For anyone in or around the world of education, it’s been a frustrating year. When schools went virtual, there was a national scramble to figure out how to replicate the classroom online. Parents and caretakers became responsible for making sure their kids were connected and on task. Teachers and administrators worried about teaching hands-on concepts through a screen, about holding kids’ attention without in-person camaraderie, and about the logistics of making sure all students had equal access to the necessary technology.
And for everyone, virtual learning required choosing and implementing apps, software, and websites--a chore that affected schools and families differently based on their devices, connectedness, and time.
When asked about the biggest challenges of at-home learning, one parent of a third-grader at Crossroads Academy - Quality Hill responded, “The different apps and programs used. It was confusing to keep up with. Different codes for everything. And still having to work outside of my home with me being the main support system.”
A teacher in Kansas City Public Schools pointed out, “Not everyone has laptops yet. Some of our families are quite large, so sharing one computer is going to be difficult. Those working on phones are doing their best, but it's not the easiest to complete work on such a small screen.”
While much of the focus has been on schools providing families with tech, and funders providing schools with money, one important player has been overlooked when it comes to leveraging resources-- the innovators themselves.
Edtech providers should offer comprehensive training for parents (in multiple languages), on not just how to use edtech tools, but also on the desired student learning outcomes for each platform.
Boddle Learning, a Tulsa-based edtech company offering an interactive math video game, has found great success with developing resources and support for parents, with the benefit of saving teachers time and energy, too. “Implementing real-time chat support on the website helped parents to come straight to us versus having to go through teachers in order to get set up,” says Boddle co-founder Clarence Tan.
Boddle continued to tailor their approach once they learned more about parents’ needs and limitations. “One of the barriers to scheduling specific training times is that parents didn't have the time or energy for more Zoom sessions and sitting down in front of a screen for training,” says Tan. “We switched our approach by helping support our parents in bite-size chunks and sending out a weekly email with How-To-Videos, as well as easy-to-read pdf instructions with bullet points. This doesn't overwhelm parents and allows them to learn more about the program on their terms and timeline."
Imagine the time and energy that schools and parents could save if more innovators and developers offered training on their products, as well as continued support. By training parents in groups, creating easy pipelines for support, and adapting to parents’ time limitations, edtech providers give educators more time to focus on the substance of education, rather than the means. Such training would also turn parents into a network of classroom aides, in which they can help each other-- and the teachers-- regain some of their capacity.
