A uni student named Tyler is attending a lecture on Zoom. There is the familiar grid of faces.

The back door of his bedroom suddenly bursts open. Two hooded figures rush in and drag him away by the wheels of his chair.

His professor observes casually. It’s clearly a prank to get out of class.

“Should we call the police?” he asks, unfazed.

The video capturing this moment in time, which went viral on Reddit, humorously chalks up what educators faced in 2020: the classroom may have been virtual, and that presented new challenges, but students are still students. They are young and need to learn (even if sometimes they don’t want to).

“Educators have always had a challenging job,” says Adam Brown, Head of B2B Solutions & Partnerships at Samsung Electronics. “But it’s also an essential one. Teachers are tasked with preparing young people for the world, while fostering their fledgling curiosity, and explaining how everything works. They lay the foundation for our shared future.”

Then last year it all went online.

Digital learning is not new, of course. But its adoption in schools and colleges has been sluggish until, almost overnight, the pandemic demanded that learning happen virtually.

Globally, in April of 2020, more than 1.2bn children were out of the classroom, according to the World Economic Forum.

And, as one educator notes, this shift hasn’t so much boosted educational technology as it has highlighted just how important Edtech is as a toolkit for teachers and pupils to learn to use.

“There are lots of ways I think that classroom technology can be useful,” says Ben Snowdon, Head Teacher.

“We have a set of interactive whiteboards and they're really engaging for kids – especially the younger children. It provides a big space for them to engage with what's going on. It’s a really positive thing that children enjoy doing and can facilitate some positive learning.”

Many educators have arrived in similar places in terms of how Edtech can feature in the classroom. And while they have all had unique experiences, there are some common threads to tug on.

So, what have we learned?

Flexibility, durability and security

When thinking about what the post-lockdown classroom should look like, the first thing to acknowledge is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

“The children I teach are quite young, aged three to seven,” says Tania Rickard, Headteacher at Ysgol T. Gwynn Jones in Wales. “That’s quite young to be working on a laptop. But when parents haven't got that digital knowledge, the scope of what you can do is fairly limited.”

In March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, Tania had the daunting job of educating the school staff on digital technology, and then the parents, and finally the pupils themselves – nearly 1,000 people.

Everyone had to upskill.

“I’ve been in education now for over 15 years. I don’t remember anyone ever trying to upskill anything, ever,” says Ranjit Samrai, Associate Assistant Principal with responsibility for remote learning.

At schools across the UK, it soon became apparent that accessibility was key to teaching via technology, as not every household had the same hardware on hand. So being able to switch between devices seamlessly was a key consideration when selecting software.

“It’s easier to have an app that is accessible from a phone or a tablet, or a laptop if they have one at home. We tried to keep things really simple. So we brought in a digital reading app and a maths app,” Tania says.

Unsurprisingly, teachers also say that students need durable Edtech.

“Obviously, durability is something that is crucial. Kids drop things, spill things, and all sorts,” says Joe Williams, a Primary Teacher. “Ideally, for students, would be something maybe a little bit compact, something that's not maybe too overly chunky that fits nicely in its little charge station and rucksacks. But something with a decent-sized screen on it.”

According to Adam – the EdTech expert from Samsung – the latest iteration of educationally focused devices, including tablets, are built with student-ready ruggedness in mind, and are run through an exhaustive battery of resilience tests. These military-grade toughness trials include dropping the gadgets from great heights, and intentionally spraying them with high-velocity plumes of dust, liquids, and other potential hazards.

So teachers want something that is as hardy as it is easy to use. But it’s also important that they’re able to monitor it.

Any device can host a lot more than educational apps these days. And without being able to stand over students’ shoulders, Tania worries about keeping them on task, and relying on parents for supervision.

“For us as educators, we want to be able to have access and monitor what children are actually doing on a tablet or whatever [device]. So, for us that functionality would be priceless, really.”

Tania also says that she’s concerned with students being distracted, and that even the programs with an educational approach seem to be focused more on entertainment, and largely originate from the U.S.

The latter posed an unexpected snag. Tania’s students, she says, were learning English phonetics with American software, a platform with an inbuilt accent that is anything but Welsh.

“Some of them started talking like Americans,” she says.

(Parents were understandably puzzled.)

The takeaway here is that while the devices need to be flexible enough to handle any software, the programs themselves need to be reconsidered to allow for more bespoke learning.

Every classroom, and indeed every student, is different.

"The key thing is giving teachers the tools to help them do what they do best. We’re here to enable adapting to the needs and challenges in the classroom and beyond."

Digital learning is now here to stay

Educating teachers on the ins-and-outs of digital learning was a new hurdle for many schools. But some teachers, like Joe from The Hythe Community Primary School, were already very tech savvy, and used their digital fluency to find creative ways to reach students.

“A lot of schools probably would never even touch this,” says Joe. “But I've actually started using TikTok as a part of the lesson. Because they all use it; they all love it. And instead of condemning it, I use it – because it's a great tool.”

His logic is hard to argue with. If the kids are going to use TikTok anyway, they may as well learn something. So Joe creates educational posts – with quick cuts and snazzy graphics – about subjects he loves, such as geography and history. His students, he says, eat it up.

But while educators generally want it to be easy to use the apps for their lessons on any device, whether a smartphone or a Chromebook, in terms of actually equipping students, teachers say there is a new preference for laptops over tablets. (Chromebooks in particular are preferable to teachers because they are affordable, and because the hard drive can’t host too many platforms, which means fewer students gaming when they should be studying.)

The reason is that laptops, which are equipped with keyboards, are inherently creative – by typing, you contribute to whatever experience you’re having through the screen. Tablets, in contrast, are more consumptive by nature. You just watch what’s happening.

To answer this call for computers, in 2020 the UK government provided a million laptops to underprivileged children, through an organisation called The National Grid for Learning. But this measure has not fixed the core problem: schools need more computers to provide children, as hybrid learning is here to stay.

For some students – such as those who are introverted, or individuals with autism or another type of neurodivergence – remote schooling has actually led to an academic flourishing, according to the BBC. And when students have to miss school for reasons other than COVID-19, such as mending a broken bone at home, teachers say they now have the tools ready and at hand.

“We’ve been going from the classroom to the house and back again. And we need devices fit for that flexibility,” says Ben Snowdon. “And, you know, if a pandemic happens again, we'll be fully ready for it.”

The consulting firm McKinsey published a report called The Quickening. Their analysis suggests that businesses made ten years’ worth of progress, in terms of digital transformation, in just three months.

But schools have had to do the same, and in even less time. The result could be seen as the world's biggest classroom experiment: an e-learning revolution.

And, according to Adam, the progress of EdTech is keeping pace, and its resilient and intuitive software and hardware have enabled educators to lead the charge.

“Samsung build a complete, joined-up ecosystem of products that can deliver a truly connected classroom for better learning outcomes – one that gives teachers the flexibility needed to make many different tools all work together.”

Moreover, he adds, these products are built with educators’ specific concerns in mind.

“Samsung Knox, for example, enables mobile devices to be customised, so only apps permitted for school can be accessed. You can set the device so that non-educational apps and websites are only available outside of school hours. These considerations significantly cut down on distractions, letting teachers decide what will bring out the best outcome for their students.”

“The key thing is giving teachers the tools to help them do what they do best. We’re here to enable adapting to the needs and challenges in the classroom and beyond,” Adam says.

The world has just witnessed a profound transformation for education, a deliberate and swift shift to e-learning through digital tools. But there is still a lot to learn from the teachers who led this conversion, and room for tinkering and refining the technology that made it possible.

Change happens. Rarely so swiftly and completely, but things do change.

Yet, as Tyler, the prankster, shows us – some things never do.