What lessons did teachers and researchers learn about ed tech during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially as AI use grows? Experts explain and help reporters better write about technology in schools.
Photo credit: James Minichello of AASA for EWA
As the pandemic emptied classrooms and weeks of remote learning stretched into months, technology tethered many students to their teachers and lessons.
But for all the ways technology made learning possible during COVID-19 — and continues to enhance instruction — it has also forced schools to confront serious questions: Who has (and doesn’t have) access to devices and software? Who gains from technology permeating schools? How can student and teacher data and privacy remain protected?
And how helpful is technology in the classroom when it can interrupt lessons with its shortcomings — or “seams” — like connection errors?
“There’s always going to be seams when it comes to technology,” Morgan Ames, assistant professor of practice at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Information, said during a 2024 National Seminar session on pandemic-era lessons educators and researchers learned about technology in the classroom. The panel took place in Las Vegas last June. “And I think the pandemic really showed us the consequences of some of those seams.”
“Those seams,” Ames said, “are much deeper and wider for lower resourced, less privileged students.”
In addition to Ames, the panel included Jun Kim, director of technology at Moore Public Schools in Oklahoma, and Pati Ruiz, senior director of ed tech and emerging technologies at Digital Promise. Natasha Singer, a reporter at The New York Times, moderated the session.
Daily technology snags during COVID included shaky internet connections and regular Zoom failures. Meanwhile, some communities were way behind with the infrastructure needed to launch remote learning overnight in 2020.
The deep divide in technology and internet access across states emerged as one of the most pressing challenges for schools to navigate in the early days of the pandemic. That digital divide became a lesson and a legacy of the pandemic.
It was one of many lessons learned as educators and school leaders improvised their way through the uncertainty of remote learning.
Another lesson centered on the essential role of teachers.
Even as many students turned to devices to learn during the pandemic, their teachers remained a critical part of their education — both in teaching them and helping them feel a sense of connection, Jun Kim said.
“Good learning is good learning,” Kim said. “Good teaching is good teaching. And the devices helped in that remote learning situation, but without the teachers being there on the Zoom calls and making those connections, I think we would’ve had [a much] tougher time.”
That lesson preceded the pandemic and will live long after it, even while artificial intelligence finds its way into more classrooms, the panelists said.
AI has exploded as the leading topic of education technology across schools, with educators and technology departments trying to understand how to help students learn how to use the technology, so they’re prepared for the future workforce and how to navigate it responsibly.
But it’s critical that those using AI don’t anthropomorphize it, panelists say, as the technology is strictly a tool for automation.
“We know so much of learning is human relationships and human connections,” Pati Ruiz said. “And there is no replacement for that human judgment and the importance of educators guiding students when we’re talking about formal learning settings.”
Ames compares the rollout of AI in schools to the introduction of calculators decades ago.
“Instead of replacing, these tools are an augmentation,” she said. “Calculators definitely changed math education, but it didn’t erase the need for math education.”
The promise of technology revolutionizing education has surfaced with each new innovation — including radio in the 1920s and cable television in the 1960s, said Ames, who authored the award-winning book, “The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child.”
“So many of these stories and promises have been recycled from one technology to another,” she said.
That also includes the idea that technological disruptions — and the implications they have for privacy and security — are inescapable, even as education technology companies collect student data and aren’t always transparent about what specific data they’re tracking and why.
“There’s a story that we don’t have a choice [when it comes to embracing technology and applying it to the classroom],” Ames said. “It’s coming. We just better prepare for it. The story that we don’t have a choice is in corporations’ interest because that allows them to roll these things out with very little opposition. And it’s them that often start telling that story, but it gets echoed so often.”
Regardless, decisions about technology belong to schools, teachers, students and families — a message that Ames says bears repeating.
“We all have choices,” Ames said. “Those choices might have consequences, but we all have choices in using things.”
A significant challenge of education technology is the proliferation of tools and how to vet them, according to Kim.
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