I created a poll about digital learning when we were quarantined in the Spring of 2020. I expected the results that I ended up getting. My results were not a surprise. I faced my classmates and peers with the question, “Did digital learning work for you? Or, do you feel like you are having trouble this year because you learned absolutely nothing, and it didn’t work one bit?” My multiple choice answers were as follows. 92.6 percent of students voted this option, “Digital learning did absolutely nothing for me!” Or, “Omg!! I feel soooo much smarter!! Digital learning did wonders for my brain!! So this must be what Albert Einstein’s brain felt like!”, which 7.4 percent of students voted for. 

“It doesn’t really count as learning, when you only work for about 20 minutes a day, then you’re done”- Grace Wilson. We can elaborate with Wilson on this one. What she means by this is when we were learning digitally, every teacher would post all of the assignments for the week on Monday, then students were expected to complete them by Friday. These assignments were often looked at by students as busy work, hence why they took very little time to complete. “Digital learning was very challenging. There was no hands on learning and little face to face interaction.” -Garrett Burkett. I think we can all agree with Burkett on this quote as well. As kids, teens especially, we thrive best when we’re with our peers, and in person. Also, according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and prevention), kids get the following from in person schooling that they cannot with online schooling, “…supports the development of social and emotional skills, and provides more educational instruction.” And finally, to top it all off, Dylan Johnson claims, “Digital learning was useless, just like language arts.” 

On the other side, the 7.4 percent of people that voted for the second option, the option that stated how amazing online learning was. One student claimed, “I feel like digital learning was the easiest thing to do, like we could wake up whenever and then do our work and wear whatever we wanted.” However, this may have been one of the pros of digital learning. The freedom, the independence, and working at your own pace. Another student claims, “It worked well, it was pretty easy to get A’s because we could cheat pretty easily.” This statement may be true as well, but we could look at this as a pro, or a con. A pro being that digital learning was filled with mostly very easy assignments, and was easy to cheat, which worked out great for people who are on the more lazy side, but a con could be about how easy it was to cheat and how there is no way to better ourselves by doing that. 

In the end, the results came through, and most students chose the option, “Digital learning did absolutely nothing for me!” “I think that digital learning was helpful and not helpful. I liked that you can do your classes whenever you want but I did not learn very much.” This quote comes from a student who is on the fence about digital learning, and had mixed emotions. Druw Robinson also states “I liked it because of how simple it was, but simple is not gonna teach you anything.” We’re with you Druw. 

Most teens today always want to take the easy way out. Whether that’s cheating on their assignment, lying about their assignment, or just simply not doing their assignment. Although, as a student myself, I know there is absolutely zero way to get better by taking the easy way out, and never pushing yourself to be the best you can be.