by Bobby Allen and Katrina Hardin

April 6, 2020

History will no doubt tell a great tale of a virus called COVID-19 that changed the way we educate children in America.  Parting with the methods we used and relied on for many years, educators were forced to rapidly transition into online learning. The Corona virus revealed that education was stuck in the era of the Industrial Revolution and far away from the school systems’ idealist 21st Century classroom. Despite the myriad of technology used in schools, educators were unprepared, or at best under prepared, to use it as the primary tool for teaching and learning.

When online learning burst onto the scene as the favored method for the instructional experience, many scholars snorted. Pioneers like the University of Phoenix solely used online learning to establish their existence. Instead of the education community taking this method seriously, this institution of higher learning became the laughingstock of the industry. As other schools followed suite and issued their bachelors and master’s degrees, many argued they were not worth the printed paper. Skeptics continued by suggesting that businesses would not honor or respect the earned degrees.

Today, about 96% of all universities offer at least one fully online course. Perhaps all universities have realized that online learning is now the lifeblood of their existence. Yet in K-12 education, we have not only trailed far behind in offering online learning but also lagged in developing the infrastructure to provide it. During the Obama administration, millions of dollars were allocated for online learning. However, few of those dollars found their way into K-12 education. Now, our K-12 ground education system lies in ruins due to the COVID-19 virus.

Although COVID-19 did not infiltrate our schools in great numbers, it did send every student home. This unforeseen pandemic revealed the education system’s lack of readiness to transition into an era of online learning. The virtual 21st Century Classroom is the new instructional environment and education must make the cursorily change. COREgistics is poised to support with this transition by supporting the online platform and maintaining the rigorous demands of K-12 learning.