4 common roadblocks to “virtual school”
Most of my work for the past year has been developing techniques, curriculum, and workflows for supporting low-digital-literacy adults with using a computer and navigating the internet. As schools have moved online, I think that the needs of adult learners help shine a light on some of the unique issues that I see unfolding in K-12 education right now, especially in younger grades. Below is a sketch of four ideas that may help to think about what learners (and teachers!) may need as they get more comfortable with virtual school environments.
1. Most people who are comfortable with computers have trouble imagining or remembering clearly what it feels like not to be comfortable with them. The metaphor I use most frequently in my work is thinking of computer operation and internet navigation as driving the car and knowing the routes. People who spend a lot of their time on computers and online are like frequent drivers in a city they know well. Their driving skills are automatic — they aren’t considering every turn, every acceleration or deceleration, every possible route you might use. They use shortcuts unthinkingly; they might get a little lost but have a general sense of direction.
Adults who are not comfortable with computers generally fall into a few different groups, even though each individual has their own strengths, challenges, and experiences.
Some have never been in the city and have never driven the car at all. Everything is completely overwhelming — the machine they are being tasked to operate seems daunting, complex, and dangerous. Even if they could figure out how to make the thing go, they would have no idea of where to begin, and can only imagine the many ways they might get lost. These folks may need, variously, fear reduction (“the computer won’t break unless you spill water on it or drop it on the floor”), limited mechanics (“you only need to know how to do three things right now. I’m going to teach you those three things”), and a simple map of the terrain (“I’m going to show you these three websites you need, and then you can explore”).
When you’re driving a car automatically, there are remarkably few operations that you are actually keeping in mind: two pedals, a wheel, and a turn signal. But if you’ve never driven a car, you have no feel for these things, and you also have a lot of things that might get in the way — what about the windshield wipers? What about this button here? What do I do if X, Y, or Z happens? Experienced drivers simply don’t think of these things until they need to. But novice drivers are overwhelmed with all of the options immediately.
What does all of this mean for younger students and their teachers? It means, first and foremost, to keep things simple to start. Don’t introduce every tool at once in the hopes that you can just “get on the road.” Even moderately tech-savvy or screen-savvy kids need time to learn the mechanics of operation, and every new tool that you introduce has a learning curve that will be different for everyone. One day you learn to upload something. One day you learn how to use a text box. One day you try a picture with a filter. Just because you can do these things all at once doesn’t mean you necessarily should — you have to gauge everyone’s existing mastery, their level of fear or discomfort, and their ability to perform simple tasks.
2. Screen savvy is not digital literacy. Another group of low-digital-literacy adults that I work with can broadly navigate the internet through smartphones, but have little to no practice using a computer or laptop. Younger children also fall into this category — they can navigate intuitively but they have never learned how to “drive.” For this category of learner, there will be predictable hurdles that can be frustrating, because one form of savvy (intuitive navigation) does not actually translate to related but separate domain of digital literacy (mastery of computer operation). (My favorite example is the young person who picked up a mouse like it was a smartphone, flipped it over, and started running her finger along it with the expectation that the mouse would start to move.)
Unfortunately, a lot of the skills that people lose when they build their navigation savvy on tablets and smartphones are also the most tedious to learn later in life. They include things like typing, file structure and organization, mouse skills, and use of specific applications. None of these skills are the kind of skills that are a lot of fun, though there are some resources that make them less onerous. Generally, these are the kinds of skills that require several minutes of dedicated practice each day, rather than “lessons” on the subject. I find (purely anecdotally) that the more bells and whistles you put on these skills, the more you end up distracting from the nature of the learning, which is more like practicing scales or memorizing times tables than it is like the more exploratory learning one can do with creative multimedia. (Creating multimedia — graphic design, video, etc. — is one way to yoke these more tedious skills to something more fun and fulfilling, but at the end of the day there is still an eat-your-vegetables element to learning these skills.)
3. Techies don’t always know how to figure things out better than non-techies. Conversely, a smaller but distinct group of low-digital-literacy adults have what I would call “old school skills.” They might be able to type or to use particular applications on a computer; often their digital literacy was informed by a professional or academic experience with computers. These are people who learned to drive on the backroads and struggle when they get to the “city” that is the internet, without a clear map in their mind for how to navigate.
Though this group tends to comprise older and more enrichment-oriented adults — the kinds of adults who enjoy taking free classes at the local library for their own edification — it is a reminder that a mastery of technology tools can be a precursor to understanding related systems like information navigation, but aren’t inherently connected. A lot of digital literacy initiatives focus so much on computer operation that they miss the foundational role of exploration, trial-and-error, and what Dr. Renee Hobbs calls “improvisation and strategic risk-taking” that are essential to learning and re-learning how to navigate the sprawling landscape of digital content.
Although computer operation follows a set of predictable rules, conventions, and processes, internet navigation is quite different in its need for us to constantly update, refresh, and shift our thinking about where information comes from, its usefulness, and the best way to access it. It’s simply not a topic that can be covered in 5 simple tricks or the 10 best ways to _____ or any of the other frameworks that may be helpful in certain elements of computer operation. And here, it is important to treat learners like learners first and “computer operators” second — honoring the background knowledge and experiences that people bring to their encounter with new information.
For younger students, this may mean “de-tech-ifying” lessons when a simpler activity or improvised fix will accomplish the goal faster. I have seen more than my fair share of hyper-stimulating phonics videos and math games in the past six months, and none of them seem to work much better than a teacher talking to students at a white board and giving them a problem set on a piece of paper in front of them.
It also means treating the websites that they do use as worthy of exploration and analysis. Why does this website use cartoon characters and pratfalls to teach about “silent E”? What are all of those videos over there on the sidebar of our YouTube music lesson? How come this free website keeps trying to get me to buy something? These are bread and butter media literacy questions that have been incorporated in media literacy education environments for decades, and they are now unavoidable.
4. This takes more time than most people might think it does. Finally, there is no way to rush this process. In my work with libraries, we try to distinguish between immediate and long-term goals and needs. If someone needs to print, scan, and send an important form in two hours, they are not going to learn how to master typing, scanning, and uploading email attachments prior to filling out the form. In these cases, making the workflow as predictable, simple, and efficient as possible is really important to avoiding tech burnout.
Tech burnout happens when you spend too much time putting out moment to moment fires — hiccups, failures, and the many unexpected barriers to smooth-sailing technology that we all experience on a regular basis. Experienced remote educators know how to control just enough of their environment that they can bake in opportunities for technology to fail. It means not introducing three new online tools during a session, but rolling them out carefully with enough time to figure out what will work and what won’t. It means having a back-up plan for your back-up plan (and then, often, just opting for the back-up plan in the first place!).
Teachers across the country are likely experiencing this burnout right now, because they are given so little professional support in adapting to this new environment. Best practices — or, at the very least, least awful practices — are not being widely shared within school communities, which are already frustratingly decentralized and isolated. But they are also, to use some of my old students’ favorite expression, doing too much. Some of this is the impossibility of the situation they are in — district and school-level expectations that are mismatched to the nature of the work. But some of it is the distrust that many people have that if you can do something with a technology tool, you should.
Mastery of technology takes time, practice, and creative exploration, the same as any other body of knowledge. It’s not something you can do quickly to “get on to” the next thing — it is the thing. Once you’ve accepted that, you can slow down, strategize, and above all else, set more realistic expectations. Then you can set those expectations with everyone else. The first thing I encourage the teachers I work with to do with adult learners is to make sure those expectations are crystal clear from the first minute: “What you want to do will take three hours.” “What you’re describing isn’t something I will need to help you with one on one for about an hour.” “You’re going to need to come to my class before we get to that.”
When you set those expectations, you set the stage for succeeding on each person’s own terms — giving them the time, space, and opportunities for specific instruction and practice they need to have a successful experience on their own terms.
