Impact of Technology on Education During Pandemic

Emelie Munch
Sinclair University
SWK 1206-500: Intro to Social Work
Professor Michael Wadham
July 18, 2021
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Emelie Munch

0791285

SWK 1206-500

7/7/2021

Impact of Technology on Education During Pandemic

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic brought many changes to our everyday lives. With the

state shut-downs happening schools needed to find a different way to approach education. This

lead to many schools transitioning to online schooling, which relied heavily on technology.

Many students struggled with learning this way as there wasn’t very many chances for one on

one learning with their teachers in the areas that they struggled. Not to mention a lot of lower

income students might not have access to the technology needed to effectively learn at home.

While many schools were able to loan out electronic devices for their students, it doesn’t mean

that every student would be able to complete their schoolwork electronically. There are many

families who can’t afford internet service in their home, with many public spaces being closed,

relying so heavily on technology, this has created a major inequality for many students.

It wasn’t only minors who were suddenly thrown into online schooling. Many adults

were affected as well. “In Apr 2020, U.S. unemployment spiked to 14.8%, and women, and

Black workers and workers without a college degree were disproportionately impacted. Most

recent BLC data indicates that the total unemployment rate has fallen to 6.2%, but 9.9% of Black

workers remain unemployed” (Johnson Hess 2021). While this is creating more of an inequality

amongst people, the pandemic is offering those unemployed a unique chance at learning a new

skill. “We have spent a tremendous amount of time throughout 2020 working with civic leaders
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to being together a cross-sector consortium of policymakers, local employers, nonprofit funders,

venture philanthropists and education institutions to expand our community reskilling initiative.

To create a more equitable economic recovery” (Johnson Hess 2021). While in theory this is

something great for those who are unemployed, with the shutdowns, this could leave to an even

further divide amongst people who do not have access to a computer, or internet access.

While some schools can provide wi-fi hotspots to low income students, or students who

don’t have internet service at home, the provided internet services are proving to be unreliable

even furthering the divide. “Every day, about a third of his students experience an outage that

cuts into their learning time, Lozano said. Nearly all of his students are from low-income

families, and many can’t afford wired, broadband service. ‘The system goes down, or someone is

working on a tower, or there’s too many people on the wi-fi hotspot and it cuts out,’ Lozano

said” (Richards 2021). While schools are doing all they can to provide the best online learning

experience for their students, this is again increasing the technological divide and slowing the

learning process down for some students. “The digital divide is complicated to solve. The cost of

broadband is out of reach for many families. High-speed internet lines are scarce in rural areas.

And there’s little good and consistent data on the extent of internet connectivity – something the

federal government could have taken the lead on years ago, but didn’t” (Richards 2021).

“US census data from 2015 suggested that 15% of US households lack high speed

internet, which impacts students’ ability to complete and turn in assignments; this is

disproportionately more of an issue for Black teens than their peers (25% compared to 4% of

White teens and 6% of Latinx teens) (Anderson & Perrins, 2020). Upon the initiation of social

distancing and remote learning, adults working service industry jobs often lost their jobs, leading

to a loss of stability for their families. One outcome of this could be the loss of internet access for
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their homes.” (Storey 2020). These statistics are again highlighting the fact that there are many

children who are going to be left behind. Schools will need to put a plan in place to help bring

those children catch up to their peers who had reliable access to a computer and the internet. If

nothing is done to remedy this as time goes on the divide caused by this will only continue to

grow.

With the responsibility of teaching their children resting of the parents’ shoulders, there is

another major factor that will continue to increase the divide amongst students during distance

learning. Most parents are not equipped to teach their children at home, not to mention a lack of

childcare could cause parents to lose their jobs in order to stay home and allow their child to

attend online school. There are some who feel the pandemic and transition to online school is the

first step in permanently relying on virtual schooling, “We could say that the crisis acts as an

incentive for the development of distance learning. The crisis also forces us to pay more attention

to the practical implementation of digital literacy” (Malganova 2021). While this could prove to

beneficial to the nation later on, there are still many inequalities that are being made very

apparent during this pandemic. “Students demonstrate a fairly high adaptability to the new

learning format, however, there are limitations associated with inequality. Many will not have

access to the telecommunications tools needed to adapt to this new environment” (Malganova

2021).

There are many ways that a social worker may be able to address this expansive social

issue. When looking at this issue from a micro-level view, I feel that social workers can use

some different intervention tactics, one such strategy could be to help their client find cash

assistance programs, this could help the client alleviate financial stressors allowing them to

potentially be able to afford a reliable internet service, or allow them to afford a reliable
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computer. If a social worker can lessen the financial burdens in other areas, that could allow the

clients to change their budget up to pay for those services. Another micro-level approach that

could help is to assist the client in finding in-person tutoring services to allow a student to get the

one on one learning environments that many students need to thrive. Also just providing

counseling services, or assisting a client in finding a counselor could help this area, whether this

be for the student themselves, or for their parents who have been thrust into the role of managing

their child's education, which has proven to be extremely stressful for parents.

When looking through a macro lens at this issue a social worker could lobby to increase

emergency funds to schools which could allow them to provide their student body with more

reliable technologies. Even just bringing awareness to the situation could force the education

system to look at what can be done to help those students who are struggling with their education

in the current pandemic. Another possible macro level strategy could be to come up with a

program that makes reliable internet access and technology more available to those in lower

income areas. While there are public libraries which now have computer labs, which are free to

use, the number of computers available are of course limited. If there were technology centers

that were open to the public, and free to use, that could help bridge the technological divide.

Three strategies that could be used to promote social justice are: bringing awareness to

the issue; getting people involved; and forming a movement. When thinking about bringing

awareness to the situation, many social justice movements start with a conversation. In this

modern age many utilize the use of hashtags, allowing a movement to reach mass amounts of

people in a small amount of time. There are many privileged people in the world who may not

even realize that the switch to online learning has been detrimental to the education of many

underprivileged students. Someone who can afford a reliable internet service, or a computer may
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not have thought about how this affecting those who are living in poverty. Once people are

aware of the issue, the next step could be getting people involved. That could be organizing

people together to speak at larger events and ask for donations, or it could even be asking for

technology donations. Many privileged wealthy people tend to want the next best piece of

technology, what if there was a way for them to donate those still working computers to students

whose families are not able to afford one. Forming a movement goes right in with getting people

involved, but having a concrete entity that could accept donations, physical or monetary, could

help as well. If monetary donations are made those could be passed out to qualifying families to

assist in getting them the technological resources necessary for their children’s education.

One ethical standard that should be used in this issue is 1.05e Cultural Competence,

“Social workers who provide electronic social work services should be aware of cultural and

socioeconomic differences among clients’ use of and access to electronic technology and seek to

prevent such potential barriers. Social workers should assess cultural, environmental, economic,

mental or physical ability, linguistic, and other issues that may affect the delivery or use of these

services” (NASW 2021). While this standard applies to social workers giving services

electronically, it can also be applied to this issue.

Another ethical standard that could be applied to this issue is 5.02 Evaluation and

Research, “Social workers should promote and facilitate evaluation and research to contribute to

the development of knowledge” (NASW 2021). This is pretty self-explanatory, in that the effect

the technological divide has had on education during the COVID 19 pandemic is a new issue that

needs to be researched and evaluated to see what can be improved so help lessen this gap.

To conclude, the rush to switch to virtual learning during this pandemic has caused the

technological divide to only grow between students who have reliable access to technology
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versus the students who don’t have the means available to be able to effectively learn in this

environment. This is affecting students worldwide and not just in the US. There is a lot of work

to be done to catch these students up and to give them a fair chance to succeed in life.
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References

Johnson Hess, A. (2021, March 29). Online learning boomed during the pandemic-but what

happens when students return to classrooms? CNBC.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/26/online-learning-boomed-during-the-pandemic-but-

soon-students-return-to-school.html.

Irina Grigorievna Malganova, Diba Mazhitovna Dokhkilgova, & Dzhamilya S. Saralinova.

(2021). The education system transformation during and post COVID-19. Política e Gestão

Educacional, 25(esp.1). https://doi.org/10.22633/rpge.v25iesp.1.14999

NASW. (2021). National Association of Social Workers (NASW). NASW - National Association

of Social Workers. https://www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics/Code-of-Ethics/Code-of-

Ethics-English.

Richards, E., Aspegren, E., & Mansfield, E. (2021, February 4). A year into the pandemic,

thousands of students still can't get reliable WiFi for school. The digital divide remains

worse than ever. USA Today.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2021/02/04/covid-online-school-

broadband-internet-laptops/3930744001/.

Segal E. A., Gerdes K. E., & Steiner S. (2018). Empowerment series: An introduction to the

profession of social work. [eCampus]. Retrieved

from https://ecampus.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781337670708/
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Storey, N., & Slavin, R. E. (2020). The US educational response to the COVID-19

pandemic. Best Evidence in Chinese Education, 5(2), 617–633.