Future of Learning: The MacGyver of remote teaching

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Hi! This is Nichole Dobo, the senior editor for audience engagement at The Hechinger Report. Those of you who have been reading for a while will remember when I established this newsletter in 2014. It’s a pleasure to briefly return to Future of Learning this week, as a stand-in for Javeria Salman. If you want to reconnect, just hit reply to this email. One of my jobs is managing our portfolio of newsletters, and I would love to hear from you.

By Nichole Dobo, The Hechinger Report

When Audrey Green, a middle school teacher in Broward County, Florida, began the year working remotely with her students, she had a lot to think about.

She had to establish a personal connection with students she’s never seen face to face and help children develop tools to cope during a pandemic. And she had to handle emotionally heavy issues, like the student who hung around after class online because she said she didn’t want to be alone. All of that while also ensuring they were being challenged academically.

But before she could do any of the hard work of teaching students through a screen, she had to solve another problem. How would she set up those screens in the first place?

Teachers have long spent their own money to outfit their classrooms — on average, teachers spend $459 out of pocket on school supplies annually, according to an analysis of 2011-12 data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics. Some teachers get some of that money back: Several states provide at least partial reimbursement for these expenses and the federal government allows a $250 tax deduction, according to Alyssa Evans, a policy researcher at the Education Commission of the States.

But the national economic crisis means that teachers might be out of pocket this year as they attempt remote teaching. States that normally compensate teachers for their expenditures might not have the money to fund those programs. In Nevada, for instance, the state created a $4.5 million program in 2015 that allows local schools to set their own rules or reimburse teachers who buy their own supplies. The budget for that item this year? Nothing. The state legislators zeroed out that budget item due to the pandemic-fueled budget crisis.

Florida, where Green teaches, is one of the states that provides teachers with a pot of money to be reimbursed for supplies. But technology isn’t an allowable expense because the law excludes equipment.

Green is also a technology liaison at Silver Trail Middle School, so she was able to think of solutions to remote teaching issues that may trip up a less tech-savvy educator. “I'm a MacGyver,” she said. “I can cook you an entire meal with an old whisk.”

And yet even for Green, the start of the school year brought seemingly endless obstacles.

Consider, for instance, the seemingly mundane task of ensuring the 35 to 40 students in the virtual room could hear and speak during class. Most cell phones these days don’t come with headphone jacks, so many students only had wireless ear buds at their disposal, but needed plug-in headphones for their laptop school computers. Some students were unable to procure those. Green got a tablet to use on the side so she can chat with those students via text.

The tablet is one of several screens she uses to pull off remote teaching. She has a work-issued laptop and a large monitor she uses to see and acknowledge raised hands among a sea of three dozen faces. She uses another screen to project presentations and examples for the children to look at while also being able to see their teacher.
It’s “like mission impossible,” Green said.

Green had access to extra technology around her house to hack together her remote workstation. But she also had to buy things, like an extra $40 for battery packs to ensure she can stay connected. Green said she is fortunate that she had a lot of things on hand. She knows other teachers who weren’t as lucky.

“It's money, money, money going out, going out to make it work and they won't cover it,” she said.

Send story ideas and news tips to Javeria Salman at salman@hechingerreport.org. 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.

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The Shortlist

1. The problem with ed tech: A new paper published in Postdigital Science and Education looks at the seller’s market in education technology that has resulted from the pandemic. The situation could create problems, the authors write, if too many hurry to adopt digital tools of unproven efficacy. “This paper urges educational leaders to think carefully about the decisions they are currently making and if they indeed pave the way to a desirable future of education.” That’s probably a question on the mind of many educators. Along those lines, a new book from Justin Reich published by Harvard University Press, “Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education,” explores the dangers of the rush to go digital. Also take a look at “The research we have is not the research we need,” a plainly written paper that examines why much of education technology hasn’t been properly vetted. (That paper also takes note of a story published by The Hechinger Report and USA Today.)

2. Industry shifts: A Boston nonprofit, Saga Education, acquired Woot Math, which provides online tutoring and other tools. The move is expected to provide better access for teachers and students and lower costs to use the program. “The platform was designed specifically for effective and engaging remote instruction of mathematics,” Woot Math CEO Krista Marks told the Daily Camera. “Working with Saga gave us a terrific chance to see first-hand how we are stronger together in our efforts to help young people succeed,” she said in a statement. This isn’t the only interesting merger in ed tech that is unfolding this fall. Trend?

3. Somebody’s watching me: As we documented in August, concerns about cheating have increased as colleges find it’s difficult to assess learning when students aren’t in-person. A new report in Wired makes the argument that creepy methods used by universities to proctor exams could radically change the way this generation views surveillance. The story begins with a student who is watched in her bedroom by a program driven by artificial intelligence as she takes an exam. “It's a dreadful experience, they'll tell you. Some systems identify possible cheats using AI; in others, a live human, employed by the firm, stares at you.” This is likely something just about every college student is dealing with. A survey in April showed that the vast majority of university respondents were using, or planned to use, online proctors.

Future of Learning: The MacGyver of remote teaching

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