A JOURNEY TOWARD iBALANCE
By Brad Huddleston
This pandemic meme says it all . Forrest Gump is sitting on a park bench , and the caption reads , “ And just like that , everyone was homeschooling their kids .” Overnight online learning became the new education norm . After just a few months , it became clear that things were not going well .
The New York Times ran the following headline : “ As School Moves Online , Many Students Stay Logged Out .” Teachers at some schools across the country report fewer than half of their students are participating in online learning .” 1 The article cites some of the reasons why the digital classroom is suffering : spotty internet connections , lowincome students with varying levels of technology , and lack of parental supervision . In Philadelphia , it was reported that only sixty-one percent of students attended on an average day . In Boston , only fifty percent of students were logging in or submitting assignments . 2
Just because so many students are not logging on to distance learning platforms doesn ’ t mean they are not online . Time spent on the internet has soared . 3 Even if students participate in online learning , they are likely also checking social media status , email , text messages , etc . known as rapid toggling . Some people believe this is a form of “ multitasking ” and therefore increases productivity . Nothing could be further from the truth . Research shows that studying or working in an office in this fashion decreases productivity by as much as forty percent . 4 One study found that multitaskers scored eleven percent lower than those who were not multitasking on a standard comprehension test . Even more troubling , researchers found that just sitting near someone who is multitasking reduces comprehension by seventeen percent . 5
Countless parents around the world found out just how ill-equipped they were . Israeli mom Shiri Kenigsberg Levi ’ s video rant on Instagram went viral . Here are only a few of her honest comments : “ I have four kids . Just imagine how many WhatsApps , how many teachers for each child , how many subjects per child . I ’ ve got only two computers in the house . All morning they ’ re fighting over the computers . I go from one child to the other . Here ’ s science ; here ’ s math .
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