So... sidestepping the technology issue for the moment, what does distance education look like at your school? I have a 12 year old, who just started middle school, and a 7 year old, starting grade 2. Distance "education" at end of last year was, IMO, a complete disaster. There was a brief morning meeting with the teacher, a small group session with the teacher twice a week, and then the kids were essentially assigned homework with no guidance or other support, other than what the parents were capable of.

This year, everything has changed, so it feels more like a distributed class room. Our middle schooler has the typical 4 classes per day, where each class is an hour long session with the teacher -- exactly as if they were in school. She has a different zoom link for each of her classes. Our youngest, since he's in elementary school and has a single teacher for the entire day, essentially connects via zoom in the morning, and stays connected the entire day (except for lunch). The teacher gave us a slide deck with the weekly schedule (on page one) and daily schedule, with the days broken up into sections. Some of those daily sections are live, some are independent work, and each of them has a clickable icon. During the independent work, the teacher puts all of the kids in the waiting room, and can connect with kids one-on-one, just like she'd be able to walk around the room and chat individually. For classes like PE and music, those teachers connect to the existing zoom session. At any rate, the teacher is managing the schedule. And so far, all we've had to do as parents, is make sure our youngest one connects (and doesn't switch to playing games while waiting for the teacher to pull him back into the zoom class, if he finishes his independent work early). This is our first day back to school, but it already feels like it's a massive, massive improvement.

So if you haven't done so already, I'd really encourage reaching out to the teacher, to see if they can be part of the solution.