October 8, 2021

Protecting your family online: You are the enemy

– by Leah Plunkett

We’re living in a post-normal world. Our last “normal” school year for primary and secondary (K-12) schools was in ‪2018-2019‬. During the last year and a half, digital tech has shaped the lives of elementary, middle, and high school students in ways that were unthinkable in February 2020.

As we move through and rebuild from the pandemic, now is the moment to take stock of what we’ve learned about the opportunities and challenges of digital tech for our kids and teens — by looking ahead, even as we’re looking back.

Let’s dive into hypothetical future extreme scenarios, both positive and negative, starring our children, our educators, and current & emerging digital tech against a backdrop of fictional high-stakes circumstances. By looking at the extremes of what could be, educators can engage their imaginations, their common sense, their values, and their professional expertise to proactively design for the ways they want their school/district/association to engage digital tech, for both daily and crisis modes.

There’s no going back to normal. Let’s go to next.