Education Forecasts for 2021: Forever Changed
2020 was unlike any other year in recent memory in terms of impact. The anguish is still with us, and it will be for a long time. However, the start of a new year provides us with an opportunity to renew our hope and energy. What impact will this have on K-12 education, particularly in the area of technology? We asked several education leaders what they expect — or are looking forward to — in 2021. Here’s what they had to say to us.
Teachers Will Become Massive Social Media Influencers
Teachers will be subject-matter experts featured in video mixtapes by other teachers and will be followed by parents to help their children. Expect teachers to participate in “going live” environments similar to those found on Twitch. What can we anticipate from the video?
- In the live video, everyone will be focused on low-stakes feedback. A quarter of live video classes will be gamified, and round-robin check-ins will account for half of all time spent on live videos.
- The video will be projected onto the main stage. Two-thirds of teacher video is being recorded, allowing teachers to manage the one-to-many ratio.
- The video lessons will be serialized and divided into manageable chunks. Student videos should be limited to one minute for first graders and 12 minutes for seniors.
- Turning off the camera will suffice; for teachers, turning off the audio will suffice. Teachers will realize that it is acceptable for students to turn off their cameras. The goal is to establish a bond with the students and encourage them to participate in the lesson. Teachers will concentrate on creating a lot of movement and visuals in their videos and speaking presence.
- The text wall will be removed. For retention and accessibility, we’ll see more images in videos. This is especially important for English language learners, special education students, and children who have attention problems.
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Data Privacy Concerns Will Draw Greater Interest
Along with the strenuous and mostly successful efforts to connect students and teachers in digital spaces during the pandemic, stories of zoom-bombing, proctoring and surveillance overreach, data breaches, and unequal student access to technology and its benefits have emerged in the past year. These incidents have brought to light the privacy issues surrounding educational data and technology use.
We expect administrators to take additional steps in 2021 to promote student data privacy, including a greater focus on data governance and security across the kindergarten-to-college continuum. These efforts must include actionable data privacy policies and practices that protect student data collection, storage, sharing, and use while ensuring that students have equal access to data and technology benefits.
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We also expect students and their families to be more interested in learning about what data is collected about them, how it helps, and their privacy rights concerning that data collection and use. Schools and their third-party educational technology vendors will need to work together to increase transparency and build trust by communicating when, how, and for how long data is used regularly. Furthermore, schools and vendors should keep their promises to protect the data and information entrusted to them by students and families.
2020 was a difficult year for education, but the lessons learned can help protect student data privacy in 2021 if they are properly implemented.