In wake of the school closings caused by the virus, many K12 districts have decided to keep educating its students, but through online work. Now this comes as no surprise seeing as we ourselves are doing the same thing at Penn State and many other universities, but what makes this district different from most is their consideration of using technology permanently. The governor responsible for the Syracuse City School District has been sort of impressed to see how much students can actually do remotely and he wants to make remote learning a bigger part of the district’s traditional set up. Now of course this would be a very large change, which means there have to be differing opinions.

Parents are voicing their concerns about this potential decision, and there are many. The most frequently heard one is that remote learning is no substitute for in person teaching, and that if the latter is much superior then we shouldn’t be spending our time on digital education. How do you think this remote learning period will permanently affect our idea of education?

https://cnycentral.com/news/coronavirus/educators-parents-weigh-in-on-gov-cuomos-ideas-for-tech-in-education

Many people may have already heard about the conspiracies surrounding COVID-19 symptoms, but to summarize: there are people arguing that the symptoms that we’ve been blaming on coronavirus have actually been caused by the construction of new 5G towers, supposedly the signal negatively affects the human body. Scientists and health experts vigorously deny this of course, but everyone is not convinced. Those who believe in the 5G theory have begun to spread media about the subject, including what they believe to be proof about the theory and “what they don’t want you to know”. YouTube, however, has chosen to stop the spread of this sort of media on its online platform. Its leaders have opted to remove all videos that claim corona was caused by the 5G towers. I think this has pros and cons. My biggest concern is that this may be a violation of free speech, deciding that conspiracy theorists need to be muted could be a grave precedent in the future of important controversial discussions, what else will YouTube begin to form restrictions on? Secondly, truthfully, this does not look good for YouTube assuming that their platform would greatly benefit from the construction of 5G towers (people could access their content faster). But I understand that the spread of disinformation can and will be disruptive to our country’s healing, and thus I understand the decision that they decided to make. I only hope that this move will not be, and at the very least will not need to be, repeated and for no reasons other than for the good of the public.

In recent news, several primary schools, universities, and even some countries have been banning the popular video conferencing tool, Zoom. This is due to the security risks that people have discovered and/or outed during their now prolonged usage of it. Zoom was found to be highly susceptible to account hijacking, where anyone could log in to your account using only a know affiliated email address. There are hundreds of Zoom login credentials that have been leaked on the internet already; though, this particular issues hasn’t been proved to be the fault of Zoom. Some personal data that users give to Zoom is then passed on to third party advertisers, according to its past privacy policy. The privacy policy has since been changed but there has been no word on if Zoom actually made any internal changes. And then of course there is “Zoombombing”, which is when people can guess the meeting ID of a session with no password and enter with poor intent. This all being said, many students are questioning the university’s choice to continue purchasing and using Zoom premium as the main platform for the remote learning period.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/article/zoom-privacy-lessons.html?auth=login-email&login=email

With the entire country being asked to put themselves on lockdown, save for essential workers such as medical staff and grocery store clerks, we as a population have come to rely on technology now more than we arguably ever have. Most universities and even some K-12 schools are teaching material through some kind of online platform. Even some activities outside of the classroom, like yoga instruction or open mics, are being held online so that people can remain social while social distancing. But there are some drawbacks to using many of the popular online platforms.

Firstly, not everyone has access to the technology. Students with less financial freedom may be unable to afford high speed internet in their homes, or even a home. Not all students have personal computers and typically use a computer lab as needed when working on assignments. Secondly, some platforms pose a data risk. Not all students are aware that when using a university account with an app, the university or instructor may be able to handle what the student believed to be completely private chats. Lastly, online learning is not always accessible. Students with hearing impairments may struggle with the poor feedback of a voice coming through computer speakers. In short, remote learning technologies are useful, but far from perfect.

Source: https://www.edsurge.com/amp/news/2020-04-02-the-3-biggest-remote-teaching-concerns-we-need-to-solve-now