From virtual to participatory learning with technology during COVID-19

Abstract

During COVID-19, schools around the world rapidly went online. Examining youth technology use reveals sharp inequities within the United States’ education system and incongruencies between the technologies used in virtual schooling and those in the lives of students outside of school. In affluent communities, virtual schooling is supported by a distributed schooling infrastructure that coordinates students’ knowledge work. This home and school technology infrastructure features material, human, and structural capital that facilitates youth development as nascent knowledge workers. Technology use during virtual schooling keeps youth activity grounded within the “walls” of school; during virtual schooling, students have little voice in setting learning goals or contributing “content.” Technology use at home for learning or entertainment stems from their own goals and features them as active inquisitors seeking out information and extending their social networks, and crucially, using participatory learning technologies such as Discord for communications. An extended period of virtual schooling could enable a rethinking of the role of technology in schools, including an embrace of play, emotional design, participatory communications, place-based learning, embodied understandings, and creative construction.