My new book Like No Other School Year: 2020, COVID-19 and the Growth of Online Learning is live. It’s written for school leaders wanting to make sense of the end of the 2019-20 school year and to plan thoughtfully for the 2020-21 school year.

When in our lifetimes has an event impacted everyone in the entire world at the same time to the extent that COVID has? 

When have schools all over the globe simultaneously sent teachers and students home without a clear idea of when they would return?

It’s been a school year, and a shift in schools, like no other.

Often major shifts to education happen without everyone knowing the impact. Or they happen gradually over months or years. 

My previous book “1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs That Work” was about a gradual shift to 1-to-1 programs in schools. Gradually, over months and years, schools and school districts began purchasing computing devices for students. Now that progress has “tipped” to 59% of schools providing laptops for children per EdWeek. That’s up several percentage points because schools distributed computing devices to students when they closed for COVID-19.

Now schools are looking at a shift to online learning as an important instructional methodology. 

Online learning isn’t new, it just hadn’t been embraced widely in schools before. According to a survey from Daniel Cruz and Megan Storey Hallam, who contributed to my book in Chapter 7, in April 2020 only 88% of the 1145 teachers they surveyed had any experience with online teaching. Yet 81% of those same teachers were expected to teach online during school closures.

Now the challenge is to implement online learning in an effective way with students. Lindy Hockenbary has a lot to say about this as the author of Chapter 7; she conducts online teaching PD all around the country and globally. 

The jury is still out on how successful online learning will be this school year, but the shift is happening everywhere, and the potential is enormous.

If you read my book, please let me know! I’d love to hear from you – pamelagaudet@productvaluesolutions.com – thank you!