Children and Media

From Boeing to Verizon Communications, scores of US companies and industries are furiously lobbying Congress to add measures to the Trump administration’s massive stimulus package to deal with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, some of which address issues that long predate the outbreak.

For all the talk of online learning during shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic, many U.S. public school students will find that the work they do while at home is actually optional. It won’t be graded and it won’t count. Some public schools are calling online work “enrichment,” not part of the curriculum, because they can’t guarantee that all students will have access to it. Students without the internet or home computers can’t do it, and special-needs students may require accommodations to complete it. As a result, millions of schoolchildren risk missing weeks of school.

Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Gary Peters (D-MI), and Jon Tester (D-MT) urged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to take action to ensure that students have access to internet so that they can continue learning while schools are closed and to create a consumer-friendly web portal with additional school resources in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. 

The School District of Philadelphia will not allow teachers to do “remote instruction” with students while schools are closed during the coronavirus outbreak. Because the district cannot ensure equal access to technology among students, it’s barring individual schools from providing graded virtual instruction. Superintendent William Hite said teachers cannot require students to do work remotely or grade them on that work.

Just as our public health system appears unable to cope with the spread of the coronavirus, our residential broadband, video conferencing platforms and VPNs are about to face unprecedented strain. That strain will have serious consequences, not just for the performance of our broadband networks but also for student access to education and the security of corporate data and networks. The performance issues might be worse in rural areas, where internet service is already less reliable than it is in big cities.

For all of China’s economic advancements in recent decades, the rudiments of connected life — capable smartphones, reliable internet — remain out of reach for large segments of the population.

Millions of US students will abruptly switch to learning remotely amid the coronavirus pandemic, pushing school administrators and teachers to establish on the fly ways to transfer the classroom to the home. Teachers are incorporating educational technology that has never been used on this scale while also dealing with the limitations of internet access in some homes.

In states like Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Washington, educators say they are feeling firsthand the sting of the digital divide — the historically hard-to-erase gap between those who have speedy, modern-day Web connections and those who do not.

Broadband makes telehealth, telework, and distance learning possible. But is U.S. broadband up to the task of delivering these services to everyone in the face of the coronavirus (COVID-19)? Both the government and private sector are moving to online systems and operations, but not everyone in the US can easily follow. Large hospitals across the country are quickly expanding the use of telemedicine to safely screen and treat patients for coronavirus, and to try to contain the spread of infection while offering remote services.

Facing the threat of the coronavirus, schools across the country are trying a new experiment in distance learning on a massive scale. Across the country, more than 500 schools with some 360,000 students have closed or are planning to suspend in-person classes.