2022 packed a wallop unlike any other period in living memory. The pain is still with us - and will be for a long time. But the beginning of this new year has brought us an opportunity to renew our hope and energy. How will this play out for K-12 education, especially in technology? We turned to several education leaders to find out what they expect – or look forward to – in 2021. Here's what he told us
Teachers will become massive social media influencers
Teachers will be subject matter experts who join other teacher video mixtapes and parents will follow them to support their students. Expect teachers to live in a Twitch-style "live going" environment. What can we expect in the video?
The low-stakes feedback in the live video will get everyone's attention. A quarter of the live video classes will be gamified, and half the time spent on live video will be round-robin style check-in.The recorded video will play on the main stage. We are seeing that two-thirds of the teacher is video recorded, which allows teachers to manage a one-to-many ratio.
Video lessons will be sorted and divided into predictable parts. Maximum length student videos must be tracked by grade level: one minute for first graders, 12 minutes for seniors. Camera-off will be fine for students; Audio-off will be fine for teachers. Teachers will learn that it is okay for students to turn off their cameras. The goal is to make a connection and engage them in the lesson. Teachers will focus on going beyond creating speaking presence and lots of movement and visuals in their videos.The wall of text will come down. We'll see more use for image retention and accessibility in videos. This is important for English language learners, special education students and children with attention difficulties.
--Jim Szafransky, CEO, Prezik
Data privacy concerns will attract more interest
As well as difficult and mostly successful efforts to connect students and teachers in the digital space during the pandemic, the past year has also brought stories of zoombombing, proctoring and surveillance overreach, data breaches and uneven student access to technology and its benefits. These events have highlighted privacy concerns related to the use of educational data and technology.
In 2021, we expect administrators to take additional measures to promote student data privacy, including increased attention to data governance and security measures across the kindergarten-to-college continuum. These efforts are required to include actionable data privacy policies and practices that protect student data collection, storage, sharing and use and ensure that students have equal access to the benefits of data and technology.
We also expect a greater interest by students and their families in understanding what data is collected about them, how their data is used, and their privacy rights related to that data collection and use. Schools and their third-party educational technology vendors will need to work to provide greater transparency and build trust by clearly and regularly communicating when, how and for how long data is used. In addition, schools and vendors must abide by their promises to protect the data and information entrusted to them by students and families.
2020 was a challenging year for education, but, if implemented well, the lessons learned could strengthen the protections of student data privacy as we move into 2021.
--Carrie Klein, Senior Fellow, Youth and Education Policy, Future of Privacy Forum
STEM will receive amplified appreciation
For 2021, we will start teaching students again how to learn and teach themselves effectively. As students continue to learn online, they will need to focus on how to help them adapt to situations and be creative in their approaches – which will lead them to a different style of learning than they used to. We do.
There will also be a widespread appreciation for STEM education and literacy. Whether it's evaluating the science behind the virus, understanding what it takes to bring a vaccine to the world, understanding the technology that enables you to create a distance learning environment or the technical thinking for any challenge is to be implemented. The only way to ensure that STEM literacy is incorporated into society is through early education. In the same way we emphasize reading comprehension, we need to introduce STEM concepts at the beginning of that build year after year. I am confident that we will see an increase in the number of young students engaging in STEM in the coming year.
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