Using Technology to Engage Students and Families during the Pandemic: Lessons from Positive Outlier Schools
by Aaron Leo & Kristen C. Wilcox
Recent NYKids blogs have explored findings from our latest report, “Opportunities and Challenges to Adapt and Innovate: How Educators Confronted the COVID-19 Pandemic.” The research drew on interviews and focus groups with 88 educators from 6 schools identified for relatively better educator responses to the pandemic in terms of stress and job satisfaction (i.e. positive outlier schools).
The full report covers a range of topics including academic and social-emotional learning, family engagement, and school and district leadership. This blog specifically focuses on findings related to the innovative ways educators used technology to engage students and family members during the pandemic.
As previous research suggests, educators encountered challenges due to the abrupt shift from in-person to remote instruction during the pandemic. Their difficulties included managing lowered levels of student engagement and participation, learning how to use new technologies, and adapting lessons for remote learning.
Teachers whose students had special needs or required specialized forms of instruction such as English learners encountered additional obstacles as they shifted to a fully online mode of instruction.
Many families also struggled with the change to remote modalities as they may have lacked access to working computers and high-speed internet, or if they were unavailable to oversee their children’s learning online due to work constraints.
Despite these challenges, we found that educators in positive outlier schools utilized novel strategies and relied on new technologies to engage students and family members throughout the pandemic.
Harnessing Technology to Support and Engage Students and Families
Educators in NYKids study developed a variety of strategies to engage students and their families during the pandemic.
Four major themes emerged from our findings in regard to this finding:
Using Technology to Stay Connected
I was actually very impressed with the fact that once I figured out Google Classroom and got it up and running, how many kids were on there and knew how to use it. They knew more than we did, and they were great. They wanted to have [Google] Meets, and they wanted to see us and do something. – Tamarac teacher
As schools shifted to remote learning, Google Classroom became the primary platform for many educators to communicate with students and deliver instruction. While this created difficulties for some teachers at first, others highlighted its effectiveness in keeping students engaged as well as in communicating with students who may have missed classes due to illness. As the quote above suggests, several teachers observed how their students were quickly able to utilize the technology.
Other applications were designed to provide a sense of familiarity and comfort for students during periods of school closures. A teacher at Shaker Road, for instance, described using Bitmoji to digitally recreate her classroom with the help of a colleague:
We got to set up a room that looked like our classroom… mine had a piano and [fellow teacher] helped me do that; [she] taught me how to make that entire page… aesthetically pleasing so the kids were excited to go into our classroom.
Engaging Families from a Distance
Educators also used technology to stay connected to students’ families. Since many previous methods of family engagement became unavailable during the height of the pandemic, educators in this study utilized innovative methods to continue connecting students and their families to the school.
One example of these adaptations was at Whitesboro Middle School, where teachers created “Virtual Open Houses.” Google Meets, too, were mentioned by educators as a useful method to transfer family events to a virtual platform. The online format of some events helped increased attendance according to educators from several schools.
Making Learning More Engaging
To address concerns over student engagement, educators in positive outlier schools developed a range of strategies. For example, teachers used Pear Deck, Kahoot, Kami, and Screencastify and described them as effective and engaging applications. A teacher at Tamarac, for instance, explained using Pear Deck to develop more interactive lessons:
You can actually answer, participate, mark maps… There’re a lot of different interactions and… there’re a lot of ways to engage students to stay involved… Now they can kind of maneuver, and it’s something that they can manipulate a little bit to… create their own learning.
Supporting Students Academically
Teachers also described the different ways they used technology to offer additional flexibility if a student missed class time. One innovative strategy used by a teacher in Whitesboro was to record videos that provided recaps or summaries of key content that would be available through Google Classroom. A teacher explained how this worked and why they used this practice:
If kids couldn’t access it [the Google classroom] … due to circumstances, they would have a video lesson available to them as a resource. They could access it at a different time. Certainly, we wanted them attending and engaging with their teachers and with their classmates as much as possible, but we did have that essential video they could access and engage with.
Take-aways on Utilizing Technology for Students and Families
Despite the challenges that educators faced as they transitioned to remote instruction during the pandemic, educators from positive outlier schools noted several lessons learned that will carry forward well beyond this pandemic.
- Educators felt that the technology used during periods of remote instruction provided both educators and family members with deeper insights into each other’s circumstances. A support staff member from Deerfield said, “I think one positive [of the pandemic] also was when we were Zooming, I think it made staff more aware where our families were coming from. Because we really got an open view in the home life.”
- The rapid shift to remote instruction revealed gaps in both the knowledge of instructional technology among staff members as well as the disparities in access to computers and reliable high-speed internet for many families. These insights allowed educators to redress these gaps and provide additional training for staff members to ensure smoother transitions to remote instruction should it be needed again.
- Educators felt that many of the innovative uses of applications and technologies they developed to engage students and family members through the pandemic were ones they planned to continue using well into the future.
As always, thank you for your interest in NYKids.
Please visit our website for the full report on the experiences and adaptations of educators from the six positive outlier schools which participated in the research study.
Individual case studies of each school are also available here.
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