Nathan News

This article is part of our special learning report on how the pandemic has continued to change our approach to education.

Bridging digital distances

Ayush Agarwal loves talking and debating. When the pandemic forced online debating tournaments during his sophomore year in high school in San Jose, Calif., he realized what it meant to live on the other side of the digital divide.

Many of Ayush’s friends at other schools in the city did not have a computer or a stable internet connection to participate in tournaments or online sessions. Then, on a Reddit chat channel, he saw posts from all over the country like, “Hey, I need help; I can’t participate in these online tournaments,” or “I can’t access Zoom because my internet is too slow,” 17-year-old Ayush said.

“That, to me, was really discouraging,” he said. “These guys are fantastic debaters. They’re probably better than me, but they just won’t be able to make it to the tournament, not because they didn’t qualify, but simply because they don’t have the resources.

So Ayush — now a senior at Basis Independent Silicon Valley, a private school in San Jose — decided to do something about it.

In March 2021, he and three other students, from Evergreen Valley High School and Leland High School in San Jose, started a nonprofit called ClosingTheDivide, which collects used electronics and refurbishes them, then donates them to families. and low-income students.

The group does not stop at distributing devices. “We’re also focused on other aspects of tech literacy,” Ayush said, like helping low-income residents connect to internet discounts through the Affordable Connectivity Program and digital literacy initiatives like coding lessons.

Since its launch, he said, the nonprofit has grown to 29 chapters in the United States, Asia, Africa and Europe – run entirely by high school students.

Students successfully donated over 1,145 devices; received approximately $32,000 in grants; collaborated with 10 sponsors and 32 corporate partners; and opened 12 computer labs, six in Tanzania, one in Cambodia, five in California.

Recently, the students applied for and received a $17,500 grant from the San Jose Digital Inclusion Partnership, a city-sponsored project, to help them fight the digital divide in their own backyards.

Public speaking, now back in public

Peyton Poole knows she wore a maroon suit with bell sleeves to this year’s National Speech and Debate Tournament in June. She remembers bright lights, a nauseous feeling in her stomach, and not much else.

“When I tell you I don’t remember anything,” said Ms Poole, whose dramatic performance earned her a second-place finish. “I saw the black. I found the faces of my judges and I was like “OK, it’s happening”. ”

When speech and debate teams from high schools across the country converged in Louisville, Ky., it was the first in-person national tournament since the pandemic began. After two years of virtual competitions, students felt both excitement and nervousness at the return of live audiences.

“It’s like pulling your heart out of your chest,” said Ms. Poole, 18, a native of Lafayette, Louisiana, and now a freshman at Western Kentucky University.

Across the country, educators are reporting an increase in students’ reluctance to speak in public, whether in the classroom or on stage. Coaches re-teach skills like eye contact and voice projection.

“With public speaking, it’s about ‘How do we relate to others, how do we respectfully disagree?’ said Kyair Butts, a language arts professor and debate coach in Baltimore.

The virtual school did not help. “The screen was the masked party for the students,” he said. “It takes some effort to help students reach their full potential now that we’re back in person.”

Once they were in front of the live audience again, “There were nerves, sure, but more than that, there was relief,” said Dan Hodges, who teaches speech and debate at Apple Valley. High School in Apple Valley, Minnesota. “They were finally here, and that was good.

For a Focus Reset, Don’t Do What Referees Do

Can baseball teach us anything about our short attention span? A study of major league umpires found they called balls and strikes more accurately during critical moments in a game. However, immediately after these moments of intense concentration, the referees committed significantly more errors. (Thanks to video technology called PITCHf/x, it’s clear when they’re right or wrong.)

The good news, according to this study, is that humans can quickly reset their attention spans. No increase in errors was detected after the end of each half-inning, when the referees take a two-minute break. The results should be replicated in the classroom, but there’s reason to think that students’ attention similarly depletes during the school day and that short, well-timed breaks might help.

“People’s ability to pay attention is an exhaustible resource,” James E. Archsmith, a University of Maryland economist and one of the researchers, said by email. “We have to take this into account when we think of environments where we force people to concentrate for long periods of time without a break. This applies to both schoolchildren and their teachers.

The study, “The Dynamics of Inattention in the (Baseball) Field,” is currently being reviewed for publication in an academic journal. A draft has been released by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

What’s clear is that sometimes looking out the window – or zoning out into left field – can be a good idea.

Pass the dining room. Summon a robot.

Red alert, Trekkies: Starship Technologies robots could deliver your next Java Chip Frappuccino. Their mission: to map new university campuses; search for starving students and rescue them from crowded dining halls; entertain boldly through song and dance.

Starship, an Estonian company headquartered in San Francisco, is deploying fleets of autonomous robots providing contactless food delivery to places such as college campuses, a hospitality service during the Covid-19 pandemic. The six-wheeled mini-vehicles respond to mobile orders placed on the Starship app, where students purchase items through meals or points. On 12 campuses at the start of the pandemic, Starship robots quickly took off.

“The robots will be active on 30 college campuses by the end of this month,” said Henry Harris-Burland, vice president of marketing at Starship.

The robots move at speeds of up to 4 miles per hour and play music as students unload cargo bays. With a 360 degree view of their immediate surroundings, 12 cameras and an array of radar and ultrasonic sensors, they can cross roads and maneuver around people, animals and objects.

“I really appreciate that bot delivery is available because it provides another accessibility option,” said Alexander Cheetham, junior and co-chair of the Brandeis Disabled Students Network, adding that some students with disabilities may avoid dining halls. when they are in a wheelchair or wheel chair. malfunction of mobility lifts.

For now, what is available for delivery is dependent on campus and food vendor participation. AI technology allows each robot to adapt to its environment and adjust when encountering unfamiliar objects. They are much like new students themselves – constantly learning and taking time to get used to campus.

In some colleges, notice required

For decades, college counseling was seen primarily as a way to help students enroll in classes. Today, it’s often a tool to help students address other aspects of their lives as they navigate college, including housing, transportation, health or family issues, and well-being. mental. This is sometimes called a case management approach — and increasingly it’s mandatory.

At San Antonio College in Texas, for example, students must meet with an advisor four times during the pursuit of a 60-hour associate degree – upon enrollment and after completing 15, 30, and 45 credit hours. . If they do not, they are prohibited from enrolling in the courses.

Other colleges across the country have taken a similar approach, including the University of Utah, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and several community colleges. In regular meetings, counselors check beyond academics to ask questions about students’ personal needs or barriers they face.

Many of these barriers have worsened during the pandemic, and historically marginalized students have been hit hardest. College leaders say students who need guidance the most often don’t think they’re getting it or realize what resources exist to help them.

Robert Vela Jr., the former president of San Antonio College and now president of Texas A&M University-Kingsville, said that traditionally the mindset has been: “These people are adults. We have services available here. If they want to participate, they will participate.

Now, he said, there has been a shift to “a parenting approach, which we know best for our students”, adding: “Sometimes because we know best we have to drop the word ‘optional’ .”

Bulletin Board was produced with The Hechinger Report, an independent, non-profit news organization covering education.