The internet to the rescue

All teachers agreed academia, as a result of the pandemic, has changed. Though there is no way to be certain of the extent to which the past year has affected students, the one certainty, Hollowell feels, is that the next 10 years will be devoted to “filling gaps,” especially for “those students who struggle with the virtual learning format.”

On the other hand, the pandemic, though not without both academic and emotional fallouts, had its silver linings. Arguably the most important is that teachers experienced and found success in a paperless classroom–a long-time goal for numerous educators. Additionally, the utilization of programs like Canvas demonstrated effective online learning is possible, and, as Haynes said, “catapulted education, overall, into some changes that it needed to make anyway and it hadn’t.”

Champion shared his praise for the internet, saying that although a pandemic is never necessary, “if there was ever a good time for this to happen,” 2020 was the adequate year–thanks to the technology of the modern era. 

“If this would’ve happened before the internet, when I was a kid, the world would be a drastically different place,” Champion said. “But because we had the internet, the world could keep spinning. You could still interact with your friends, you could still order food, you could still see what was going on in somebody else’s house. I know that sounds crazy, but I mean, you could still watch television from all over the world. You were still connected. If the internet wasn’t there, this would’ve been the trainwreck of trainwrecks. The internet saved humanity.”