Educators — distance learning demands a new model…think fast, think (even more) social.

Last week my daughter muted her Zoom science class and quickly forgot all about it — and started playing with her hair, the dog, and at one point danced to a TikTok she played on her phone — stopping only when classmates texted furiously that all of this was ‘in frame’ and part of the class (she was embarrassed, but not too embarrassed?!).

First, I’d like to stipulate that right now teachers are heroically attempting, en masse, to deliver an online ‘product’ for which they’ve had little/no training and are facing kids with goldfish-like attention spans at the best of times. BUT — as most kids continue to follow distance learning (those who have internet access at least), it’s clear that ‘transporting’ education online is not enough, many kids need ‘transformative’ approaches to “Zoom-learning” to stay engaged and learn.

Schools like my daughter’s have already taken steps in the right direction, experimenting with “cookie challenge” diversions and reducing workload to focus on teaching students the skills for self-directed learning, but now it’s time for teachers, parents AND kids to re-think what works and what doesn’t. Organizations like Edutopia and companies like BrainPop have good thinking and great products to consider, but I suspect that all stakeholders involved in educating our kids will have to do more to involve kids more consistently and effectively in distance learning efforts.

What more to do? A few years back I worked on a team that stood up an online learning platform and we heavily included gamification techniques and social media-inspired collaborative learning exercises and peer-to-peer support. We were porting existing online behaviors into the education environment (a pretty dry set of LMS-driven video lesson modules), rather than trying to recreate an offline experience online. We know these techniques work — teachers, please experiment with different approaches to transfer your knowledge while keeping our children tuned in! Channel your inner TikTok! I’m pretty sure all of us parents will support your efforts…