Beyond What "Didn't Work in COVID": Unleashing the True Potential of Ed Tech & Gen AI

We are again in a moment of education transformation with Gen AI, and at LINC we’ve contributed through our own AI copilot Yourwai. And in the past month, I’ve heard several ed leaders say something to the effect of, “Tech isn’t the answer; just look at Covid learning. We saw the limits of technology during Covid.” What hits me in those moments is the need to defend Covid learning, while also creating a strong call to action to capture the opportunity we were not positioned to capture during that crisis.?

In times of crisis, our innate ability to innovate and adapt often emerges as a response to survival. The fear and uncertainty sparked a remarkable display of resilience among educators and students, as they sought to maintain a sense of normalcy in the face of adversity.

4 Key Achievement Learnings from Covid:?

1. Education can change when the need exceeds the comfort of the status quo.
2. Even within, and maybe especially amidst chaos in fear, innovation shines.?
3. We can learn from anywhere with the right technology and mindset in place.?
4. We have created huge infrastructure improvements to make digital learning accessible.

And of course, there were shortcomings of Covid crisis learning, but they do not necessarily speak to the limits of educational technology. It is vital to recognize that the full capabilities of technology in education were not fully realized. The rapid deployment of remote learning solutions, revealed a tendency to replicate traditional teaching practices using technology. The urgency of the situation led to a widespread adoption of ed tech that, in many instances, merely substituted for conventional teaching methods without truly leveraging its full potential for student-centered learning. Beyond this crisis, we have the opportunity to do better.?

4 Key Opportunities to Capture the Gen AI Transformation Moment

1. Tech alone doesn’t build capacity or shift mindset - We need to match the power of Gen Ai with professional learning that cultivates student-centered learning mindset and practices.
2. We can and need to push past S - Considering SAMR, how can we do more than simply replicating traditional lesson planning, assessment creation, grading with AI substitutes??
3. Start with the “Why” - During the pandemic, our “why” was basic - just keep learning happening. Now we have the opportunity to reach a higher “why”. We need to understand the pedagogical challenges we’re trying to solve and create and use AI tools that help teachers solve those challenges.
4. Amplify human intelligence and connection - During Covid, we were living in heightened disconnection, and the way we had to access learning did not fulfill the promise of connection. As Artificial Intelligence tools rise, we can ask ourselves, How do these tools create more opportunities for collaboration, time for teachers to connect with each other, connection to relevance???

As we transition into a post-Covid era, educators possess the resilience and agency to inspire transformation beyond the realms of fear and crisis. This is at the heart of our theory of change at Yourway Learning . It's critical we recognize pandemic era learnings which offer stepping stones to reach a new level of edtech innovation by empowering educators with capacity building professional learning and AI tools that solve pedagogical challenges.