are more effective for personalizing education than non-digital materials, according to a Gallup and NewSchools Venture Fund report from last year. Virtual tools give students alternative ways to grasp material, and to complete and submit their work. When interactive and dynamic, these tools can also provide opportunities for practice and student engagement.   

Still, research shows that digital-resource usage hasn’t reached its full potential. According to a 2018 study by the accounting firm PwC, only 10 percent of K-12 teachers reported they “feel confident” about including high-level technology in their lesson plans. Most technology use in classrooms — 60 percent — was “passive”: watching videos or reading websites.  

Plus, the jury is still out on what constitutes a high-quality online resource. As long as students, parents and teachers are baffled, these tools will continue to fall short of their capacity to improve and personalize instruction. 

Julia Kaufman, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, believes part of the problem is that educators and families alike need more guidance about instructional materials, to help them navigate the deluge of websites, apps, curricula and more online.  

“There are a lot of digital materials out there that may not be well-aligned with curricula,” she said. “There’s a lot of care that has to be involved in selecting these resources.” 

Kaufman said some states do provide good guidance for educators, citing Louisiana, Tennessee and Nebraska as some examples. “And there are other states,” she said, “that just provide long lists of resources — they don’t curate, they just list.” 

Could students, then, be the unwitting experts in remote learning? J.D. LaRock, a Northeastern University professor who is the president of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, thinks so. 

“They’re the most authentic voice for letting adults know what they need and how they need it,” he said. 

Send story ideas and news tips to salman@hechingerreport.org. Tweet at @JaveriaSal. Read high-quality news about innovation and inequality in education at The Hechinger Report. And, here’s a list of the latest news and trends in the future of learning.

1. How to catalyze lasting change. A new report from the Christensen Institute seeks to answer the question of whether schools will change forever as a result of the two ongoing crises roiling the country: Covid-19 and a reckoning over systemic racism. The report argues that “converting rallying cries into lasting change is a complex proposition.” Written by Chelsea Waite and Thomas Arnett, the report offers a framework and recommendations for school leaders who want to implement change in public schools that will stick long term. Read the report. 

2. Student mindsets matter when it comes to STEM. A study released by the Center for American Progress found that how early high school students rate their experience with science and math courses correlates to their future success and pursuit of STEM majors. A key finding from the analysis was that “the relationship between STEM mindsets and pursuit of a STEM major was strongest for female students and students from families with low incomes.” Read the report.  

3. Student-led solutions to address the digital divide. The digital divide has disproportionately impacted students of color and other underserved communities. An upcoming virtual policy hackathon will focus on finding solutions for the disparities in internet access. The event will be hosted by the Internet Law and Policy Foundry, a professional development organization for young professionals, on November 20-22. Although the event is targeted at college students and young professionals, it is open to high school students interested in the fields of public policy, law, and data and computer science. Students can register here. 

4. How to choose the right ed tech products. At a time when educators and schools may be feeling overwhelmed by the plethora of ed tech options, Digital Promise, a nonprofit that works for innovation in schools, has launched a new Learner Variability product certification. The certification, which uses a competency-based learning framework, is intended to help schools select products that can meet the needs of different learners. So far 15 products have received the Learner Variability product certification.

“How one Native American tribe in S.D. created its own wireless education network,” Argus Leader 

“Should we screen kids’ genes to ‘predict’ how successful they’ll be in school?,” The Hechinger Report 

“Why the “homework gap” is key to America’s digital divide,” MIT Technology Review 

“The digital divide starts with a laptop shortage,” The New York Times