A Classroom Teacher’s Take on What Ed-Tech Needs to Deliver Next

The ”digital divide” is about much more than inequities in students’ basic access to technology.

It undermines students’ ability to use technology more dynamically and critically. It affects the training and support to help teachers design innovative classroom methods using digital tools. And — despite heavy investments by schools nationwide — it continues to result in a lack of equitable, sustainable access to high-quality digital content in many schools.

The breadth of those challenges were detailed recently in the U.S. Department of Education’s National Educational Technology Plan, “A Call to Action for Closing the Digital Access, Design and Use Divides,” published last year. The 113-page report was the agency’s first update of its national technology plan in eight years.

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About This Insider

Jennifer Orr is a teacher at Fort Belvoir Elementary School in the Fairfax County Pubic Schools in Virginia. She’s been an elementary school classroom teacher for more than 25 years. Orr is the author of Demystifying Discussion: How to Teach and Assess Academic Conversation Skills, K-5 and the co-author of We’re Gonna Keep on Talking: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Elementary Classroom. She is a National Board-Certified Teacher and a frequent mentor to new and pre-service teachers.

The authors of the plan describe a pivotal moment for both education and education technology.

The report examines tech challenges in K-12 schools “much more broadly than we have tried to look systematically in the past — at not just access, but the ways that educators and students are using technology,” said Jennifer Orr, an elementary school classroom teacher who served as part of the technical working group for the plan.

Orr, an elementary school teacher in the 180,000-student Fairfax County (Va.) Schools, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., recently spoke with EdWeek Market Brief Contributing Writer Robin L. Flanigan about what the plan says about how schools can use technology to engage students of all abilities, opportunities for ed-tech companies to collaborate with schools in using tech in innovative ways, and the types of tech that she believes hold the most promise in the classroom.

Based on your experience in schools, and what you learned working on the plan, how much potential do you see for tech to transform teaching and learning?

At the moment I think it is deeply unrealized, unfortunately. The potential of ed tech to help children explore and connect beyond their classroom and school walls is huge. And the ability to create and share their creations widely is huge. These opportunities are really exciting, but they’re not the ways ed tech is often being used.

So what then needs to happen for ed tech to have a more meaningful impact?

One of the great challenges in education — and definitely for ed tech — is that we aim again and again for the lowest common denominator. We want to student-proof and teacher-proof things. Technology programs and various curriculum are often designed so that teachers can implement them no matter what understanding or knowledge they may or may not have, and students can use them without needing any support. And in doing so, we often end up with things that fall far from what they could be.

We have to invest in our educators so that they have both the time and the energy to put into using ed-tech in more meaningful ways, and then we can offer software and programs and opportunities within technology that allows students to more than just what they could do on paper.

The NETP mentions an approach for developing lessons called the Universal Design for Learning, which was designed to make learning accessible for every student regardless of ability. What do you see as its broader application?

It’s so exciting to think about that as something we are looking at systemically and not just as it happens, where someone understands it and jumps on board. Technology is such a wonderful way to implement UDL, even when it’s as simple as a text being read aloud to children.

Having young kindergartners and first ^{graders do research is really hard because there aren’t a lot of things at their reading level. But when they can have an online encyclopedia read aloud to them, then they can do research far beyond their reading ability.}

Then there are students who have dyslexia, dysgraphia, and other things that make writing a challenge. The ability for them to speak and have the technology type it is hugely impactful for them.

Do you see potential risks of ed tech exacerbating existing inequities?

So much of ed tech does that right now. Getting back to that idea of the UDL, a lot of ed-tech design is set up for students who are accustomed to using technology—those who are set up on, and know how to navigate, devices. I see students, even 5^th graders, who immediately know where to look or where to click, and I also see students who say, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

A lot of the design comes down to how much it assumes students already have experience, and how much it supports them as they move through programs.

The report also talks about helping students use technology more effectively. How can companies working across the market help with this?

It would be amazing if ed-tech companies that already have contracts with really large school districts were looking at ways to increase the ability to collaborate and problem-solve as a team. Too often, the ed tech is designed for kids to use by themselves.

Learning is so social for so many of us. The more opportunity kids have to talk to each other, the better, whether that’s talking to each other in the classroom or across the globe or across time asynchronously. So are ways of making learning more authentic [by having] students share their thinking beyond the classroom — a blog post that can be read more widely, or a video that can be shared, even if just with their families, because that’s a bigger audience and a more meaningful piece of work for them to create.

Often, everything children create is created for their teacher for a grade, and that’s not a very powerful motivator.

Teachers are obviously wrestling with the proper role of artificial intelligence in classrooms. What do you believe AI’s role should be?

Teachers and students can use AI to help get organized and do rote tasks. I’ve watched a teacher use AI to generate a story based on a student’s interest to help them as a reader. So I see the potential to help students at risk or those who need more than what a standard classroom lesson can provide.

I’ll admit it worries me a little bit in that students from kindergarten to higher ed are going to jump on it. And I don’t blame them for that, but they need to know both the potential and the risks. They need to know that AI is only pulling from the sources it has, and if those sources aren’t great, then it’s not going to be great. Students need a critical lens for AI, and given the hype it’s getting in the media, I’m not sure that critical lens is something they’re gaining.

How should school make judgments about the mix of digital versus non-digital learning?

One thing districts and schools need to be far more thoughtful about is the developmentally appropriate usage of technology. Putting 6-year-olds in front of a screen for more than an hour or two a day feels deeply inappropriate, especially if they are spending an equal amount of time on screens outside of school, which surveys suggest they are. We need to be minimizing using technology for work that doesn’t need to be done online.

There is a little value in online worksheets, but not as much as the time and money being spent on it. Ed-tech companies provide them, and teachers jump on them because it feels more meaningful than it actually is.

What message would you offer to ed-tech companies about unmet product needs? What does the market need to produce for schools that it’s currently not?

I’d like to see more that allows students to really create. I’ve long loved Wixie for the way it allows even young children to share their thinking with videos or images, and I’d like to see more of that. I’d love to see more opportunities for kids to create beyond just some Google or PowerPoint slides.

I’d also love to see more ways for schools and classrooms and students to connect. I know we get into some privacy issues, which of course is a challenge. But the chance to learn about other places, other cultures, and geography from students they’re peers with could offer them so many wonderful opportunities if we had a way for those connections to be easily made.

Have you personally seen the value of these kinds of curated, student-to-student opportunities?

Years ago when I taught first ^{graders, we became digital pen pals with a class in Regina, Saskatchewan. I will never forget when, in April, we took our classes outside on a Skype call, and the students were shocked. My students in Northern Virginia were in shorts and T-shirts, and the students in Saskatchewan were putting on snowsuits. It was the most impactful understanding of geography I’ve ever seen young children have.}

Those kinds of connections offer opportunities for children to build background knowledge and empathy. That can be done without technology, but it’s so much easier with technology.

So to put a fine point on it, what types of technology seem to hold the most promise?

The ones that give me the most hope are the ones that are most responsive to educators, from companies who have a lot of current or very recent teachers working for them, so they’re as little removed from the reality of the classroom as possible. The kinds of things out there for creation and collaboration and communication are where innovation is going to happen.

How should ed-tech companies provide opportunities for teachers to provide feedback on the quality and usefulness of their products?

That’s a really interesting question, because I’m going to be honest — it is rare that the feedback of teachers is solicited.

Ed-tech companies ought to be soliciting that feedback for their own knowledge, to help continually revise their product. IT departments, and even instructional services departments, are usually in control of decision-making about technology products used in schools and districts, as well as communicating with technology companies about those products. But wouldn’t it be amazing if those who have boots on the ground were being asked what was and wasn’t working?