The Lessons Learned Online That Will Shape Education After the Pandemic

Last year presented many challenges and accelerated a number of shifts that were already underway in K-12 education. Even before the pandemic, broadband and mobile technology was expanding connectivity across the globe, hybrid and virtual classrooms were gaining steam in providing personalized learning to students, and project-based learning was proving to be an effective, engaging and increasingly popular pedagogy. The pandemic, however, brought all these innovative, yet still considered by some to be “alternative” education methods to the forefront in ways that our team could have never predicted. It forced school systems to not only rethink their instruction but also figure out how to best use technology to facilitate instruction. Often, that meant moving completely away from replicating in-person, lecture-based models online.