Learning Apps Have Boomed in the Pandemic. Now Comes the Real Test.
学习类App因疫情爆发式增长，今迎来真正考验
After a tough year of toggling between remote and in-person schooling, many students, teachers and their families feel burned out from pandemic learning. But companies that market digital learning tools to schools are enjoying a coronavirus windfall.
在课堂与远程两种学习方式之间反复切换并非易事，经历了一年这样的生活之后，老师、学生还有他们的家庭开始对疫情下的学习方式感到身心俱疲。但是，向学校出售数字型学习工具的公司，却正在享受新冠病毒带来的意外之财。
Financing for education technology start-ups has more than doubled, surging to $12.58 billion worldwide last year from $4.81 billion in 2019. During the same period, the number of laptops and tablets shipped to primary and secondary schools in the United States nearly doubled to 26.7 million, from 14 million.
去年，教育技术类创业公司获得的投资增长了一倍多，全球范围内的投资额从2019年的48.1亿美元增长到了125.8亿美元。同时期运往美国中小学的笔记本和平板电脑数量也几乎翻倍，从1400万台增长到了2670万台。
But as more districts reopen for in-person instruction, the billions of dollars that schools and venture capitalists have sunk into education technology are about to get tested. Some remote learning services, like videoconferencing, may see their student audiences plummet.
随着更多地区的面授课程重新开放，学校和风险投资砸进教育技术领域的数十亿美元，即将迎来考验。一些类似视频会议形式的远程教育服务，可能会面临学生用户数量的大幅下降。
Tech evangelists have long predicted that computers would transform education. The future of learning, many promised, involved apps powered by artificial intelligence that would adjust lessons to children’s abilities faster and more precisely than their human teachers ever could.
一些技术福音派（认为技术进步将会大幅改善人们生活），长期以来都认为计算机将会彻底改变教育。对于未来的学习方式，许多人都做出了积极预测：由人工智能技术驱动的学习类App，将能够根据学生的能力匹配不同的课程，而且速度和精准度超过任何人类老师。
That robotic teaching revolution has been slow in coming, in part because very few learning apps have shown they significantly improve students’ outcomes.
但机器人教育革命迟迟没有到来，部分原因是几乎还没有什么学习App能显著提升学习效果。
