Google Degree, Zoom University: Technology for Education and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves

Do you remember when school meant pencils, paper, and pretending not to cheat off your pal in math? Cute moments. Every 9-year-old with an iPad knows more about coding than you did when you were 23. Like the person at the party who brings his own speaker and won’t allow anyone else connect to Bluetooth, technology barged into education. Yes, we have “changed learning.” Kids utilize tablets. PowerPoint is like a religion for teachers. We all say “Google it” as a way to deal with things and as a way of life. So get your venti espresso shot of despair ready for this exciting story of how technology made school “easier” (in other words, emotionally exhausting but in 4K).

The Rise of Zoom University: No Pants Required, Wi-Fi Rules

A group of college students learned in the middle of 2020 that their $40,000 tuition was only getting them glitchy discussions and tired eyes. Welcome to Zoom University, where you have to unmute yourself before your teacher sighs, where “class debate” is merely eight people saying “You’re on mute” in different tones.
A Bold Reality Check: Online learning sounded like a big deal, but then you discovered your camera was off, your brain was off, and your Wi-Fi cut out in the middle of a sentence.
“Sorry, I lost connection” is modern poetry.
“Let’s take five” means “I need to cry into my cereal.”
“Virtual breakout rooms” are places where shy people go to act like they can’t hear you.
Isn’t it crazy how technology promised to make education more accessible, but instead made everyone feel like they were yelling into the void? If you can stop checking TikTok every nine seconds, you might get a degree in philosophy from your bedroom.

Google Classroom: The Sacred Kingdom of Work and Worry
Google Classroom is a digital prison where teachers post “quick quizzes” that gobble up your Sunday. It looks neat and tidy, yet it’s still a mess. It’s up to you whether you clicked “Turn In” or “Mark as done” to decide your whole academic future. (Spoiler: There is a difference.) A painful one.
Teachers love it because who wouldn’t want to deal with 500 comments on a PDF called “Essay Final Final v8 REAL.pdf”?

A Shocking Idea: In the past, education meant interacting with other people. Now it means asking Google Drive for mercy.
Let’s take it apart:

Google Forms: Where you have to choose between two options and wonder if you really exist.
Google Docs: The new place where passive-aggressive group projects happen.

Google Sheets: Where math and trauma meet.
If you’ve ever yelled because your submission timestamp showed “11:59 PM – Late,” raise your hand. Yes. I thought so.

Tablets, smartboards, and the end of chalk dust

Do you remember when your teacher would erase the board and everything would be tranquil for five seconds? There is now a 12-foot touchscreen that can do everything except your taxes. Technology took away chalk and gave us “interactive learning tools,” which sound like fun until someone has to reboot the Smartboard in the middle of a sentence.
Let’s face it: Teachers have changed from being teachers to being IT support by accident.
“Kids, we’ll start the lesson as soon as the board stops changing.”
“Kids, who plugged their iPhone back into the display?”
“Kids, what the hell is Minecraft doing on the screen?”
Yes, technology makes learning more fun. But there is still that one kid in the back with headphones on who thinks this is an episode of “Euphoria.” And every teacher already knows how awful it is to write on a tablet that doesn’t respond. In 2025, even pens need to be charged.

The Great EdTech Gold Rush: Apps That Fix Everything (Except for Depression)
Are you really a student if you haven’t downloaded at least five applications that “revolutionize how you learn”? EdTech entrepreneurs throw new platforms to you faster than your teacher gives you readings. Duolingo gets mad at you for not learning Spanish. Notion says it will “organize your life,” but it won’t. And a lot of “AI tutors” say they can teach you calculus while stealing your data in the background.

The harsh truth is that half of these learning apps are there to remind you that you’re always behind.
EdTech is like Silicon Valley for teachers who dress up like them. Every other founder’s pitch was, “Imagine a world where kids want to do their homework!”
No. That world doesn’t exist. Not even virtual reality can do that.
But go ahead, king. Think of your flashcard app as the next Renaissance.
And let’s be honest, those same kids who keep forgetting to mute on Zoom aren’t going to “embrace immersive tech learning.” All they want is for their laptop to not die during finals.

AI in Education: Robots Can Grade You Faster Than Professors
Ah, the most important thing. Artificial Intelligence is the educational ruler that is now grading your essays like a literary Simon Cowell. You write something emotional about The Great Gatsby, and an algorithm gives it a B-minus because your sentence didn’t have enough “lexical variation.” Just poetry.
AI promises to get rid of bias, make grading easier, and tailor learning to each student. In other words:
No one will ever see your great joke in the second paragraph.
The robot doesn’t care about how “creative” you are.
“Adaptive feedback” means getting constant notifications that make you want to rewrite like a raccoon on caffeine.

Honestly, can AI educate you better? Maybe. Will it feel bad for you if you fail the midterm? No way.
But at least your feedback is “instant.” Getting a red-flag critique 0.3 seconds after pushing “submit” is a sure sign of emotional trauma.

The Irony: We’re smarter but also dumber

Technology for education has made it possible for us to learn anything we want, yet we don’t want to use what we learn. At 2 a.m., you can learn about particle physics on YouTube, but you’ll probably watch five-hour conspiracy films about how pigeons are government spies. We’ve made the most connected schools ever, yet most of us are so busy that we don’t know what to do. There are screens everywhere, yet no one is paying attention.
Memorable times in modern education:
Forgetting your login before each test.
Sending in blank PDFs.
“Accidentally” switching windows while being watched online (we see you).
Finding out that your webcam has been on the whole time.
Learning didn’t die because of technology; it merely became optional.

Conclusion:

You are basically a cyborg scholar. Now
Congratulations on making it this far; you’ve made it through a crash course in digital self-delusion. Technology for education has given us unlimited access, better tools, and a million new opportunities to put things off. So give yourself a pat on the back, launch that “productivity app” that you’ll forget about by tomorrow, and pretend you grew as a person. Keep in mind that no matter how advanced the system is, the student will always find a way to turn in their work late. Welcome to the golden age of e-learning! Now, before your pen runs out, go charge it.