using technology in education benefits

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New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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11 key benefits of technology in education, share this article.

As education technology develops at an ever-increasing rate, many educators are left wondering how to adapt to the new learning landscape. It’s exciting – but also unsettling for some.

The truth is, there are a huge range of benefits of technology in education – ranging from more collaboration to increased efficiency, and the chance to adapt content to different learning styles. Use education technology to reduce your costs, increase accessibility, and make your content more engaging for learners.

Here are the top 11 benefits of technology in education – plus examples of exactly how to use it for the best results.

Click the links below to skip ahead:

Top benefits of technology in education

Boost collaboration, connect with learners, encourage continuous learning, create engaging content, adapt to different learning styles, improve accessibility and inclusion, use personalized learning paths, improve efficiency with automation, track learners’ progress, reduce running costs, work with technology – not against it.

And to help you keep up with the changes and use them for the benefit of learners and educators, download our Ultimate Guide to Technology.

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Here are the top 11 benefits of technology in education and how to make the most of the education technology around today.

The average person spends 2 hours and 31 minutes on social media every day – and for 16-24-year-olds that figure goes up to 5 hours 49 minutes.

The clue is in the name – social media is all about connecting with others, sharing, chatting, and learning collaboratively. One of the top benefits of technology in education is the impact it can have on communication and collaboration between learners. 

If you can tap into the social elements of education technology, you can connect with your learners in a way that’s never been possible before. The use of technology in education opens up new avenues for social learning .

Use education technology to encourage social learning through a wide range of different methods, including: 

• Live virtual classrooms for discussions
• Forums and message threads for Q&As
• Topic-specific Pinterest boards
• Themed Twitter or LinkedIn hashtags and threads
• Interactive quizzes and games
• Online leaderboards and rewards

Encourage your learners to connect with social learning activities to boost collaboration and social learning and improve outcomes across the board.

For educators, using technology in education is also an opportunity to build closer connections with your learners. Build a learning community to develop a direct link to your learners – increasing brand loyalty and opening up new opportunities for upselling and reconversions.

If you’re a Creator Educator, an online community is a top method to help your business grow long-term. An interactive online community lets learners engage and interact with your brand whenever they want, building trust and creating a culture of support and sharing.

In your community space, you can interact directly with learners, including:

• Hosting live Q&A sessions
• Setting office hours
• Discussing trending topics 
• Setting group goals
• Celebrating learner milestones

Using technology to create your own learning community gives you total control over your audience interactions, so you can connect with and retain more customers and build your brand awareness. 

To see how it’s done, check out this case study on how a therapist became a full-time educator by tapping into online communities to help learners and grow her business.

Rather than relying on traditional classroom learning, technology in education has created more opportunities for continuous learning – wherever and whenever your learners are.

That means learning can now take place on the subway, at the gym, and even in the bath thanks to education technology that delivers learning content in a range of different formats and styles – think podcasts, video, microlearning lessons, and quick quizzes.

Recent advances in education technology mean educators can now adapt their content to fit every learner’s needs and preferences. The best part? Educators and administrators simply upload the content to a platform like a Learning Management System (LMS) and either bulk publish or drip feed content to learners for them to access when they want it.

When it comes to continuous learning, the impact of technology in education can’t be overstated – educators now have access to a global audience of learners across any and all time zones. The only requirements learners need are a device and an internet connection.

Download our Ultimate Guide to Education technology to learn more:

Education technology gives educators the chance to shake up the routine of regular learning. Drive learner curiosity and creativity by using technology to help students embrace their natural curiosity by creating discovery-driven content – like independent research, games, peer reviews and more.

Here are some examples of how to use education technology to encourage learner curiosity:

• Ask students to make their own videos and recorded presentations
• Set online research assignments
• Encourage peer-review and feedback sessions
• Set online creative games and science experiments

If you can build a culture of curiosity through your content, you can make the learning experience more engaging and dynamic – to boost course completion rates and increase knowledge retention.

Technology in education has also made it possible for educators to adapt their content to meet the specific needs of different learning styles.

Educators can now tailor their content to all of the 7 main learning styles , including:

• Visual learning: Visual learners learn best through demonstrations, reading directions, or seeing pictures, diagrams and charts. Use technology like YouTube videos, infographics, and animations to engage visual learners.
• Auditory learning: Preferring listening and speaking to reading, auditory learners can be encouraged to connect with learning content through podcasts, voice recordings, audiobooks, and text-to-speech tools . 
• Kinesthetic learning: For learners who learn best with hands-on, interactive activities, educators can use education technology to encourage game-based learning and virtual or interactive experiences. Kinesthetic learners are also likely to enjoy Virtual Reality (VR) activities too.
• Verbal learning: For verbal learners, learning content that involves reading and writing text is most effective for knowledge retention. These learners can take advantage of online written resources like workbooks, articles, and speech-to-text tools.
• Logical learning: Logical or analytical learners prefer to use logic to process information, enjoying creating connections and looking for patterns in learning content. To engage logical learners, ask open-ended questions and include problem-solving activities in your content – think interactive class debates, individual research questions, and online Q&As.
• Social learning: As the name suggests, social learners love to learn through social interactions. Online learning can sometimes be isolating, so make sure to include social learning activities like group discussions, peer reviews, and class quizzes or games.
• Solitary learning: On the flip side, solitary learners prefer to learn solo – so include activities like journaling, solo projects, and single-player games to engage them.

Take advantage of education technology to engage and accommodate learners through the learning styles they prefer. For example, you can set multiple activities for each learning module and let your learners choose the activity they like best. Try to include a combination of solo, group, and hands-on tasks every time.

One of the top benefits of technology in education is the improvements in accessibility and inclusion that have been made possible. As well as opening up opportunities to cater to multiple learning styles, educators can now make sure their content is accessible for all learners.

Tools like text-to-speech software, screen readers, braille displays and more have made it simpler and easier for students with visual impairments and dyslexia, for example, to access learning content.

Here are some more examples of accessible technology in education:

• Voice control software
• Subtitles and closed captions on videos
• Shortcut keys
• Speech-to-text software
• Phonetic spelling software
• Electronic worksheets
• Talking calculators

Learn more about Universal Design for Learning and accessibility here.

As well as boosting learner curiosity and making space for different learning styles, the rise of technology in education has also paved the way for unprecedented personalization.

For the first time, educators can offer personalized learning paths on a much bigger scale – accommodating a wider range of learners who can now learn at their own pace, and choose exactly what content to engage with.

Here are just a few of the ways education technology makes personalized learning possible:

• Self-paced, flexible learning: With access to technology in education, learners can progress through content at their own pace, fitting learning around their schedule and commitments, including family, work, and more. Rather than requiring learners to be present in the classroom at a certain time and location, learning is now possible anytime and anywhere. Learners can also choose the content and modules most relevant to them, rather than following a one-size-fits-all learning path.
• Personalization at scale: Personalized learning is all about learner-centered education, with content that’s shaped to every learner’s unique needs, interests, and preferences. This type of personalized learning is almost impossible to achieve at scale without the use of education technology – but now even more learners can benefit from customized, adaptable learning paths.
• Provide extra support: Some learners need more support than others and education technology gives educators the chance to identify and address learning gaps in real-time, including adapting content, providing individual feedback, and assigning human or AI-driven tutors to the learners who need it most.

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Enrollment, onboarding, assignments, and certificates – automating all of these processes is now possible thanks to the rise of technology in education.

For educators, a whole host of repetitive tasks can now be automated, giving you more time and energy to work on the parts of your business that need you most – like content creation, marketing, and more.

Don’t make learners wait for your content, use automatic rollout to release content as and when it’s needed – for example, when learners successfully complete assignments, they can automatically unlock the next learning module to allow them progress at their own pace.

Here are some more examples of everyday processes you can automate:

• Student registration
• Scheduling calls and classes
• Surveys and student feedback
• Attendance or course completion tracking
• Permission forms
• Audits and compliance
• Grading and student progression

Free up more time to focus on what matters most, while delivering a smoother and more seamless experience for your learners.

Technology in education has also enhanced the opportunity for educators to track learners’ progress in more detail – including course completion rates, drop-off rates, and learner performance.

For the first time, educators can now take a data-driven approach to learner performance. Get real-time insights as learners progress through your content, tracking how they engage with your content so you can offer extra support where it’s needed.

This is essential for improving safety and compliance across a range of industries. Organizations can now keep track of who has completed essential onboarding, training, and refreshers, flagging when learners need to update or add-to their current knowledge.

By utilizing technology in education, you also open up new areas of efficiency. Provide instant feedback – via video, interactive comments or a messenger app – based on the insights and data you receive from your LMS or learning platform. And adapt your content in real-time according to learners’ needs.

Stop making stabs in the dark and start taking a data-led approach to education for better results.

Implementing technology in education is key for reducing costs for Creator Educators, educational institutions – and ultimately learners.

As well as helping educators save money, education technology can also lower the barrier to entry by helping rollout educational content that’s more affordable for more people.

Technology in education can reduce costs in a range of different ways, including:

• Using automation to reduce human hours spent on manual tasks
• Using virtual spaces to minimize the need physical classrooms
• Going paperless with online resources
• More low cost tools for creating content – including video, audio, and images
• Subscription services that are cheaper than learning same content at college

Education technology gives more learners the chance to gain new skills, explore topics they’re passionate about, and advance in their careers. Thanks to the opportunity to create education content at scale, it’s cheaper than ever to produce, publish, and engage with content.

While some educators have seen the rapid rise of technology in education as a negative – for those who are able to work with technology rather than against it, the benefits can be incredible.

With the introduction of AI-driven tools like ChatGPT, educators now have the chance to engage learners in new and innovative ways, encouraging healthy and productive relationships between learners and technology.

Here are a few ideas to help you do just that:

• Use AI tools to help students draft outlines for assignments
• Generate creative lesson plans
• Provide personalized feedback

While it’s now possible for students to ask AI tools to complete assignments for them, it’s also possible for educators to set increasingly creative and fun activities using those same tools.

Take advantage of these top benefits of technology in education

The truth is technology in education isn’t going anywhere – so it’s time to take advantage of the top benefits to create a more engaging, personalized, and continuous learning experience. Use technology in education to make your life easier too – by automating key tasks and tracking your learners’ progress, while building closer connections with each cohort.

This post was originally published in July 2023. It was updated in August of 2023 with more information.

Elizabeth Harris is a content marketer and copywriter with a passion for helping businesses get the most out of their content, helping to educate, inspire, and engage audiences.

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How Important Is Technology in Education? Benefits, Challenges, and Impact on Students

Many of today’s high-demand jobs were created in the last decade, according to the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). As advances in technology drive globalization and digital transformation, teachers can help students acquire the necessary skills to succeed in the careers of the future.

How important is technology in education? The COVID-19 pandemic is quickly demonstrating why online education should be a vital part of teaching and learning. By integrating technology into existing curricula, as opposed to using it solely as a crisis-management tool, teachers can harness online learning as a powerful educational tool.

The effective use of digital learning tools in classrooms can increase student engagement, help teachers improve their lesson plans, and facilitate personalized learning. It also helps students build essential 21st-century skills.

Virtual classrooms, video, augmented reality (AR), robots, and other technology tools can not only make class more lively, they can also create more inclusive learning environments that foster collaboration and inquisitiveness and enable teachers to collect data on student performance.

Still, it’s important to note that technology is a tool used in education and not an end in itself. The promise of educational technology lies in what educators do with it and how it is used to best support their students’ needs.

Educational Technology Challenges

BuiltIn reports that 92 percent of teachers understand the impact of technology in education. According to Project Tomorrow, 59 percent of middle school students say digital educational tools have helped them with their grades and test scores. These tools have become so popular that the educational technology market is projected to expand to $342 billion by 2025, according to the World Economic Forum.

However, educational technology has its challenges, particularly when it comes to implementation and use. For example, despite growing interest in the use of AR, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technology, less than 10 percent of schools report having these tools in their classrooms, according to Project Tomorrow. Additional concerns include excessive screen time, the effectiveness of teachers using the technology, and worries about technology equity.

Prominently rising from the COVID-19 crisis is the issue of content. Educators need to be able to develop and weigh in on online educational content, especially to encourage students to consider a topic from different perspectives. The urgent actions taken during this crisis did not provide sufficient time for this. Access is an added concern — for example, not every school district has resources to provide students with a laptop, and internet connectivity can be unreliable in homes.

Additionally, while some students thrive in online education settings, others lag for various factors, including support resources. For example, a student who already struggled in face-to-face environments may struggle even more in the current situation. These students may have relied on resources that they no longer have in their homes.

Still, most students typically demonstrate confidence in using online education when they have the resources, as studies have suggested. However, online education may pose challenges for teachers, especially in places where it has not been the norm.

Despite the challenges and concerns, it’s important to note the benefits of technology in education, including increased collaboration and communication, improved quality of education, and engaging lessons that help spark imagination and a search for knowledge in students.

The Benefits of Technology in Education

Teachers want to improve student performance, and technology can help them accomplish this aim. To mitigate the challenges, administrators should help teachers gain the competencies needed to enhance learning for students through technology. Additionally, technology in the classroom should make teachers’ jobs easier without adding extra time to their day.

Technology provides students with easy-to-access information, accelerated learning, and fun opportunities to practice what they learn. It enables students to explore new subjects and deepen their understanding of difficult concepts, particularly in STEM. Through the use of technology inside and outside the classroom, students can gain 21st-century technical skills necessary for future occupations.

Still, children learn more effectively with direction. The World Economic Forum reports that while technology can help young students learn and acquire knowledge through play, for example, evidence suggests that learning is more effective through guidance from an adult, such as a teacher.

Leaders and administrators should take stock of where their faculty are in terms of their understanding of online spaces. From lessons learned during this disruptive time, they can implement solutions now for the future. For example, administrators could give teachers a week or two to think carefully about how to teach courses not previously online. In addition to an exploration of solutions, flexibility during these trying times is of paramount importance.

Below are examples of how important technology is in education and the benefits it offers to students and teachers.

Increased Collaboration and Communication

Educational technology can foster collaboration. Not only can teachers engage with students during lessons, but students can also communicate with each other. Through online lessons and learning games, students get to work together to solve problems. In collaborative activities, students can share their thoughts and ideas and support each other. At the same time, technology enables one-on-one interaction with teachers. Students can ask classroom-related questions and seek additional help on difficult-to-understand subject matter. At home, students can upload their homework, and teachers can access and view completed assignments using their laptops.

Personalized Learning Opportunities

Technology allows 24/7 access to educational resources. Classes can take place entirely online via the use of a laptop or mobile device. Hybrid versions of learning combine the use of technology from anywhere with regular in-person classroom sessions. In both scenarios, the use of technology to tailor learning plans for each student is possible. Teachers can create lessons based on student interests and strengths. An added benefit is that students can learn at their own pace. When they need to review class material to get a better understanding of essential concepts, students can review videos in the lesson plan. The data generated through these online activities enable teachers to see which students struggled with certain subjects and offer additional assistance and support.

Curiosity Driven by Engaging Content

Through engaging and educational content, teachers can spark inquisitiveness in children and boost their curiosity, which research says has ties to academic success. Curiosity helps students get a better understanding of math and reading concepts. Creating engaging content can involve the use of AR, videos, or podcasts. For example, when submitting assignments, students can include videos or interact with students from across the globe.

Improved Teacher Productivity and Efficiency

Teachers can leverage technology to achieve new levels of productivity, implement useful digital tools to expand learning opportunities for students, and increase student support and engagement. It also enables teachers to improve their instruction methods and personalize learning. Schools can benefit from technology by reducing the costs of physical instructional materials, enhancing educational program efficiency, and making the best use of teacher time.

Become a Leader in Enriching Classrooms through Technology

Educators unfamiliar with some of the technology used in education may not have been exposed to the tools as they prepared for their careers or as part of their professional development. Teachers looking to make the transition and acquire the skills to incorporate technology in education can take advantage of learning opportunities to advance their competencies. For individuals looking to help transform the education system through technology, American University’s School of Education online offers a Master of Arts in Teaching and a Master of Arts in Education Policy and Leadership to prepare educators with essential tools to become leaders. Courses such as Education Program and Policy Implementation and Teaching Science in Elementary School equip graduate students with critical competencies to incorporate technology into educational settings effectively.

Learn more about American University’s School of Education online and its master’s degree programs.

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Helping Girls Succeed in STEM

BuiltIn, “Edtech 101”

EdTech, “Teaching Teachers to Put Tech Tools to Work”

International Society for Technology in Education, “Preparing Students for Jobs That Don’t Exist”

The Journal, “How Teachers Use Technology to Enrich Learning Experiences”

Pediatric Research, “Early Childhood Curiosity and Kindergarten Reading and Math Academic Achievement”

Project Tomorrow, “Digital Learning: Peril or Promise for Our K-12 Students”

World Economic Forum, “The Future of Jobs Report 2018”

World Economic Forum, “Learning through Play: How Schools Can Educate Students through Technology”

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10 Benefits of Technology in the Classroom

Table of Contents

There are many benefits of technology in the classroom. From accessibility to increased personalization and rich digital resources, teachers are learning how to use technology best to meet the needs of their diverse student population. 

In Instructure’s State of Teaching & Learning in K-12 Education Research , 86% of teachers, parents, and educators believe using educational technology resources impacts students' success. Recently, classrooms have seen tremendous growth in technology use, which has come with growing pains, but the benefits of committing to long-term technology outweigh the risks.

“Now, more than ever, we recognize that digital tools are a great way to honor, respect, and provide equitable experiences for all students. It is a great way to give them what they need when they need it.”–Nancy Brightwell, Cheif Academic Officer at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

Let’s dig into some of the many benefits of using technology in the classroom today.

#1 Increases Student Engagement

Students are engaging with technology outside of school. Educators can embrace this reality and use technology to cultivate interactive and creative learning experiences for their students in the classroom. Video , for instance, can inspire and spark conversation in today’s students.

#2 Establishes Consistency

A shared environment, like a learning management system, for every student, teacher, and guardian creates a place for connection and consistency. For most of history, this place has been the physical classroom. However, modern tools can recreate this familiarity in a digital environment.

“Canvas LMS can be the single landing place where you add all the digital curricula, content, and tools to support student learning, so students don't have to go to multiple places to find what they need.” –Trenton Goble, VP of K-12 Strategy at Instructure.

#3 Opens Communication Lines

Administrators face different challenges than their students, teachers, and families. For schools to operate smoothly, each of these parties needs to feel comfortable communicating about their challenges and confident they can reach out for support. Students know they can get help outside the physical classroom, and parents stay informed about their student’s learning (i.e., by using observer status to keep a pulse on what’s happening in the classroom). Administrators can offer support to teachers and families through the avenue that works best for their community, such as:

Office Hours

Phone & Email Support

Newsletters

“Creating synchronous support made us [administrators] available to them [teachers and families]." Dr. Lisa Gilbert, Deputy Superintendent of Instruction at Kern County Schools

#4 Streamlines Feedback

To grow, students need to hear feedback from their teachers; the sooner they receive it, the better. Teachers, on the other hand, have a lot on their plate. Technology features like SpeedGrader can help teachers quickly provide feedback when and where students need it most.

#5 Eases Student Anxiety

Technology can either amplify or alleviate anxiety. Answering the Fundamental Five , such as what students need to do when they need to do it and where they can reach out for support, helps educators accomplish the latter.

#6 Allows for Data-Informed Action

The right technology gives teachers the data they need when they need it most.

“For us, the focus is on real-time formative data. That is what is most meaningful. That is what we want to be able to work around. We can respond to needs more quickly than relying solely on end-of-the-year data. That is helpful, and we need to look at it, and we need to look for patterns and trends and address the issues we see there, but for us, it is more about real-time, what is happening now .” Nancy Brightwell, Chief Academic Officer at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools

A practical assessment management system is one way to access real-time information so educators can intervene efficiently.

#7 Boosts College & Career Readiness

Technology is integral to our world. Connecting students with the right technology empowers them to take ownership of their learning in the present and prepares them for future success.

“We are thinking about our demographic and want to encourage as many students as possible to pursue post-secondary opportunities. It helps our teachers to embrace ‘the why’ when they learn that all our community colleges across our state are utilizing Canvas LMS.”–Dr. Lisa Gilbert, Deputy Superintendent of Instruction at Kern County Schools

#8 Facilitates Collaboration

Classrooms without technology are bound to the time in the physical classroom for collaboration. Using technology makes students, teachers, and their families accessible beyond the confines of the building, whether through Zoom or Team meetings virtually or using Google Docs to work together on a project. Both foster collaboration and comments, version history, and activity in these tools inform teachers about who is contributing and who needs to engage.

#9 Reduces Paper Waste

Paper is still a valuable resource for schools. Estimates report that a typical school will use over 2,000 sheets of paper daily. Using digital resources and tech tools can save:

Educators' time at the printer

Students the stress of scouring folders for the correct sheet of paper to turn in

Schools the cost of ink, toner, and reams of paper

Excess paper from being thrown into the recycling bin

#10 Personalizes Learning

Each student’s preferred learning path is unique. Technology provides opportunities to differentiate instruction and personalize learning by offering students multiple assignment submission types or a variety of mediums through which to learn new material. (i.e., Videos, podcasts, articles, etc.)  

“Some things we have leveraged extensively are understanding how important digital content is and truly personalizing learning for students.”–Nancy Brightwell, Chief Academic Officer at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

How to Prepare Students for the Digital World

Schools like Kern County continue to wonder how they can better prepare students for the increasingly digital world they'll grow into. Specific examples of how to get started with technology in the classroom can help outline the next steps for putting students on the path to lifelong success.

“We are graduating our students into a [digital] world. And these are the skillsets that we need to be helping them learn and apply…Do we not have a responsibility to ensure that our students are familiar with them? So that they can focus on the content they are learning, use the tools to dig deeper, collaborate online, and do all the wonderful things that Canvas LMS allows us to do.”–Dr. Lisa Gilbert, Deputy Superintendent of Instruction at Kern County Schools

Examples of Technology in the Classroom

Many effective technology tools are accessible and built with educators and students in mind. 

The modern classroom is no longer limited to blackboards and overhead projectors. Educators power their classrooms with a wide variety of tools and platforms that enrich the learning experience for students. Let's explore some common examples.

E-textbooks are now commonplace in many of today's classrooms and accessible from any device. They come with interactive features such as multimedia, hyperlinks, and search functions. The digital shift over the years has made learning more engaging and contributed to reducing the physical weight of backpacks and promote environmental sustainability.

Online Courses

The rise of platforms like Nearpod and Khan Academy signifies the growing importance of personalize online learning content in courses. These platforms offer courses on a variety of topics, allow students to learning at their own pace by rewinding lessons and accessing learning materials from anywhere. Online courses break geographical barriers, making high-quality education accessible to students everywhere.

Learning Management Systems

Canvas is a prime example of an LMS transforming education. It is the digital hub for teachers to organize courses, grade assignments, and communicate with students. Canvas streamlines the learning process with features such as quizzes, discussion boards, and integrations with other tools loved by teachers and students. It supports learning everywhere it happens, both in the hybrid or in the physical classroom.

Graphic Design Tools

Today's classrooms are full of tomorrow's creatives. Tools like Adobe Spark and Canva allow students (and teachers!) to tap into their creativity and showcase what they know in a variety of innovative ways such as videos, infographics, and posters. Educators can similarly use these tools to customize their online classrooms and create inspiring lessons.

Tablets are a staple in many classrooms that keep students connected to the digital content they need to succeed. iPads are one example that many schools use to take their blended learning strategies to the next level.

Video Conferencing Tools

Tools like Zoom and Google Meet bring everyone together easily no matter where they're located. Teachers can also use these tools to broaden the horizons of their classroom by creating virtual field trip experiences for their students and hosting guest speakers who may not otherwise be able to attend in person.

All in all, a massive benefit of technology in the classroom is student success. To learn more about tackling the challenges associated with technology in the classroom, download your free copy of Removing Roadblocks to Teaching with Technology .

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Technology in the Classroom & The Benefits for K-12 Schools

Rebecca Torchia is a web editor for  EdTech: Focus on K–12 . Previously, she has produced podcasts and written for several publications in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and her hometown of Pittsburgh.

Technology integration is no longer about whether tech belongs in classrooms. In today’s education landscape, it pertains to how technology is chosen and used for learning.

Schools have received waves of government funding for educational technology. Administrators and IT leadership still have  until September 2022 and September 2023  to obligate ESSER I and ESSER II funds, respectively. To get the best return on investment with this funding, districts must ensure technology integration is done effectively.

Students benefit from technology integration when it is done well. It can lead to a more equitable educational experience and give students the tools to be successful in life.

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What Does Technology in The Classroom Look Like Today?

Technology integration is the use of technology in teaching and learning to achieve academic goals.

“I don’t use tech unless it solves a problem I have in the classroom,” says Lisa Highfill, a technology integration specialist at  Pleasanton Virtual Academy  in California.

For example, Highfill says, she’ll use a  Jamboard  where students can post their responses instead of calling on them one at a time. “Then, when they’re all quiet, what are they doing? They’re reading each other’s comments.”

Meaningful tech integration should be done thoughtfully to enhance a learning experience. “You don’t want to use technology just for technology’s sake,” says Melissa Lim, a technology integration specialist at Oregon’s  Portland Public Schools . “We recommend using the Triple E Framework as a simple tool to help determine if it’s worth using technology or if you’re just using it as a substitute.”

The Triple E Framework  was developed by Liz Kolb, a clinical associate professor of education and learning technologies at the University of Michigan. When K–12 IT leaders evaluate new tech based on this framework, they can determine “how well technology tools integrated into lessons are helping students engage in, enhance and extend learning goals,” according to Kolb’s website for the framework.

“It’s all about the learning first,” Lim says.

Why Is Integrating Technology Important in Education?

Technology integration in Education is important for multiple reasons. It makes learning more equitable for K–12 students, and — when used in lower grades — it sets them up for success in school and, moving forward, in their careers.

“If you’re a teacher who doesn’t use a lot of technology, your students aren’t getting equitable access to learning experiences that another teacher who uses technology is giving to their students,” Lim says.

Melissa Lim Technology Integration Specialist, Portland Public Schools

Now that many students have devices and access to technology, educators and school leaders must work to  narrow the digital divide  through equity of use. If students aren’t exposed to technology and taught how to use it, they will fall behind their peers.

“Educators should make sure logging in is a really easy, smooth process,” Highfill says. “Once I get everyone logged in, the No. 1 thing I have to get students to learn how to do is share their screen.”

This not only helps her work through problems with students, she says, but also helps students take  a more active role in their learning . Students will find new ways to achieve a goal or manipulate a technology and can show the class — and the teacher — how they’ve accomplished it by sharing their screen. “You empower them and put them in the teaching role,” Highfill adds.

What Are the Benefits of Technology for Students?

Through technology, schools can support all students. There are roughly 60 grade school students and nearly 250 high school students enrolled at Pleasanton Virtual Academy. “I’m so excited our district put in that investment,” Highfill says. “We’re a public school virtual academy. They invested in a quality virtual academy to meet the needs of all students.”

Even students who are learning in an in-person environment are  using technology in their daily lives . Integrating it into the classroom gives them an opportunity to learn to use tech in a meaningful way.

READ MORE:   Build the themes of digital citizenship into instruction and business planning.

“If you have the skills and know how to research and find information and discern whether that information is true or not, that’s going to help you not only in school with your schoolwork, but also with life in general,” Lim says.

“I watch the kids, and they’re very addicted to their devices,” says Highfill. “So, it’s my new teaching point: How can you take a digital diet, and how can you identify when tech is not doing good things for you?”

Highfill says that anytime there’s a fear about introducing technology to the classroom, educators should use that. “We have to teach students how to take care of themselves if they’re going to use technology,” she says.

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New global data reveal education technology’s impact on learning

The promise of technology in the classroom is great: enabling personalized, mastery-based learning; saving teacher time; and equipping students with the digital skills they will need  for 21st-century careers. Indeed, controlled pilot studies have shown meaningful improvements in student outcomes through personalized blended learning. 1 John F. Pane et al., “How does personalized learning affect student achievement?,” RAND Corporation, 2017, rand.org. During this time of school shutdowns and remote learning , education technology has become a lifeline for the continuation of learning.

As school systems begin to prepare for a return to the classroom , many are asking whether education technology should play a greater role in student learning beyond the immediate crisis and what that might look like. To help inform the answer to that question, this article analyzes one important data set: the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), published in December 2019 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Every three years, the OECD uses PISA to test 15-year-olds around the world on math, reading, and science. What makes these tests so powerful is that they go beyond the numbers, asking students, principals, teachers, and parents a series of questions about their attitudes, behaviors, and resources. An optional student survey on information and communications technology (ICT) asks specifically about technology use—in the classroom, for homework, and more broadly.

In 2018, more than 340,000 students in 51 countries took the ICT survey, providing a rich data set for analyzing key questions about technology use in schools. How much is technology being used in schools? Which technologies are having a positive impact on student outcomes? What is the optimal amount of time to spend using devices in the classroom and for homework? How does this vary across different countries and regions?

From other studies we know that how education technology is used, and how it is embedded in the learning experience, is critical to its effectiveness. This data is focused on extent and intensity of use, not the pedagogical context of each classroom. It cannot therefore answer questions on the eventual potential of education technology—but it can powerfully tell us the extent to which that potential is being realized today in classrooms around the world.

Five key findings from the latest results help answer these questions and suggest potential links between technology and student outcomes:

• The type of device matters—some are associated with worse student outcomes.
• Geography matters—technology is associated with higher student outcomes in the United States than in other regions.
• Who is using the technology matters—technology in the hands of teachers is associated with higher scores than technology in the hands of students.
• Intensity matters—students who use technology intensely or not at all perform better than those with moderate use.
• A school system’s current performance level matters—in lower-performing school systems, technology is associated with worse results.

This analysis covers only one source of data, and it should be interpreted with care alongside other relevant studies. Nonetheless, the 2018 PISA results suggest that systems aiming to improve student outcomes should take a more nuanced and cautious approach to deploying technology once students return to the classroom. It is not enough add devices to the classroom, check the box, and hope for the best.

What can we learn from the latest PISA results?

How will the use, and effectiveness, of technology change post-covid-19.

The PISA assessment was carried out in 2018 and published in December 2019. Since its publication, schools and students globally have been quite suddenly thrust into far greater reliance on technology. Use of online-learning websites and adaptive software has expanded dramatically. Khan Academy has experienced a 250 percent surge in traffic; smaller sites have seen traffic grow fivefold or more. Hundreds of thousands of teachers have been thrown into the deep end, learning to use new platforms, software, and systems. No one is arguing that the rapid cobbling together of remote learning under extreme time pressure represents best-practice use of education technology. Nonetheless, a vast experiment is underway, and innovations often emerge in times of crisis. At this point, it is unclear whether this represents the beginning of a new wave of more widespread and more effective technology use in the classroom or a temporary blip that will fade once students and teachers return to in-person instruction. It is possible that a combination of software improvements, teacher capability building, and student familiarity will fundamentally change the effectiveness of education technology in improving student outcomes. It is also possible that our findings will continue to hold true and technology in the classroom will continue to be a mixed blessing. It is therefore critical that ongoing research efforts track what is working and for whom and, just as important, what is not. These answers will inform the project of reimagining a better education for all students in the aftermath of COVID-19.

PISA data have their limitations. First, these data relate to high-school students, and findings may not be applicable in elementary schools or postsecondary institutions. Second, these are single-point observational data, not longitudinal experimental data, which means that any links between technology and results should be interpreted as correlation rather than causation. Third, the outcomes measured are math, science, and reading test results, so our analysis cannot assess important soft skills and nonacademic outcomes.

It is also worth noting that technology for learning has implications beyond direct student outcomes, both positive and negative. PISA cannot address these broader issues, and neither does this paper.

But PISA results, which we’ve broken down into five key findings, can still provide powerful insights. The assessment strives to measure the understanding and application of ideas, rather than the retention of facts derived from rote memorization, and the broad geographic coverage and sample size help elucidate the reality of what is happening on the ground.

Finding 1: The type of device matters

The evidence suggests that some devices have more impact than others on outcomes (Exhibit 1). Controlling for student socioeconomic status, school type, and location, 2 Specifically, we control for a composite indicator for economic, social, and cultural status (ESCS) derived from questions about general wealth, home possessions, parental education, and parental occupation; for school type “Is your school a public or a private school” (SC013); and for school location (SC001) where the options are a village, hamlet or rural area (fewer than 3,000 people), a small town (3,000 to about 15,000 people), a town (15,000 to about 100,000 people), a city (100,000 to about 1,000,000 people), and a large city (with more than 1,000,000 people). the use of data projectors 3 A projector is any device that projects computer output, slides, or other information onto a screen in the classroom. and internet-connected computers in the classroom is correlated with nearly a grade-level-better performance on the PISA assessment (assuming approximately 40 PISA points to every grade level). 4 Students were specifically asked (IC009), “Are any of these devices available for you to use at school?,” with the choices being “Yes, and I use it,” “Yes, but I don’t use it,” and “No.” We compared the results for students who have access to and use each device with those who do not have access. The full text for each device in our chart was as follows: Data projector, eg, for slide presentations; Internet-connected school computers; Desktop computer; Interactive whiteboard, eg, SmartBoard; Portable laptop or notebook; and Tablet computer, eg, iPad, BlackBerry PlayBook.

On the other hand, students who use laptops and tablets in the classroom have worse results than those who do not. For laptops, the impact of technology varies by subject; students who use laptops score five points lower on the PISA math assessment, but the impact on science and reading scores is not statistically significant. For tablets, the picture is clearer—in every subject, students who use tablets in the classroom perform a half-grade level worse than those who do not.

Some technologies are more neutral. At the global level, there is no statistically significant difference between students who use desktop computers and interactive whiteboards in the classroom and those who do not.

Finding 2: Geography matters

Looking more closely at the reading results, which were the focus of the 2018 assessment, 5 PISA rotates between focusing on reading, science, and math. The 2018 assessment focused on reading. This means that the total testing time was two hours for each student, of which one hour was reading focused. we can see that the relationship between technology and outcomes varies widely by country and region (Exhibit 2). For example, in all regions except the United States (representing North America), 6 The United States is the only country that took the ICT Familiarity Questionnaire survey in North America; thus, we are comparing it as a country with the other regions. students who use laptops in the classroom score between five and 12 PISA points lower than students who do not use laptops. In the United States, students who use laptops score 17 PISA points higher than those who do not. It seems that US students and teachers are doing something different with their laptops than those in other regions. Perhaps this difference is related to learning curves that develop as teachers and students learn how to get the most out of devices. A proxy to assess this learning curve could be penetration—71 percent of US students claim to be using laptops in the classroom, compared with an average of 37 percent globally. 7 The rate of use excludes nulls. The United States measures higher than any other region in laptop use by students in the classroom. US = 71 percent, Asia = 40 percent, EU = 35 percent, Latin America = 31 percent, MENA = 21 percent, Non-EU Europe = 41 percent. We observe a similar pattern with interactive whiteboards in non-EU Europe. In every other region, interactive whiteboards seem to be hurting results, but in non-EU Europe they are associated with a lift of 21 PISA points, a total that represents a half-year of learning. In this case, however, penetration is not significantly higher than in other developed regions.

Finding 3: It matters whether technology is in the hands of teachers or students

The survey asks students whether the teacher, student, or both were using technology. Globally, the best results in reading occur when only the teacher is using the device, with some benefit in science when both teacher and students use digital devices (Exhibit 3). Exclusive use of the device by students is associated with significantly lower outcomes everywhere. The pattern is similar for science and math.

Again, the regional differences are instructive. Looking again at reading, we note that US students are getting significant lift (three-quarters of a year of learning) from either just teachers or teachers and students using devices, while students alone using a device score significantly lower (half a year of learning) than students who do not use devices at all. Exclusive use of devices by the teacher is associated with better outcomes in Europe too, though the size of the effect is smaller.

Finding 4: Intensity of use matters

PISA also asked students about intensity of use—how much time they spend on devices, 8 PISA rotates between focusing on reading, science, and math. The 2018 assessment focused on reading. This means that the total testing time was two hours for each student, of which one hour was reading focused. both in the classroom and for homework. The results are stark: students who either shun technology altogether or use it intensely are doing better, with those in the middle flailing (Exhibit 4).

The regional data show a dramatic picture. In the classroom, the optimal amount of time to spend on devices is either “none at all” or “greater than 60 minutes” per subject per week in every region and every subject (this is the amount of time associated with the highest student outcomes, controlling for student socioeconomic status, school type, and location). In no region is a moderate amount of time (1–30 minutes or 31–60 minutes) associated with higher student outcomes. There are important differences across subjects and regions. In math, the optimal amount of time is “none at all” in every region. 9 The United States is the only country that took the ICT Familiarity Questionnaire survey in North America; thus, we are comparing it as a country with the other regions. In reading and science, however, the optimal amount of time is greater than 60 minutes for some regions: Asia and the United States for reading, and the United States and non-EU Europe for science.

The pattern for using devices for homework is slightly less clear cut. Students in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and non-EU Europe score highest when they spend “no time at all” on devices for their homework, while students spending a moderate amount of time (1–60 minutes) score best in Latin America and the European Union. Finally, students in the United States who spend greater than 60 minutes are getting the best outcomes.

One interpretation of these data is that students need to get a certain familiarity with technology before they can really start using it to learn. Think of typing an essay, for example. When students who mostly write by hand set out to type an essay, their attention will be focused on the typing rather than the essay content. A competent touch typist, however, will get significant productivity gains by typing rather than handwriting.

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Finding 5: the school systems’ overall performance level matters.

Diving deeper into the reading outcomes, which were the focus of the 2018 assessment, we can see the magnitude of the impact of device use in the classroom. In Asia, Latin America, and Europe, students who spend any time on devices in their literacy and language arts classrooms perform about a half-grade level below those who spend none at all. In MENA, they perform more than a full grade level lower. In the United States, by contrast, more than an hour of device use in the classroom is associated with a lift of 17 PISA points, almost a half-year of learning improvement (Exhibit 5).

At the country level, we see that those who are on what we would call the “poor-to-fair” stage of the school-system journey 10 Michael Barber, Chinezi Chijoke, and Mona Mourshed, “ How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better ,” November 2010. have the worst relationships between technology use and outcomes. For every poor-to-fair system taking the survey, the amount of time on devices in the classroom associated with the highest student scores is zero minutes. Good and great systems are much more mixed. Students in some very highly performing systems (for example, Estonia and Chinese Taipei) perform highest with no device use, but students in other systems (for example, Japan, the United States, and Australia) are getting the best scores with over an hour of use per week in their literacy and language arts classrooms (Exhibit 6). These data suggest that multiple approaches are effective for good-to-great systems, but poor-to-fair systems—which are not well equipped to use devices in the classroom—may need to rethink whether technology is the best use of their resources.

What are the implications for students, teachers, and systems?

Looking across all these results, we can say that the relationship between technology and outcomes in classrooms today is mixed, with variation by device, how that device is used, and geography. Our data do not permit us to draw strong causal conclusions, but this section offers a few hypotheses, informed by existing literature and our own work with school systems, that could explain these results.

First, technology must be used correctly to be effective. Our experience in the field has taught us that it is not enough to “add technology” as if it were the missing, magic ingredient. The use of tech must start with learning goals, and software selection must be based on and integrated with the curriculum. Teachers need support to adapt lesson plans to optimize the use of technology, and teachers should be using the technology themselves or in partnership with students, rather than leaving students alone with devices. These lessons hold true regardless of geography. Another ICT survey question asked principals about schools’ capacity using digital devices. Globally, students performed better in schools where there were sufficient numbers of devices connected to fast internet service; where they had adequate software and online support platforms; and where teachers had the skills, professional development, and time to integrate digital devices in instruction. This was true even accounting for student socioeconomic status, school type, and location.

COVID-19 and student learning in the United States: The hurt could last a lifetime

Second, technology must be matched to the instructional environment and context. One of the most striking findings in the latest PISA assessment is the extent to which technology has had a different impact on student outcomes in different geographies. This corroborates the findings of our 2010 report, How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better . Those findings demonstrated that different sets of interventions were needed at different stages of the school-system reform journey, from poor-to-fair to good-to-great to excellent. In poor-to-fair systems, limited resources and teacher capabilities as well as poor infrastructure and internet bandwidth are likely to limit the benefits of student-based technology. Our previous work suggests that more prescriptive, teacher-based approaches and technologies (notably data projectors) are more likely to be effective in this context. For example, social enterprise Bridge International Academies equips teachers across several African countries with scripted lesson plans using e-readers. In general, these systems would likely be better off investing in teacher coaching than in a laptop per child. For administrators in good-to-great systems, the decision is harder, as technology has quite different impacts across different high-performing systems.

Third, technology involves a learning curve at both the system and student levels. It is no accident that the systems in which the use of education technology is more mature are getting more positive impact from tech in the classroom. The United States stands out as the country with the most mature set of education-technology products, and its scale enables companies to create software that is integrated with curricula. 11 Common Core State Standards sought to establish consistent educational standards across the United States. While these have not been adopted in all states, they cover enough states to provide continuity and consistency for software and curriculum developers. A similar effect also appears to operate at the student level; those who dabble in tech may be spending their time learning the tech rather than using the tech to learn. This learning curve needs to be built into technology-reform programs.

Taken together, these results suggest that systems that take a comprehensive, data-informed approach may achieve learning gains from thoughtful use of technology in the classroom. The best results come when significant effort is put into ensuring that devices and infrastructure are fit for purpose (fast enough internet service, for example), that software is effective and integrated with curricula, that teachers are trained and given time to rethink lesson plans integrating technology, that students have enough interaction with tech to use it effectively, and that technology strategy is cognizant of the system’s position on the school-system reform journey. Online learning and education technology are currently providing an invaluable service by enabling continued learning over the course of the pandemic; this does not mean that they should be accepted uncritically as students return to the classroom.

Jake Bryant is an associate partner in McKinsey’s Washington, DC, office; Felipe Child is a partner in the Bogotá office; Emma Dorn is the global Education Practice manager in the Silicon Valley office; and Stephen Hall is an associate partner in the Dubai office.

The authors wish to thank Fernanda Alcala, Sujatha Duraikkannan, and Samuel Huang for their contributions to this article.

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7 benefits of technology in the classroom

Using technology in the classroom can bring many benefits to teachers and students. Smart boards, clickers, cloud applications, and student laptops are changing the way we teach and learn. Around the school, digital document solutions and paperless school practices are transforming communications, while also saving time and money. Like many other industries, technology is often seen primarily as a source of cost savings and productivity gains in K-12 and post-secondary schools. However, integrating technology into the classroom can do much more than just make things faster and cheaper.

The vast array of educational and administrative technology options can be confusing. What works, what are the benefits, and how are they best used?

Benefits of technology in the classroom

Greater adaptability for a range of learners, enriched collaboration, and making learning more fun are just of few of the potential benefits of using tech in your classroom. We’ve identified seven significant ways that these tools can help:

1. Improve adaptability

Whether you need to accommodate a broad range of diverse learners or just want to change up your lesson plans, classroom technologies can help you be more adaptable. Using an array of different instruction techniques is a great way to help all students and mixing up materials and activities can be more enjoyable for teachers, too. Students exposed to a variety of materials, activities, and assessments often report higher levels of motivation, enjoyment, and engagement. Cloud applications and adaptive learning systems make it faster and easier to try out different methods, and a wealth of shared online resources provide endless inspiration and support. Even digital document solutions can help, speeding up the data gathering process for individual education plans (IEPs) and automating workflows that compile and share profiles to authorized teachers.

2. Enrich collaboration

Working together, from peer discussions to formal group projects, has a positive impact on the development of higher-level thinking, communication skills, and subject retention. Collaborative learning also increases understanding and acceptance of different perspectives, and better prepares students for social interactions and employment. Cloud-based collaboration tools allow students to work together asynchronously or in real time on all types of files and documents. Teachers can make quick progress checks, be notified of questions, and provide timely feedback. Online chat and social media tools make it easier for students to interact inside and outside the classroom without disrupting others. And many online games have collaborative modes that provide rich opportunities to work together towards a common goal, while exploring curriculum appropriate concepts. Best of all, most of these tools can be easily adapted to in-class or remote learning situations.

3. Increase student fun

Making games out of learning is not new, but modern tools and techniques unlock new levels of interesting and fun opportunities in the classroom. The widespread practice in video games of trial and error to solve problems or get through levels is familiar to many students and, when applied to learning, can make tests or assignments less daunting. Alternate pathways and direct feedback provide a measure of differentiated instruction and coaching to the students, potentially freeing up the teacher’s time. As students play, they often become very immersed in the activity, increasing engagement and retention. Games are also a great option for group activities, especially if they include tasks that require several students to work together on different parts of the project. It is important to keep these games from becoming a direct source of competition between students, which can negatively impact results.

4. Enhance feedback

Responding to students’ work is an essential part of teaching and can be a significant contributor to student performance. Effective feedback is more than just a grade and is often measured by three characteristics: is it timely, consistent, and goal-specific? Classroom response systems, cloud applications, and workflow tools help shorten the feedback cycle, automating repetitive tasks, summarizing rubric elements, and even providing basic, machine-generated assessments that teachers can augment with their own insights. These tools also encourage consistency, helping to reduce bias and ensure that the last paper or project gets the same attention as the first one. By easing the feedback workload, teachers can devote more time and attention to providing positive encouragements and insights that guide students towards their curriculum and individual goals.

5. Foster connections

Tech provides many ways of fostering connections between teachers and students, parents, and other key stakeholders. Workflow automation and digital documents can reduce the amount of time spent on routine communications, such as consent forms and liability waivers , freeing up resources. Digital tools can also make education-related conversations with students and parents more efficient, accelerating questions, responses, and ultimately results. It is important to clearly state and manage the rules of engagement for these communications, including hours of availability, or they can become overwhelming. Cloud applications can help foster connections in other ways, for example providing common notes and material that the entire class can view, edit, and comment on. These shared documents help to level the field for students with varied note-taking abilities, encourage collaboration instead of competition, and provide the teacher with immediate insight on how well students understand the material.

6. Promote tech skills

In a world filled with digital tools and devices, building technical skills and digital literacy is an important part of using technology in the classroom. Organizations such as the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) emphasize the necessity to both teach with technology and teach about technology. Students of all ages need to learn about the appropriate uses and effects of common technologies, so that they can act legally, ethically, and safely. For example, protecting their private and confidential information, exploring the positive and negative effects of posting personal information, and learning to identify sources and risks of misinformation. Teachers are encouraged to discuss digital rights and responsibilities, and model best practices for online behavior.

7. Reduce costs

Finally, classroom and administrative technologies can save time, reduce costs, and enhance services. Digital document solutions save up to $6 per document in paper, ink, faxing and mailing costs, and printing equipment. Electronic health records improve the quality and efficiency of student care and make it easier to comply with privacy regulations. Digital transformation of school processes can reduce workloads and increase productivity and adaptability inside and outside of the classroom. Many of these changes can also positively impact student outcomes and improve interactions with colleagues, students, and parents.

Technology can be a multiplier for teachers

Choosing and using tools in the classroom can seem like a daunting task, with uncertain outcomes. Used well, classroom and administrative technologies can be a significant multiplier for teachers, reducing workloads, making learning more fun, and enhancing student outcomes. The good news is that there is a wealth of resources available online for teachers, students, and administrators to explore the world of classroom technology, ask questions, share their experiences, and learn about best practices.

Visit Adobe’s Education Resource Hub to learn more about how their education-focused solutions can help you, your students, and your colleagues reap the benefits of technology in the classroom and around the school.

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https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/06/28/how-paperless-solutions-make-it-easier-for-students-to-return-to-the-classroom#gs.8n59cq

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Effective Uses of Technology in Elementary School

Minimizing screen time and maximizing student interactions are worthwhile, but there are still good uses of technology in the elementary grades.

Following months of virtual schooling and tuning in to a device for synchronous and asynchronous learning, many teachers and students have been happy this year to move away from digital experiences and return to analog learning activities.

Many elementary school activities engage children in hands-on, dynamic activities that do not require the use of technology, limiting how much time students spend in front of a screen. However, there are ways that technology can develop and sustain unique learning opportunities in schools.

As an educational technologist, I collaborate with teachers to implement technologies that improve student learning. I’ll talk about and share examples of how teachers can use technology in the classroom to provide instructional guidance and support, encourage students’ self-reflection, and spark creativity.

Using Technology as an Instructional Tool

Teachers can create short audio or video clips to supplement and extend classroom instruction. Many teachers have discovered how simple it is to create a short video that students can use to review a concept or reread a set of instructions while participating in remote learning.

You can create detailed instructions or give information to guide students through a series of exercises for a lesson or project. Plan a class activity in which students, for example, rotate among different stations (individually or in small groups) to complete a series of independent tasks.

Each station could have its own device, such as an iPad or a Chromebook, where students can review prerecorded instructions or rewatch brief presentations while doing activities at that station. You might create a screencast  as a tutorial or explain the steps to completing a math review worksheet .

Students Using Technology to Self-Reflect on Their Learning and Progress

Students can use technology to keep track of their progress. They can use images or a short video to document special classroom moments, activities, projects, or presentations, and then create a presentation that highlights their learning from these snapshots.

For example, a third-grade student learning about the composition of a cell could create a presentation that included a photo of a cell diagram, descriptions of why certain parts of a cell were included, explanations of what materials were used to create the cell model, and a written reflection of what they learned about the parts of a cell. For a framework of how to write a self-reflection, you can provide students with protocols such as Project Zero’s thinking routine “ I Used to Think… Now I Think .” John Spencer’s blog post about digital portfolios is another resource you can use to prompt students’ self-reflection.

To help students develop their metacognitive skills, you can combine learning snapshots with opportunities for their self-reflection. During a large or small group presentation, students can present a slide show with voice-overs or explain what they were doing and what they learned at the moment. They can respond to questions such as “Did this learning experience make you feel successful?” and “What would you do differently next time?” Students can revisit these reflections later in the year to assess and celebrate their progress.

In one upper elementary classroom I visited, for example, students were trying out different study strategies to see which ones worked best for them. After they completed a formative assessment activity, the teacher asked them to reflect on whether they had felt successful throughout the assessment activity because of using study strategies.

The teacher asked students to identify which strategies they used and whether they thought the strategies were effective in helping them explore new content and ideas. One student described how using flash cards and rereading a chapter helped her prepare for and pass a science quiz.

You can allow students to reflect with fewer specific prompts as they become accustomed to considering their work and feel comfortable exploring how they think throughout a learning experience.

Using Technology to Provide Choice and Spark Students’ Creativity

You can design projects that allow students to choose how they want to use technology. Students can create digital art by using various websites and tools. They can create original artwork or learning resources such as math manipulatives using classroom art supplies and then record a brief video explaining or displaying their work.

Comic strips, slide shows, green screen images, infographics, timelines, digital posters, videos, podcasts, mini-portfolios, and video book talks are other forms of digital student creation. When students combine these various modalities, they have even more opportunities for creativity and self-expression.

With the help of technology, sharing digital creations like these is simple. Google’s share settings can publish Google Slideshows or documents. Google Sites is also an excellent tool for students to keep track of their assignments. Students can include video, images, Google Drive files, PDF files, and much more on a Google Site. Microsoft Office 365 tools, Flipgrid, and Padlet are some of the other platforms for creating, curating, and sharing student work.

When using technology in the elementary classroom, be judicious and intentional. Before implementing it, consider your goals for using it and whether it provides a functional improvement to a learning task. Documenting student learning, providing extra student support via audio or video, and enhancing student creation capabilities are all excellent ways for technology to improve the teaching and learning process.

REALIZING THE PROMISE:

Leading up to the 75th anniversary of the UN General Assembly, this “Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all?” publication kicks off the Center for Universal Education’s first playbook in a series to help improve education around the world.

It is intended as an evidence-based tool for ministries of education, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, to adopt and more successfully invest in education technology.

While there is no single education initiative that will achieve the same results everywhere—as school systems differ in learners and educators, as well as in the availability and quality of materials and technologies—an important first step is understanding how technology is used given specific local contexts and needs.

The surveys in this playbook are designed to be adapted to collect this information from educators, learners, and school leaders and guide decisionmakers in expanding the use of technology.  

Introduction

While technology has disrupted most sectors of the economy and changed how we communicate, access information, work, and even play, its impact on schools, teaching, and learning has been much more limited. We believe that this limited impact is primarily due to technology being been used to replace analog tools, without much consideration given to playing to technology’s comparative advantages. These comparative advantages, relative to traditional “chalk-and-talk” classroom instruction, include helping to scale up standardized instruction, facilitate differentiated instruction, expand opportunities for practice, and increase student engagement. When schools use technology to enhance the work of educators and to improve the quality and quantity of educational content, learners will thrive.

Further, COVID-19 has laid bare that, in today’s environment where pandemics and the effects of climate change are likely to occur, schools cannot always provide in-person education—making the case for investing in education technology.

Here we argue for a simple yet surprisingly rare approach to education technology that seeks to:

• Understand the needs, infrastructure, and capacity of a school system—the diagnosis;
• Survey the best available evidence on interventions that match those conditions—the evidence; and
• Closely monitor the results of innovations before they are scaled up—the prognosis.

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The framework.

Our approach builds on a simple yet intuitive theoretical framework created two decades ago by two of the most prominent education researchers in the United States, David K. Cohen and Deborah Loewenberg Ball. They argue that what matters most to improve learning is the interactions among educators and learners around educational materials. We believe that the failed school-improvement efforts in the U.S. that motivated Cohen and Ball’s framework resemble the ed-tech reforms in much of the developing world to date in the lack of clarity improving the interactions between educators, learners, and the educational material. We build on their framework by adding parents as key agents that mediate the relationships between learners and educators and the material (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The instructional core

Adapted from Cohen and Ball (1999)

As the figure above suggests, ed-tech interventions can affect the instructional core in a myriad of ways. Yet, just because technology can do something, it does not mean it should. School systems in developing countries differ along many dimensions and each system is likely to have different needs for ed-tech interventions, as well as different infrastructure and capacity to enact such interventions.

The diagnosis:

How can school systems assess their needs and preparedness.

A useful first step for any school system to determine whether it should invest in education technology is to diagnose its:

• Specific needs to improve student learning (e.g., raising the average level of achievement, remediating gaps among low performers, and challenging high performers to develop higher-order skills);
• Infrastructure to adopt technology-enabled solutions (e.g., electricity connection, availability of space and outlets, stock of computers, and Internet connectivity at school and at learners’ homes); and
• Capacity to integrate technology in the instructional process (e.g., learners’ and educators’ level of familiarity and comfort with hardware and software, their beliefs about the level of usefulness of technology for learning purposes, and their current uses of such technology).

Before engaging in any new data collection exercise, school systems should take full advantage of existing administrative data that could shed light on these three main questions. This could be in the form of internal evaluations but also international learner assessments, such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and/or the Progress in International Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the Teaching and Learning International Study (TALIS). But if school systems lack information on their preparedness for ed-tech reforms or if they seek to complement existing data with a richer set of indicators, we developed a set of surveys for learners, educators, and school leaders. Download the full report to see how we map out the main aspects covered by these surveys, in hopes of highlighting how they could be used to inform decisions around the adoption of ed-tech interventions.

The evidence:

How can school systems identify promising ed-tech interventions.

There is no single “ed-tech” initiative that will achieve the same results everywhere, simply because school systems differ in learners and educators, as well as in the availability and quality of materials and technologies. Instead, to realize the potential of education technology to accelerate student learning, decisionmakers should focus on four potential uses of technology that play to its comparative advantages and complement the work of educators to accelerate student learning (Figure 2). These comparative advantages include:

• Scaling up quality instruction, such as through prerecorded quality lessons.
• Facilitating differentiated instruction, through, for example, computer-adaptive learning and live one-on-one tutoring.
• Expanding opportunities to practice.
• Increasing learner engagement through videos and games.

Figure 2: Comparative advantages of technology

Here we review the evidence on ed-tech interventions from 37 studies in 20 countries*, organizing them by comparative advantage. It’s important to note that ours is not the only way to classify these interventions (e.g., video tutorials could be considered as a strategy to scale up instruction or increase learner engagement), but we believe it may be useful to highlight the needs that they could address and why technology is well positioned to do so.

When discussing specific studies, we report the magnitude of the effects of interventions using standard deviations (SDs). SDs are a widely used metric in research to express the effect of a program or policy with respect to a business-as-usual condition (e.g., test scores). There are several ways to make sense of them. One is to categorize the magnitude of the effects based on the results of impact evaluations. In developing countries, effects below 0.1 SDs are considered to be small, effects between 0.1 and 0.2 SDs are medium, and those above 0.2 SDs are large (for reviews that estimate the average effect of groups of interventions, called “meta analyses,” see e.g., Conn, 2017; Kremer, Brannen, & Glennerster, 2013; McEwan, 2014; Snilstveit et al., 2015; Evans & Yuan, 2020.)

*In surveying the evidence, we began by compiling studies from prior general and ed-tech specific evidence reviews that some of us have written and from ed-tech reviews conducted by others. Then, we tracked the studies cited by the ones we had previously read and reviewed those, as well. In identifying studies for inclusion, we focused on experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations of education technology interventions from pre-school to secondary school in low- and middle-income countries that were released between 2000 and 2020. We only included interventions that sought to improve student learning directly (i.e., students’ interaction with the material), as opposed to interventions that have impacted achievement indirectly, by reducing teacher absence or increasing parental engagement. This process yielded 37 studies in 20 countries (see the full list of studies in Appendix B).

Scaling up standardized instruction

One of the ways in which technology may improve the quality of education is through its capacity to deliver standardized quality content at scale. This feature of technology may be particularly useful in three types of settings: (a) those in “hard-to-staff” schools (i.e., schools that struggle to recruit educators with the requisite training and experience—typically, in rural and/or remote areas) (see, e.g., Urquiola & Vegas, 2005); (b) those in which many educators are frequently absent from school (e.g., Chaudhury, Hammer, Kremer, Muralidharan, & Rogers, 2006; Muralidharan, Das, Holla, & Mohpal, 2017); and/or (c) those in which educators have low levels of pedagogical and subject matter expertise (e.g., Bietenbeck, Piopiunik, & Wiederhold, 2018; Bold et al., 2017; Metzler & Woessmann, 2012; Santibañez, 2006) and do not have opportunities to observe and receive feedback (e.g., Bruns, Costa, & Cunha, 2018; Cilliers, Fleisch, Prinsloo, & Taylor, 2018). Technology could address this problem by: (a) disseminating lessons delivered by qualified educators to a large number of learners (e.g., through prerecorded or live lessons); (b) enabling distance education (e.g., for learners in remote areas and/or during periods of school closures); and (c) distributing hardware preloaded with educational materials.

Prerecorded lessons

Technology seems to be well placed to amplify the impact of effective educators by disseminating their lessons. Evidence on the impact of prerecorded lessons is encouraging, but not conclusive. Some initiatives that have used short instructional videos to complement regular instruction, in conjunction with other learning materials, have raised student learning on independent assessments. For example, Beg et al. (2020) evaluated an initiative in Punjab, Pakistan in which grade 8 classrooms received an intervention that included short videos to substitute live instruction, quizzes for learners to practice the material from every lesson, tablets for educators to learn the material and follow the lesson, and LED screens to project the videos onto a classroom screen. After six months, the intervention improved the performance of learners on independent tests of math and science by 0.19 and 0.24 SDs, respectively but had no discernible effect on the math and science section of Punjab’s high-stakes exams.

One study suggests that approaches that are far less technologically sophisticated can also improve learning outcomes—especially, if the business-as-usual instruction is of low quality. For example, Naslund-Hadley, Parker, and Hernandez-Agramonte (2014) evaluated a preschool math program in Cordillera, Paraguay that used audio segments and written materials four days per week for an hour per day during the school day. After five months, the intervention improved math scores by 0.16 SDs, narrowing gaps between low- and high-achieving learners, and between those with and without educators with formal training in early childhood education.

Yet, the integration of prerecorded material into regular instruction has not always been successful. For example, de Barros (2020) evaluated an intervention that combined instructional videos for math and science with infrastructure upgrades (e.g., two “smart” classrooms, two TVs, and two tablets), printed workbooks for students, and in-service training for educators of learners in grades 9 and 10 in Haryana, India (all materials were mapped onto the official curriculum). After 11 months, the intervention negatively impacted math achievement (by 0.08 SDs) and had no effect on science (with respect to business as usual classes). It reduced the share of lesson time that educators devoted to instruction and negatively impacted an index of instructional quality. Likewise, Seo (2017) evaluated several combinations of infrastructure (solar lights and TVs) and prerecorded videos (in English and/or bilingual) for grade 11 students in northern Tanzania and found that none of the variants improved student learning, even when the videos were used. The study reports effects from the infrastructure component across variants, but as others have noted (Muralidharan, Romero, & Wüthrich, 2019), this approach to estimating impact is problematic.

A very similar intervention delivered after school hours, however, had sizeable effects on learners’ basic skills. Chiplunkar, Dhar, and Nagesh (2020) evaluated an initiative in Chennai (the capital city of the state of Tamil Nadu, India) delivered by the same organization as above that combined short videos that explained key concepts in math and science with worksheets, facilitator-led instruction, small groups for peer-to-peer learning, and occasional career counseling and guidance for grade 9 students. These lessons took place after school for one hour, five times a week. After 10 months, it had large effects on learners’ achievement as measured by tests of basic skills in math and reading, but no effect on a standardized high-stakes test in grade 10 or socio-emotional skills (e.g., teamwork, decisionmaking, and communication).

Drawing general lessons from this body of research is challenging for at least two reasons. First, all of the studies above have evaluated the impact of prerecorded lessons combined with several other components (e.g., hardware, print materials, or other activities). Therefore, it is possible that the effects found are due to these additional components, rather than to the recordings themselves, or to the interaction between the two (see Muralidharan, 2017 for a discussion of the challenges of interpreting “bundled” interventions). Second, while these studies evaluate some type of prerecorded lessons, none examines the content of such lessons. Thus, it seems entirely plausible that the direction and magnitude of the effects depends largely on the quality of the recordings (e.g., the expertise of the educator recording it, the amount of preparation that went into planning the recording, and its alignment with best teaching practices).

These studies also raise three important questions worth exploring in future research. One of them is why none of the interventions discussed above had effects on high-stakes exams, even if their materials are typically mapped onto the official curriculum. It is possible that the official curricula are simply too challenging for learners in these settings, who are several grade levels behind expectations and who often need to reinforce basic skills (see Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). Another question is whether these interventions have long-term effects on teaching practices. It seems plausible that, if these interventions are deployed in contexts with low teaching quality, educators may learn something from watching the videos or listening to the recordings with learners. Yet another question is whether these interventions make it easier for schools to deliver instruction to learners whose native language is other than the official medium of instruction.

Distance education

Technology can also allow learners living in remote areas to access education. The evidence on these initiatives is encouraging. For example, Johnston and Ksoll (2017) evaluated a program that broadcasted live instruction via satellite to rural primary school students in the Volta and Greater Accra regions of Ghana. For this purpose, the program also equipped classrooms with the technology needed to connect to a studio in Accra, including solar panels, a satellite modem, a projector, a webcam, microphones, and a computer with interactive software. After two years, the intervention improved the numeracy scores of students in grades 2 through 4, and some foundational literacy tasks, but it had no effect on attendance or classroom time devoted to instruction, as captured by school visits. The authors interpreted these results as suggesting that the gains in achievement may be due to improving the quality of instruction that children received (as opposed to increased instructional time). Naik, Chitre, Bhalla, and Rajan (2019) evaluated a similar program in the Indian state of Karnataka and also found positive effects on learning outcomes, but it is not clear whether those effects are due to the program or due to differences in the groups of students they compared to estimate the impact of the initiative.

In one context (Mexico), this type of distance education had positive long-term effects. Navarro-Sola (2019) took advantage of the staggered rollout of the telesecundarias (i.e., middle schools with lessons broadcasted through satellite TV) in 1968 to estimate its impact. The policy had short-term effects on students’ enrollment in school: For every telesecundaria per 50 children, 10 students enrolled in middle school and two pursued further education. It also had a long-term influence on the educational and employment trajectory of its graduates. Each additional year of education induced by the policy increased average income by nearly 18 percent. This effect was attributable to more graduates entering the labor force and shifting from agriculture and the informal sector. Similarly, Fabregas (2019) leveraged a later expansion of this policy in 1993 and found that each additional telesecundaria per 1,000 adolescents led to an average increase of 0.2 years of education, and a decline in fertility for women, but no conclusive evidence of long-term effects on labor market outcomes.

It is crucial to interpret these results keeping in mind the settings where the interventions were implemented. As we mention above, part of the reason why they have proven effective is that the “counterfactual” conditions for learning (i.e., what would have happened to learners in the absence of such programs) was either to not have access to schooling or to be exposed to low-quality instruction. School systems interested in taking up similar interventions should assess the extent to which their learners (or parts of their learner population) find themselves in similar conditions to the subjects of the studies above. This illustrates the importance of assessing the needs of a system before reviewing the evidence.

Preloaded hardware

Technology also seems well positioned to disseminate educational materials. Specifically, hardware (e.g., desktop computers, laptops, or tablets) could also help deliver educational software (e.g., word processing, reference texts, and/or games). In theory, these materials could not only undergo a quality assurance review (e.g., by curriculum specialists and educators), but also draw on the interactions with learners for adjustments (e.g., identifying areas needing reinforcement) and enable interactions between learners and educators.

In practice, however, most initiatives that have provided learners with free computers, laptops, and netbooks do not leverage any of the opportunities mentioned above. Instead, they install a standard set of educational materials and hope that learners find them helpful enough to take them up on their own. Students rarely do so, and instead use the laptops for recreational purposes—often, to the detriment of their learning (see, e.g., Malamud & Pop-Eleches, 2011). In fact, free netbook initiatives have not only consistently failed to improve academic achievement in math or language (e.g., Cristia et al., 2017), but they have had no impact on learners’ general computer skills (e.g., Beuermann et al., 2015). Some of these initiatives have had small impacts on cognitive skills, but the mechanisms through which those effects occurred remains unclear.

To our knowledge, the only successful deployment of a free laptop initiative was one in which a team of researchers equipped the computers with remedial software. Mo et al. (2013) evaluated a version of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program for grade 3 students in migrant schools in Beijing, China in which the laptops were loaded with a remedial software mapped onto the national curriculum for math (similar to the software products that we discuss under “practice exercises” below). After nine months, the program improved math achievement by 0.17 SDs and computer skills by 0.33 SDs. If a school system decides to invest in free laptops, this study suggests that the quality of the software on the laptops is crucial.

To date, however, the evidence suggests that children do not learn more from interacting with laptops than they do from textbooks. For example, Bando, Gallego, Gertler, and Romero (2016) compared the effect of free laptop and textbook provision in 271 elementary schools in disadvantaged areas of Honduras. After seven months, students in grades 3 and 6 who had received the laptops performed on par with those who had received the textbooks in math and language. Further, even if textbooks essentially become obsolete at the end of each school year, whereas laptops can be reloaded with new materials for each year, the costs of laptop provision (not just the hardware, but also the technical assistance, Internet, and training associated with it) are not yet low enough to make them a more cost-effective way of delivering content to learners.

Evidence on the provision of tablets equipped with software is encouraging but limited. For example, de Hoop et al. (2020) evaluated a composite intervention for first grade students in Zambia’s Eastern Province that combined infrastructure (electricity via solar power), hardware (projectors and tablets), and educational materials (lesson plans for educators and interactive lessons for learners, both loaded onto the tablets and mapped onto the official Zambian curriculum). After 14 months, the intervention had improved student early-grade reading by 0.4 SDs, oral vocabulary scores by 0.25 SDs, and early-grade math by 0.22 SDs. It also improved students’ achievement by 0.16 on a locally developed assessment. The multifaceted nature of the program, however, makes it challenging to identify the components that are driving the positive effects. Pitchford (2015) evaluated an intervention that provided tablets equipped with educational “apps,” to be used for 30 minutes per day for two months to develop early math skills among students in grades 1 through 3 in Lilongwe, Malawi. The evaluation found positive impacts in math achievement, but the main study limitation is that it was conducted in a single school.

Facilitating differentiated instruction

Another way in which technology may improve educational outcomes is by facilitating the delivery of differentiated or individualized instruction. Most developing countries massively expanded access to schooling in recent decades by building new schools and making education more affordable, both by defraying direct costs, as well as compensating for opportunity costs (Duflo, 2001; World Bank, 2018). These initiatives have not only rapidly increased the number of learners enrolled in school, but have also increased the variability in learner’ preparation for schooling. Consequently, a large number of learners perform well below grade-based curricular expectations (see, e.g., Duflo, Dupas, & Kremer, 2011; Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). These learners are unlikely to get much from “one-size-fits-all” instruction, in which a single educator delivers instruction deemed appropriate for the middle (or top) of the achievement distribution (Banerjee & Duflo, 2011). Technology could potentially help these learners by providing them with: (a) instruction and opportunities for practice that adjust to the level and pace of preparation of each individual (known as “computer-adaptive learning” (CAL)); or (b) live, one-on-one tutoring.

Computer-adaptive learning

One of the main comparative advantages of technology is its ability to diagnose students’ initial learning levels and assign students to instruction and exercises of appropriate difficulty. No individual educator—no matter how talented—can be expected to provide individualized instruction to all learners in his/her class simultaneously . In this respect, technology is uniquely positioned to complement traditional teaching. This use of technology could help learners master basic skills and help them get more out of schooling.

Although many software products evaluated in recent years have been categorized as CAL, many rely on a relatively coarse level of differentiation at an initial stage (e.g., a diagnostic test) without further differentiation. We discuss these initiatives under the category of “increasing opportunities for practice” below. CAL initiatives complement an initial diagnostic with dynamic adaptation (i.e., at each response or set of responses from learners) to adjust both the initial level of difficulty and rate at which it increases or decreases, depending on whether learners’ responses are correct or incorrect.

Existing evidence on this specific type of programs is highly promising. Most famously, Banerjee et al. (2007) evaluated CAL software in Vadodara, in the Indian state of Gujarat, in which grade 4 students were offered two hours of shared computer time per week before and after school, during which they played games that involved solving math problems. The level of difficulty of such problems adjusted based on students’ answers. This program improved math achievement by 0.35 and 0.47 SDs after one and two years of implementation, respectively. Consistent with the promise of personalized learning, the software improved achievement for all students. In fact, one year after the end of the program, students assigned to the program still performed 0.1 SDs better than those assigned to a business as usual condition. More recently, Muralidharan, et al. (2019) evaluated a “blended learning” initiative in which students in grades 4 through 9 in Delhi, India received 45 minutes of interaction with CAL software for math and language, and 45 minutes of small group instruction before or after going to school. After only 4.5 months, the program improved achievement by 0.37 SDs in math and 0.23 SDs in Hindi. While all learners benefited from the program in absolute terms, the lowest performing learners benefited the most in relative terms, since they were learning very little in school.

We see two important limitations from this body of research. First, to our knowledge, none of these initiatives has been evaluated when implemented during the school day. Therefore, it is not possible to distinguish the effect of the adaptive software from that of additional instructional time. Second, given that most of these programs were facilitated by local instructors, attempts to distinguish the effect of the software from that of the instructors has been mostly based on noncausal evidence. A frontier challenge in this body of research is to understand whether CAL software can increase the effectiveness of school-based instruction by substituting part of the regularly scheduled time for math and language instruction.

Live one-on-one tutoring

Recent improvements in the speed and quality of videoconferencing, as well as in the connectivity of remote areas, have enabled yet another way in which technology can help personalization: live (i.e., real-time) one-on-one tutoring. While the evidence on in-person tutoring is scarce in developing countries, existing studies suggest that this approach works best when it is used to personalize instruction (see, e.g., Banerjee et al., 2007; Banerji, Berry, & Shotland, 2015; Cabezas, Cuesta, & Gallego, 2011).

There are almost no studies on the impact of online tutoring—possibly, due to the lack of hardware and Internet connectivity in low- and middle-income countries. One exception is Chemin and Oledan (2020)’s recent evaluation of an online tutoring program for grade 6 students in Kianyaga, Kenya to learn English from volunteers from a Canadian university via Skype ( videoconferencing software) for one hour per week after school. After 10 months, program beneficiaries performed 0.22 SDs better in a test of oral comprehension, improved their comfort using technology for learning, and became more willing to engage in cross-cultural communication. Importantly, while the tutoring sessions used the official English textbooks and sought in part to help learners with their homework, tutors were trained on several strategies to teach to each learner’s individual level of preparation, focusing on basic skills if necessary. To our knowledge, similar initiatives within a country have not yet been rigorously evaluated.

Expanding opportunities for practice

A third way in which technology may improve the quality of education is by providing learners with additional opportunities for practice. In many developing countries, lesson time is primarily devoted to lectures, in which the educator explains the topic and the learners passively copy explanations from the blackboard. This setup leaves little time for in-class practice. Consequently, learners who did not understand the explanation of the material during lecture struggle when they have to solve homework assignments on their own. Technology could potentially address this problem by allowing learners to review topics at their own pace.

Practice exercises

Technology can help learners get more out of traditional instruction by providing them with opportunities to implement what they learn in class. This approach could, in theory, allow some learners to anchor their understanding of the material through trial and error (i.e., by realizing what they may not have understood correctly during lecture and by getting better acquainted with special cases not covered in-depth in class).

Existing evidence on practice exercises reflects both the promise and the limitations of this use of technology in developing countries. For example, Lai et al. (2013) evaluated a program in Shaanxi, China where students in grades 3 and 5 were required to attend two 40-minute remedial sessions per week in which they first watched videos that reviewed the material that had been introduced in their math lessons that week and then played games to practice the skills introduced in the video. After four months, the intervention improved math achievement by 0.12 SDs. Many other evaluations of comparable interventions have found similar small-to-moderate results (see, e.g., Lai, Luo, Zhang, Huang, & Rozelle, 2015; Lai et al., 2012; Mo et al., 2015; Pitchford, 2015). These effects, however, have been consistently smaller than those of initiatives that adjust the difficulty of the material based on students’ performance (e.g., Banerjee et al., 2007; Muralidharan, et al., 2019). We hypothesize that these programs do little for learners who perform several grade levels behind curricular expectations, and who would benefit more from a review of foundational concepts from earlier grades.

We see two important limitations from this research. First, most initiatives that have been evaluated thus far combine instructional videos with practice exercises, so it is hard to know whether their effects are driven by the former or the latter. In fact, the program in China described above allowed learners to ask their peers whenever they did not understand a difficult concept, so it potentially also captured the effect of peer-to-peer collaboration. To our knowledge, no studies have addressed this gap in the evidence.

Second, most of these programs are implemented before or after school, so we cannot distinguish the effect of additional instructional time from that of the actual opportunity for practice. The importance of this question was first highlighted by Linden (2008), who compared two delivery mechanisms for game-based remedial math software for students in grades 2 and 3 in a network of schools run by a nonprofit organization in Gujarat, India: one in which students interacted with the software during the school day and another one in which students interacted with the software before or after school (in both cases, for three hours per day). After a year, the first version of the program had negatively impacted students’ math achievement by 0.57 SDs and the second one had a null effect. This study suggested that computer-assisted learning is a poor substitute for regular instruction when it is of high quality, as was the case in this well-functioning private network of schools.

In recent years, several studies have sought to remedy this shortcoming. Mo et al. (2014) were among the first to evaluate practice exercises delivered during the school day. They evaluated an initiative in Shaanxi, China in which students in grades 3 and 5 were required to interact with the software similar to the one in Lai et al. (2013) for two 40-minute sessions per week. The main limitation of this study, however, is that the program was delivered during regularly scheduled computer lessons, so it could not determine the impact of substituting regular math instruction. Similarly, Mo et al. (2020) evaluated a self-paced and a teacher-directed version of a similar program for English for grade 5 students in Qinghai, China. Yet, the key shortcoming of this study is that the teacher-directed version added several components that may also influence achievement, such as increased opportunities for teachers to provide students with personalized assistance when they struggled with the material. Ma, Fairlie, Loyalka, and Rozelle (2020) compared the effectiveness of additional time-delivered remedial instruction for students in grades 4 to 6 in Shaanxi, China through either computer-assisted software or using workbooks. This study indicates whether additional instructional time is more effective when using technology, but it does not address the question of whether school systems may improve the productivity of instructional time during the school day by substituting educator-led with computer-assisted instruction.

Increasing learner engagement

Another way in which technology may improve education is by increasing learners’ engagement with the material. In many school systems, regular “chalk and talk” instruction prioritizes time for educators’ exposition over opportunities for learners to ask clarifying questions and/or contribute to class discussions. This, combined with the fact that many developing-country classrooms include a very large number of learners (see, e.g., Angrist & Lavy, 1999; Duflo, Dupas, & Kremer, 2015), may partially explain why the majority of those students are several grade levels behind curricular expectations (e.g., Muralidharan, et al., 2019; Muralidharan & Zieleniak, 2014; Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). Technology could potentially address these challenges by: (a) using video tutorials for self-paced learning and (b) presenting exercises as games and/or gamifying practice.

Video tutorials

Technology can potentially increase learner effort and understanding of the material by finding new and more engaging ways to deliver it. Video tutorials designed for self-paced learning—as opposed to videos for whole class instruction, which we discuss under the category of “prerecorded lessons” above—can increase learner effort in multiple ways, including: allowing learners to focus on topics with which they need more help, letting them correct errors and misconceptions on their own, and making the material appealing through visual aids. They can increase understanding by breaking the material into smaller units and tackling common misconceptions.

In spite of the popularity of instructional videos, there is relatively little evidence on their effectiveness. Yet, two recent evaluations of different versions of the Khan Academy portal, which mainly relies on instructional videos, offer some insight into their impact. First, Ferman, Finamor, and Lima (2019) evaluated an initiative in 157 public primary and middle schools in five cities in Brazil in which the teachers of students in grades 5 and 9 were taken to the computer lab to learn math from the platform for 50 minutes per week. The authors found that, while the intervention slightly improved learners’ attitudes toward math, these changes did not translate into better performance in this subject. The authors hypothesized that this could be due to the reduction of teacher-led math instruction.

More recently, Büchel, Jakob, Kühnhanss, Steffen, and Brunetti (2020) evaluated an after-school, offline delivery of the Khan Academy portal in grades 3 through 6 in 302 primary schools in Morazán, El Salvador. Students in this study received 90 minutes per week of additional math instruction (effectively nearly doubling total math instruction per week) through teacher-led regular lessons, teacher-assisted Khan Academy lessons, or similar lessons assisted by technical supervisors with no content expertise. (Importantly, the first group provided differentiated instruction, which is not the norm in Salvadorian schools). All three groups outperformed both schools without any additional lessons and classrooms without additional lessons in the same schools as the program. The teacher-assisted Khan Academy lessons performed 0.24 SDs better, the supervisor-led lessons 0.22 SDs better, and the teacher-led regular lessons 0.15 SDs better, but the authors could not determine whether the effects across versions were different.

Together, these studies suggest that instructional videos work best when provided as a complement to, rather than as a substitute for, regular instruction. Yet, the main limitation of these studies is the multifaceted nature of the Khan Academy portal, which also includes other components found to positively improve learner achievement, such as differentiated instruction by students’ learning levels. While the software does not provide the type of personalization discussed above, learners are asked to take a placement test and, based on their score, educators assign them different work. Therefore, it is not clear from these studies whether the effects from Khan Academy are driven by its instructional videos or to the software’s ability to provide differentiated activities when combined with placement tests.

Games and gamification

Technology can also increase learner engagement by presenting exercises as games and/or by encouraging learner to play and compete with others (e.g., using leaderboards and rewards)—an approach known as “gamification.” Both approaches can increase learner motivation and effort by presenting learners with entertaining opportunities for practice and by leveraging peers as commitment devices.

There are very few studies on the effects of games and gamification in low- and middle-income countries. Recently, Araya, Arias Ortiz, Bottan, and Cristia (2019) evaluated an initiative in which grade 4 students in Santiago, Chile were required to participate in two 90-minute sessions per week during the school day with instructional math software featuring individual and group competitions (e.g., tracking each learner’s standing in his/her class and tournaments between sections). After nine months, the program led to improvements of 0.27 SDs in the national student assessment in math (it had no spillover effects on reading). However, it had mixed effects on non-academic outcomes. Specifically, the program increased learners’ willingness to use computers to learn math, but, at the same time, increased their anxiety toward math and negatively impacted learners’ willingness to collaborate with peers. Finally, given that one of the weekly sessions replaced regular math instruction and the other one represented additional math instructional time, it is not clear whether the academic effects of the program are driven by the software or the additional time devoted to learning math.

The prognosis:

How can school systems adopt interventions that match their needs.

Here are five specific and sequential guidelines for decisionmakers to realize the potential of education technology to accelerate student learning.

1. Take stock of how your current schools, educators, and learners are engaging with technology .

Carry out a short in-school survey to understand the current practices and potential barriers to adoption of technology (we have included suggested survey instruments in the Appendices); use this information in your decisionmaking process. For example, we learned from conversations with current and former ministers of education from various developing regions that a common limitation to technology use is regulations that hold school leaders accountable for damages to or losses of devices. Another common barrier is lack of access to electricity and Internet, or even the availability of sufficient outlets for charging devices in classrooms. Understanding basic infrastructure and regulatory limitations to the use of education technology is a first necessary step. But addressing these limitations will not guarantee that introducing or expanding technology use will accelerate learning. The next steps are thus necessary.

“In Africa, the biggest limit is connectivity. Fiber is expensive, and we don’t have it everywhere. The continent is creating a digital divide between cities, where there is fiber, and the rural areas.  The [Ghanaian] administration put in schools offline/online technologies with books, assessment tools, and open source materials. In deploying this, we are finding that again, teachers are unfamiliar with it. And existing policies prohibit students to bring their own tablets or cell phones. The easiest way to do it would have been to let everyone bring their own device. But policies are against it.” H.E. Matthew Prempeh, Minister of Education of Ghana, on the need to understand the local context.

2. Consider how the introduction of technology may affect the interactions among learners, educators, and content .

Our review of the evidence indicates that technology may accelerate student learning when it is used to scale up access to quality content, facilitate differentiated instruction, increase opportunities for practice, or when it increases learner engagement. For example, will adding electronic whiteboards to classrooms facilitate access to more quality content or differentiated instruction? Or will these expensive boards be used in the same way as the old chalkboards? Will providing one device (laptop or tablet) to each learner facilitate access to more and better content, or offer students more opportunities to practice and learn? Solely introducing technology in classrooms without additional changes is unlikely to lead to improved learning and may be quite costly. If you cannot clearly identify how the interactions among the three key components of the instructional core (educators, learners, and content) may change after the introduction of technology, then it is probably not a good idea to make the investment. See Appendix A for guidance on the types of questions to ask.

3. Once decisionmakers have a clear idea of how education technology can help accelerate student learning in a specific context, it is important to define clear objectives and goals and establish ways to regularly assess progress and make course corrections in a timely manner .

For instance, is the education technology expected to ensure that learners in early grades excel in foundational skills—basic literacy and numeracy—by age 10? If so, will the technology provide quality reading and math materials, ample opportunities to practice, and engaging materials such as videos or games? Will educators be empowered to use these materials in new ways? And how will progress be measured and adjusted?

4. How this kind of reform is approached can matter immensely for its success.

It is easy to nod to issues of “implementation,” but that needs to be more than rhetorical. Keep in mind that good use of education technology requires thinking about how it will affect learners, educators, and parents. After all, giving learners digital devices will make no difference if they get broken, are stolen, or go unused. Classroom technologies only matter if educators feel comfortable putting them to work. Since good technology is generally about complementing or amplifying what educators and learners already do, it is almost always a mistake to mandate programs from on high. It is vital that technology be adopted with the input of educators and families and with attention to how it will be used. If technology goes unused or if educators use it ineffectually, the results will disappoint—no matter the virtuosity of the technology. Indeed, unused education technology can be an unnecessary expenditure for cash-strapped education systems. This is why surveying context, listening to voices in the field, examining how technology is used, and planning for course correction is essential.

5. It is essential to communicate with a range of stakeholders, including educators, school leaders, parents, and learners .

Technology can feel alien in schools, confuse parents and (especially) older educators, or become an alluring distraction. Good communication can help address all of these risks. Taking care to listen to educators and families can help ensure that programs are informed by their needs and concerns. At the same time, deliberately and consistently explaining what technology is and is not supposed to do, how it can be most effectively used, and the ways in which it can make it more likely that programs work as intended. For instance, if teachers fear that technology is intended to reduce the need for educators, they will tend to be hostile; if they believe that it is intended to assist them in their work, they will be more receptive. Absent effective communication, it is easy for programs to “fail” not because of the technology but because of how it was used. In short, past experience in rolling out education programs indicates that it is as important to have a strong intervention design as it is to have a solid plan to socialize it among stakeholders.

Beyond reopening: A leapfrog moment to transform education?

On September 14, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) will host a webinar to discuss strategies, including around the effective use of education technology, for ensuring resilient schools in the long term and to launch a new education technology playbook “Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all?”

file-pdf Full Playbook – Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all? file-pdf References file-pdf Appendix A – Instruments to assess availability and use of technology file-pdf Appendix B – List of reviewed studies file-pdf Appendix C – How may technology affect interactions among students, teachers, and content?

About the Authors

Alejandro j. ganimian, emiliana vegas, frederick m. hess.

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Global Education Monitoring Report

Technology in education

As recognised in the Incheon Declaration, the achievement of SDG 4 is dependent on opportunities and challenges posed by technology, a relationship that was strengthened by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Technology appears in six out of the ten targets in the fourth Sustainable Development goal on education. These references recognize that technology affects education through five distinct channels, as input, means of delivery, skill, tool for planning, and providing a social and cultural context.

There are often bitter divisions in how the role of technology is viewed, however. These divisions are widening as the technology is evolving at breakneck speed.  The 2023 GEM Report on technology and education explores these debates, examining education challenges to which appropriate use of technology can offer solutions (access, equity and inclusion; quality; technology advancement; system management), while recognizing that many solutions proposed may also be detrimental.

The report also explores three system-wide conditions (access to technology, governance regulation, and teacher preparation) that need to be met for any technology in education to reach its full potential. It provides the mid-term assessment of progress towards SDG 4 , which was summarized in a brochure and promoted at the 2023 SDG Summit.

The 2023 GEM Report and 200 PEER country profiles on technology and education were launched on 26 July. A recording of the global launch event can be watched  here  and a south-south dialogue between Ministers of education in Latin America and Africa here .

Background material

Watch the launch event

Consultations

The GEM Report is partnering with Restless Development  to mobilize youth globally to inform the development of the 2023 Youth Report, exploring how technology can address various education challenges.

The GEM Report ran a consultation process to collect feedback and evidence on the proposed lines of research of the 2023 concept note.

Related resources

on technology and education

in quality and school infrastructure

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Monitoring SDG 4: Quality

The Benefits Of Using Technology In Learning

While technology opens new horizons, adapting to this is more challenging. What are the benefits of technology in learning and education?

contributed by Yulia Gorenko , Unicheck

While technology opens new horizons for education at home, adapting to this is more challenging. What are the pros and cons of remote teaching technology?

Education is one of the sectors hardest hit by the COVID-19 lockdown with social distancing measures meaning schools could be closed for the foreseeable future. 

However, thanks to technology, teachers are still able to continue teaching and students don’t lag behind. And while this is good news, many educators face new challenges due to this switch to remote learning, and for some, it takes time to accustom.

Let’s take a look at the challenges and advantages of remote teaching and technology for teachers.

Challenges Of Using Technology In Learning

In remote education, students are more responsible for the outcome of their learning. And as increasing numbers of teachers and students adapt to this new reality, more challenges are coming their way.

So many distractions for students

Online students face a huge number of distractions from their learning. And it’s no wonder: technology offers learners so many opportunities for entertainment or communication, they often participate in them during lessons — whether it be scrolling TikTok, chatting, or browsing. Every teacher now has to explore new technical and pedagogical means to keep students focused.

Adapting to round-the-clock availability

Going to a traditional school formed a clear daily routine: with a fixed duration of lessons, breaks, and free time after that. Now, it’s down to students to plan their day and distribute the workloads on their own. Teachers may also struggle with the 24-hour online availability. It’s hard to ‘escape’ from a remote school. On top of this, since learning and resting now takes place at home, it feels like school is open the whole time. 

Time and labor-consuming course planning

Using lots of new tools and techniques turns teachers into students too. 

While they already had everything ready for in-school lessons, each remote lesson now requires teachers to convert these learning materials into forms more suitable for online education.

Including hardware, software, training, and more.

The Benefits Of Using Technology For Learning

Technology opens up a new space for learning where students are allowed more freedom, and teachers are guides in an exciting new world of almost infinite knowledge.

Collaborative learning environment regardless of location

Without effective collaboration between learners and teachers, students often lose motivation due to the perceived lack of community and a sense of shared learning. This is why it is critical to use various forms of online interaction, from text messages and video conferencing to collaborative interactive projects and the latest online platforms, to support students and keep them engaged. 

Encouraging active participation

Remote teaching gives learners flexibility you won’t find in the traditional classroom setting. Instead of having all students participate simultaneously, teachers can schedule separate group or individual lessons, give personalized content, and always stay in touch.

Jerry Blumengarten, a connected educator with more than 30 years of experience, suggests, “To make distant learning work, you should prepare tutorials on the use of the tech tools you will be using for your instructors and students. This should be done in a step-by-step simple way to avoid any confusion and mistakes. Provide a contact number where you can be reached to answer any questions and offer further help to your students.”

Engaging Students In New Ways

Online distance learning allows you to move from static learning materials to more dynamic interactive media content. Another benefit of technology in learning is that students often learn faster when they are not only listening to the teacher and reading textbooks but also participating in engaging academic activity. That’s why it’s a great idea to encourage learning using short quizzes, exercises with elements of gamification , interactive apps, and more.

Easier Plagiarism Detection

Technology is your friend when it comes to academic integrity, and is the bestway to effectively check works for plagiarism. Text similarity detection tools like Unicheck thoroughly scan students’ texts for plagiarism and help teachers see where students have relied too heavily on other sources. There are dozens of reasons why students cheat, but it’s the teacher’s role to teach them to realize that this won’t help  – either in school or in life.

Assessment And Grading Automation

You can use various interactive tests and multiple-choice quizzes to quickly and easily check student knowledge. Utilize online grading tools to organize your grade book, see overall marks for every student, and empower them to follow their success. 

Changing Roles For Student And Teacher

With information easily available online, the teacher’s role as a subject expert becomes less critical. It’s the ability to guide students through these volumes of information that really matters in modern education.

At the same time, finding the most effective ways of learning from different sources together with students makes teachers co-learners rather than the sole source of knowledge. And this is exactly the behavior that can inspire students and encourage them to study beyond the curriculum. It might look like teachers are losing control, but in fact, these new approaches build real trust and respect within the class.

Adopting Progressive Educational Technologies

Information technology in education provides a large variety of new methods for teachers. Mobile educational apps, collaborative platforms, learning analytics, and so many more innovative tools and approaches make the learning process much more appealing for both student and teacher.

Access To The Latest Information 

It takes a long time to update academic textbooks and other printed materials, so they often contain obsolete knowledge, especially when it comes to modern science or contemporary history. But online information is dynamic and always updated. On the internet, new information is spread instantly, and can be instantly integrated into the learning process making this one of the most powerful benefits of technology in learning.

From what we’ve seen so far, technology in education is more than just the latest trend. Instead, it’s a powerful tool capable of greatly enriching teachers’ work and being thoroughly engaging for students. However, like any tool, technology requires a sensible, balanced approach. 

The good news is there’s so much room for experiments, every teacher can find the best approach. In the words of Amy Hollier, the Head of Blended Learning at Heart of Worcestershire College, UK, and a remote learning enthusiast: “These circumstances have brought digital to the fore and really offered the opportunity to explore different methods of delivery and communication with students outside of the institution. I think we will all have a new, improved approach to teaching and learning digitally due to this period of time.”

TeachThought is an organization dedicated to innovation in education through the growth of outstanding teachers.

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Exploring the Benefits of Technology in Education

One of the most important aspects of technology in education is its ability to level the field of opportunity for students John King , Jr., U.S. Secretary of Education 2016–2017

From the printing press to the virtual classroom, technology has long been vital for simplifying and empowering teachers and learners. Technology in education enhances learning opportunities for students, improves engagement, and facilitates efficient teaching and classroom management—but only when it is properly implemented.

Today, technology benefits learners by preparing them for the digital age and promoting 21st-century skills. Here’s what educators need to know about maximizing the benefits of technology in education, the most popular technology tools to consider, and how to best use technology within the classroom.

Benefits of Technology in Education

Technology is a versatile tool, one that can affect all aspects of education—from assisting with the creation of curricula to facilitating communication, automating evaluations, and empowering learners to be more active in their own learning. When properly employed, educational technology can result in the following benefits:

• Increased engagement and motivation: One of the greatest impacts of modern technology is how it can make learning more interactive and engaging for all learners. Multimedia instruction that uses audio, video, animation, or software applications can help learners visualize and understand complex concepts. The gamification of learning through educational apps and other software presents novel ways to capture learners’ attention and encourage active participation.

Kids coming out of our SmartLab are thinkers. They don’t just do school, they’re engaged in school. They question things. They wonder about things. They do not simply complete a task. This sounds silly, but our kids are not absent on the days they know they’re coming to the SmartLab. Paige Kraus, Facilitator, Encompass Heights Elementary | Public |Colorado Springs, CO

• Differentiated and personalized instruction: Technology’s capability to differentiate instruction is a powerful tool for meeting the diverse needs of learners. With adaptive software and online tools, teachers can tailor their instruction, resources, and activities to accommodate the different abilities of individual learners. Providing various resources through technology allows learners to make meaning of content using multiple senses, helping them learn at their own pace and level. Instructors can optimize the presentation of content depending on the needs of the classroom. For example, to teach the impact of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the Civil Rights Movement, it may be valuable to review audio and video recordings of the speech alongside the written text so students can see how King’s emphasis on certain phrases, words, and imagery augment his message.
• Greater accessibility: Assistive technologies and software can provide support for learners who require special accommodations, such as those with learning or physical disabilities. By making education more accessible to all, technology can be transformational and empowering for students with and without special needs. For example, the Universal Design for Learning guidelines recommend implementing multiple ways of making meaning through auditory, visual, and textual information. By providing multiple ways for learners to compose and communicate their ideas and navigate and organize content, you reduce barriers and maximize learning opportunities. In effect, learning that works for those with accessibility requirements works for everyone.

We purposely paired [our students with dyslexia] with SmartLab because [they] struggle with literacy. But research shows us they are highly, highly creative… They come to SmartLab, they don’t have to have those literacy skills. They thrive. They know they can use their creativity and their problem solving and they’re going to be successful. Paige Kraus

• Increased and easier access to information: Digital technology and the Internet provide both students and teachers with greater access to information and educational resources. For learners, this means more ways to conduct research, exposure to global news, and the ability to collaborate with other classrooms anywhere in the world. For instructors, this can offer more ways to collaborate with other education professionals, additional resources for professional development, and a more comprehensive overview of student performance.
• Enhanced collaboration and communication: Digital and online technology offers learners the ability to communicate with their teachers and peers—even across geographical boundaries. Online programs can support teamwork and collaboration skills, giving learners the means to draw and write together on projects even if they’re on opposite sides of the country. Other communication tools, such as video conferencing and learning management systems, offer learners more opportunities for one-on-one meetings with instructors and more options for completing assignments while at home or away from the classroom.

I think that collaboration and teamwork really is built in a space like a SmartLab to encourage ideas of how [students] can perform in a future job… Having some foundational skills of collaboration and communication and teamwork are super important. If [students] have a partner, they want to pull them in, and they’re more than happy to communicate with their partners. Kay Boldrjack, Facilitator, Charles Hay World School | Public | Englewood, CO.

• More tools for providing immediate feedback: Not only can technology make it more convenient for an instructor to provide feedback; but automated programs can also provide instant feedback on assignments, allowing learners to identify and address their mistakes promptly. More advanced programs can even provide differentiated and scaffolded adaptive feedback, which can help students move beyond making simple corrections and guide them in creating more effective revisions. Technology also presents the opportunity for instructors to receive more direct feedback from learners. The use of student response systems, such as smartphones or other mobile devices, can provide a quick and immediate way for instructors to survey a class to see if instruction is clear or if more explanation is required.
• Increased efficiency and organization: For both instructors and learners, technology can help save time and effort when completing tasks. Different platforms can make it easier for instructors to manage administrative tasks such as lesson planning, grading, and taking attendance. Students can benefit from instant access to project resources, assignment instructions, and their grades.
• Long-term cost savings: Although there is an initial cost for investing in new technology, over time digital resources and online materials can reduce the costs associated with replacing traditional textbooks and printed materials. Making the shift to Open Educational Resources (OER) can provide additional cost savings and increase access to content.
• Relevant to real-world technological skills: As technology is increasingly an integral part of modern life and the workforce, technology in the classroom plays a key role in helping students develop digital skills. Beyond preparing for future jobs, educational technology can help students learn how to be responsible in today’s digital world.

By moving beyond textbooks and theory, investing in SmartLab technology gives students a chance to succeed in an ever-changing, fast moving environment while fostering essential skills such as communication, flexibility, creativity, and collaboration. We’re equipping students with the tools, resources, and confidence to adapt to new technologies and ideas that push the world forward. Travis Brantingham, Head of School, The Principia School | St. Louis, MO.

Popular Educational Technology Tools and Programs

There are hundreds of educational tools, software, platforms, and other technological resources available—so finding the right one that fits your school’s needs and budget can be a challenge. Here’s a list of some of the most popular and useful tools to help point you in the right direction.

Online learning

• Khan Academy — Free virtual learning classroom featuring videos and quizzes for students ages 5+.
• Explain Everything — Interactive whiteboard for teaching, creating interactive lessons, and collaborating in real-time.
• ThingLink — Multimedia editor for creating interactive images, videos, and virtual tours with additional information and links.

Student creation

• Code.org — Nonprofit platform that provides resources for students of all ages to code.
• Animationish — Web-based animation creation program, designed primarily for elementary students.
• Canva for Education — Widely-used photo and video editing program that provides access to thousands of templates that can help students start creating quickly.

Virtual meetings

• Zoom — Online video conferencing platform for virtual instruction, meetings, webinars, and live chat.
• Google Meet — Online video conferencing platform available to anyone with a Google account.
• Flip — Free web and mobile app that enables learners and instructors to record, edit, and share video assignments.

Flipped learning

• Animoto — Simple video maker program used to create instructional videos or enable learners to create their own content.
• EdPuzzle — Easy-to-use media creation tool that combines text, video, and audio annotations to deepen learner comprehension and retention
• Knowmia — Video creation program with assessment and analytics tools to track student engagement.

Classroom management

• LANschool — Classroom management software to provide online one-on-one learning experiences and collaboration through connected classrooms.
• Hāpara — Comprehensive learning environment software that can be integrated directly into Chromebook management.
• Class Dojo — Free classroom management system designed for primary school learners.

Gamification

• Prodigy — Adaptive learning platform that provides students with personalized and gamified learning for math.
• Nearpod — Platform to create interactive slides, videos, and gamified activities to engage students.
• Quizizz — Platform to create gamified assessments and interactive lessons for all content areas and grade levels.

Looking for additional lists of educational tools and resources for STEM classes? See our companion blog post on STEM Education Companies & Organizations .

8 Tips for Implementing Educational Technology in the Classroom

While technology offers numerous benefits, its integration into the classroom requires intentional planning, training, and support. Whatever the tools or applications your school will use, remember to stay true to the overall goals of improving learner access, engagement, and communication.

• Always evaluate technology to determine how it will support intended learning outcomes. In what ways will it enable students to achieve the objectives of a lesson or project? Are there ways to gamify certain assignments and topics? Be willing to take risks and explore new technology tools.
• Consider how the technology will fit into your classroom and existing lesson plans. What resources will you have access to? For example, will learners share a pod of computers? Will they need to schedule time to access a computer lab? Or will students have 1:1 laptops or Chromebooks? The resources available both in the classroom and at home will determine how you can enhance student learning.
• Be sure to support students with clear instructions and guidance. Aside from understanding the goals of a project or assignment, learners will need to be confident in using the technology and accessing all of the resources. Consider offering training sessions or setting up a tech support system to help students who are struggling. Don’t worry if you aren’t a technology expert yourself; you should be able to make use of your school’s IT support services (see #7) or review online tutorials to build your own proficiency with technology tools.
• You’ll want to monitor and assess student progress to make sure they’re not struggling with the technology and that they’re using it appropriately. Use available analytics features to gather data, track student progress, and provide immediate feedback when needed. This can help you identify areas where students need additional support and will inform how you can adjust your teaching strategies accordingly. Consider employing polls or survey platforms to gather student feedback about what they like about using the technology and where they feel they need assistance.
• Developing readers at the elementary level can use technology to create graphical representations of stories using simple “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) tools.
• Middle school learners can enhance the effectiveness of their presentations and projects by using online tools for research and simulating complex science phenomena.
• High school learners can leverage more advanced technology tools to understand, model, simulate, and create with increased sophistication, as well as share their achievements online to reach wider audiences.
• Always have a non-technology backup plan. Machines break, software can have bugs, and the internet can go out. In the case of a minor issue, you can consider troubleshooting the problem with the students for an impromptu learning exercise. And, of course, always know who to call for help.
• Make use of your school’s IT staff and tech support. Beyond solving problems, you should find ways to collaborate with them to thoroughly vet the privacyand safety standards of any new technology before rolling it out in the classroom. Forming strong relationships with tech support personnel can make it easier to request timely support and integration of tools. You can also find new avenues for integration through their suggestions.
• Remember that technology can never fully replace the human relationships essential to effective teaching and learning. When developing your curriculum, consider how to balance educational technology with established best practices in teaching to provide well-rounded experiences for your students. Technology works best when it supplements existing best practices in the classroom to provide new opportunities for students. For example, when Danbury Local School District saw that standardized test scores had plateaued for their gifted students, they started looking for a way to challenge their gifted learners beyond simply assigning more complex worksheets or projects. Read the full case study to see how the incorporation of technology into the classroom helped them achieve an increase in standardized testing scores and improvement in overall student behavior.

How does technology in education benefit students?

Educational technology enhances the learning experience, providing greater accessibility to content, allowing for more personalized instruction, fostering communication and collaboration, and preparing them for the challenges of the modern world.

How does technology in education benefit instructors?

Educational technology supports teachers both in instruction and professional development. Edtech can automate tasks, enable instant feedback, and provide access to learning analytics and additional resources. It also provides instructors with more tools for professional collaboration and opportunities to attend meetings, training sessions, webinars, and more.

How can I get the most out of using tech in the classroom?

Instructors should start by ensuring the use of technology in the classroom aligns with established learning objectives and standards. From there, talk with IT and tech support to discuss how technology can be incorporated and supported. Over time, evaluate the effectiveness of the technology and how learners are using the available tools, being open to feedback and making adjustments where necessary. 

How can we support students to use technology appropriately in the classroom?

Instruction, direction, and oversight are important to ensure that learners are using technology appropriately and safely. Learners should have clear directions and expectations about how to use tools and software. Instructors will need to provide guidance to students—either directly within the classroom or by reviewing their progress online. 

How can we protect student privacy when using technology?

It’s important to have a designated expert identify and vet all websites and applications for use. That person should verify that the terms of service and privacy policy are clear in how they collect user data. Once that designated expert creates a list of approved technology, learners and instructors should only use applications and software from that list. Parental consent should be required for any disclosure of personal data.

How can technology support learning outside of the classroom?

Technology can support learning outside of the classroom by providing opportunities for independent study, personalized learning, and continued skill development. Students can access multimedia resources such as eBooks, digital textbooks, videos, and interactive programs to supplement their in-class instruction. Technology can also allow for flipped classrooms, where students watch videos of lectures while at home, and then come into the classroom to participate in activities related to that instruction.

Phil Mayhoffer

Phil Mayhoffer loves to explore how creativity, curiosity, and play interact throughout the process of learning. As a middle school teacher for four years, he dove into design thinking and project-based learning to make his classroom a place to foster and support innovation in his students. He believes that one of the primary purposes of our existence is to learn how to create and thereby contribute to the beauty of the world around us. Phil strives to weave that purpose into the work he does by setting the stage for rich learning experiences that harness the power of play and empower learners to make a difference.

Looking for ways to choose educational technology for your own classroom?

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How technology is reinventing education.

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of  Stanford Graduate School of Education  (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the  Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately  worried  that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or  coach  students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the  AI + Education initiative  at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of  CRAFT  (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the  Digital Learning initiative  at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of  virtual field trips  to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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Use of Technology in Education: A Complete Guide  

• June 27th 2023
• 13 minute read

Technology in education is changing at a faster pace than ever before. The classroom doesn’t look like it did five years ago, let alone 30 years ago! With good reason too. Technology in education has a number of benefits for both teachers and students.

Want to stay in the know? Read on to discover everything you need to know about the use of technology in education...  

Table of contents

A brief history of technology in education

How important is the use of technology in education, what are the benefits of using technology in education , potential challenges of digital learning, how to optimise the use of technology in education  .

Firstly, let’s explore how the use of technology in education has changed over time. There’s a vast array of equipment that can be classed as technology in education. From the overhead projectors and photocopiers, which made it easier to display and distribute learning materials, to mobile devices, which allow for new methods of instruction altogether.

However, it wasn’t until the 1980s that digital technology made its mark on education. This was the decade when computers went from an experimental technology to a mass-market consumer product. That shift was reflected in schools, many of which invested in a single computer for basic learning applications. The Education Reform Act in 1988 made some form of information and communication technology (ICT) compulsory for all pupils in state schools from 5 to 16.

In the 1990s, the advent of the World Wide Web gave a glimpse into what computers were capable of. Publicly available from 1993, it facilitated the use of search engines and email on a regular basis. By the end of the 1990s, most primary and secondary (K-12) schools had a computer lab equipped with enough machines for a full class to use.

This growth continued in the new millennium. In 2000, for example, the UK National Curriculum was updated with the recommendation that Information Communications Technology (ICT) should be embedded across the board. By 2009,  97% of US classrooms  had at least one computer and 93% had internet access.

From the turn of the millennium, digital technology has been growing in prevalence within education – and it’s not just about computers. The early 2000s saw interactive whiteboards introduced. We’ve since seen a wide range of technology make its way into education – from portable and handheld devices in the 2010s to increasingly sophisticated software for learners and educators.

Millions of students in schools around the world use technology every day. From captivating imaginations to saving teachers’ time, modern technology is now part of the furniture in education – and it’s here to stay.

Looking back at the progress of technology in education, you can see that it’s only going in one direction. Up to and including the 1980s, there was no such thing as digital technology in education. In the 1990s and 2000s, IT was a single subject on the curriculum. Fast-forward through the 2010s, and it’s integral to practically everything schools teach.

As technology becomes more important to modern life, it will naturally become more important in education too. Put simply, it can’t be ignored. Educators that try to do so may miss out on the benefits we outline below.

Technology can benefit education in many ways. From helping students learn in new and exciting ways, developing communication and teamworking skills or improving accessibility, teachers can use technology to adapt learning to each student’s needs.  @Rocco_Avantis  - Educational Specialist, Avantis Education  

We’ve covered how important the use of technology in education is. But what are the actual benefits of using edtech in the classroom? Here are some of the advantages of educational technology for students and schools…

It creates engaging learning environments

Technology has a positive impact on student engagement,  according to research . It can help educators create exciting, engaging and memorable lessons. Needless to say, higher engagement makes pupils more motivated and makes lessons more enjoyable for both students and teachers.Whether they’re using virtual reality headsets like  ClassVR  to explore the impossible, tablets to study the night sky, or coding platforms like  CoSpaces  to create virtual worlds – the use of technology in education can truly grab students’ attention! While traditional teaching methods are typically effective at engaging some students in a classroom, integrating edtech into their pedagogy can help educators engage every   student in the class. 

Technology in education prepares students for the future

Additionally, digital learning helps students improve those invaluable digital skills which are fundamental in modern life. While today’s learners are naturally proficient with technology like smart phones and computers, using them in an education setting throughout K-12 will familiarise them with more practical applications.As we’ve already covered, technology is a huge part of our lives, and it isn’t going anywhere. This means it’s  key that children learn how to use technology while growing up , so they’re equipped throughout the rest of their lives! Students can learn some extremely important skills by using technology in education. With the rapid rate of technology innovation, simply being to adapt to new technologies is an invaluable skill in itself. 

Improves interaction and communication

Technology can also improve communication and collaboration at schools. That could be collaboration amongst students or communication between students and teachers through an accessible or even anonymous platform.

Students can work together, create shared projects and engage with their peers through technology. What’s better, it doesn’t matter if they’re in the classroom together or working from home, which brings us onto…

Remote access

Gone are the days of groups of students crowding around an A4 worksheet, now students can communicate and  interact with their peers from anywhere in the world ! 

Accessing learning materials remotely has multiple benefits for schools, teachers and pupils. Firstly, students don’t have to miss out on work if bad weather, illness or other circumstances prevent them from getting to school in person. Additionally, it’s easier to set homework with the benefits listed above – engaging, collaborative and tailored – which can be accessed remotely.

Fosters creativity and problem-solving skills

Classroom technology can help students set their imaginations free! When aligned with a teacher’s pedagogy, it offers endless opportunities to get creative while also practising problem-solving. Students can build anything, explore anywhere and so much more! For example, a  study by Gallup  showed that 85% of teachers who focus on creative learning and use technology in transformative ways see their students more engaged in independent problem-solving. 

Saves teachers' time

If you ask a teacher what their most precious resource is, we'd wager that the majority would say time. There’s always so much that needs doing, and so little time to do it! But using technology in the classroom can give teachers some precious time back. It can be as simple as  saving documents and lesson plans in Google Drive , taking attendance with nothing but a few clicks, or reporting on results. Technology can help educators focus their time on what matters, the teaching! 

How is technology used in education?

There are thousands (potentially even millions!) of technologies that educators can integrate into schools and  smart classrooms . All of these tools have the potential to transform learning when correctly aligned to the pedagogy of the teacher. Here are some examples of the technology used in education:   

Interactive whiteboards

Also known as a smart board, these large interactive displays have a variety of applications. They can be used as a simple touchscreen display where teachers can annotate, for example, or connected multiple devices to create interactive quizzes, polls and tasks.

VR & AR

One of the most exciting applications of technology in education is that of  virtual reality (VR) . Using VR headsets,  teachers can immerse pupils in a range of virtual environments , such as historical re-enactments and science explorations. Rather than being given static information, pupils become part of the content they’re learning about.

Augmented reality (AR)  is a similar concept, which makes education more engaging and immersive. While VR refers to a completely virtual environment created by technology, AR puts virtual elements into the real world.

Both augmented and  virtual reality in education  open a whole new world of opportunities for teachers and pupils. That applies to all age groups and ability levels. From as young as 4 years, VR can be used to  transport children to the settings of books  to make reading more immersive and spark their imaginations even more. At a later stage, the tools are still invaluable to  engage students in important topics from the curriculum  such as the Battle of Britain, and, in turn, spark more meaningful discussions.Virtual reality is also hugely effective tool for students with special educational needs. Used as a form of assistive technology, it has been found to  engage children who struggle with intrinsic motivation , for example, as well as  building up confidence ahead of new experiences with personalized 360 videos .

The metaverse

Since 2021, the metaverse has gone from one of Mark Zuckerberg’s eccentric ideas to a potentially useful concept for business and education. Strictly speaking, it’s based on VR, discussed above. However, the Metaverse goes beyond this by creating a virtual environment, in which all students can participate. The metaverse can provide a shared learning environment for students in class and those at home.

Mobile devices, tablets and laptops

Internet-enabled devices such as laptops and tablets are a great way for students to work in the classroom. They can be used to support independent research and fact-checking or create more engaging classroom activities like quizzes. Tablets can also encourage student feedback to help teachers provide the support they need.

Devices are at the very core of technology in education. To provide a level playing field for all students, schools must, where possible, provide reliable devices that have all the functionality required for the lessons being delivered.

Learning management systems

An LMS is a digital platform that stores educational materials. They became particularly important for teachers during the pandemic, allowing them to distribute materials to students remotely. However, they also provide a place where educators can manage the curriculum and course content more effectively.

Projectors & TV screens

While projectors have been around for some time, they’re continually advancing in terms of quality and functionality. As well as displaying multimedia content to engage classes, they can be used to facilitate collaboration and group projects. Similarly, TV screens facilitate multimedia content within the classroom, including video, music and text.

Microphones & speakers

Audio equipment is vital for larger teaching environments, such as sports halls and assembly theatres. It maintains student engagement and are particularly helpful for students with hearing impairments or those with English as a second language. Needless to say, microphones and speakers are also essentials for any music department!

3D printers

Primarily, 3D printing can be used to create models that allow a more hands-on approach to learning. That could be organs in biology as part of a  STEM lab , maps in geography, or even 3D shapes for mathematics.

3D design tools

From art and architecture to design and engineering, 3D design has a vast array of applications in the modern world. As such, it’s a great thing for people to become familiar with from a young age, given that it’s relevant to so many career paths.

HD and 360-degree cameras 

Cameras are a great tool for creative subjects in schools, but they can also be used as a way to improve teaching and learning. By recording lessons, schools can obtain valuable resources for staff training – not to mention providing a better experience for remote learners.

AI & robotics

Artificial intelligence has a variety of educational applications. It can save teachers time with marking, for example, especially in objective subjects like Maths. On the other hand, AI-based applications are becoming increasingly effective for language subjects.

Yes – really. Esports is a growing industry which offers real opportunities to students as they progress through education. Firstly, there are several parallels between education and esports, such as teamwork, communication and problem solving. By acknowledging these and understanding why children play games, schools can help students develop key skills that will benefit other areas of their education.

Remote learning

Technology was a lifeline for education during Covid-19 lockdowns, when it facilitated remote learning for students of all ages. Going forward, it can still play an important role. That could be for those who can’t make it to the classroom for whatever reason or just all pupils benefitting from more engaging homework assignments through purpose-built apps.

Blended learning

Blended learning is a practice that combines technologies like those above, with a face-to-face environment where teachers and students are physically present. Conventional classroom methods are also integrated, creating a ‘best of both worlds’ approach.

As with any new development, education technology (or ‘edtech’) isn’t without its challenges. Here are some of the potential hurdles which teachers and educational organisations need to overcome.

Disengagement

While engagement is seen as a common advantage of edtech, it can also have the opposite effect without the right planning and implementation.  Howard, Ma & Yang  found that teachers need to attend to students’ different capabilities with technology to avoid disengagement as a result of a lack of experience or confidence.

Teacher training

It’s not just students who can struggle with edtech. Teachers may also find it difficult to use certain technology or adapt their teaching methods to get the most out of it. In this case, professional development is a must, especially for experienced teachers who didn’t cover such technology in their initial teacher training.

Finally, there’s the issue of access. Not everyone has access to the same resources for digital learning. That applies to schools, who might not have the adequate funding for the technology they need. But it can also extend to students, who don’t have devices or reliable internet at home. For the latter, schools should try however they can to support students and provide the resources they need for e-learning if it’s a key part of the curriculum. In the UK, these two issues actually go hand in hand, with  pupil premium funding  provided for disadvantaged pupils. This funding can be used for things like VR technology to provide teaching aid and targeted academic support.

“The use of technology in education is vastly important. Technology provides educators with opportunities to enhance teaching and learning, but the way it’s actually used in the classroom is the most important factor. The teacher's pedagogy is always key.”  @Rocco_Avantis  - Educational Specialist, Avantis Education  

It’s not just the technology that’s important. The way educators use technology is just as crucial. You can have all the edtech you could possibly imagine in a classroom, but the educator leading the class is the most vital component.  Pedagogy doesn’t come from the technology , it comes from the teacher.  

To put it simply, every school and class is different. This means there’s not one hard and fast rule to maximising the use of technology in education. Instead, educators need to align their pedagogy and technology to the needs of the school, staff and students, whether it’s K-12, special educational needs or adult learning.For example, the use of technology in a charter school or rural, affluent area will be completely different to an inner-city secondary school based in a less affluent area. Similarly, the use of technology for high attaining students will be completely different to students with additional educational needs. It’s down to educators to look at their specific context, then decide what   technology to use and how   to use it to benefit the students in learning.  

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15 Reasons Why The Use of Technology in Education Benefits Educators and Learners

Technology has been around for quite some time. Still, it has only recently become integral to the educational system. But why is this so?

One reason is that technology has only recently advanced to the point where it is easily accessible and affordable for educational institutions. Additionally, the internet and online resources have made it easier for educators to incorporate technology into their curriculum.

This has led to more engaging, interactive learning experiences, improved teaching quality and efficiency, and increased access to education for disadvantaged learners.

Here are some benefits educators and learners gain from using technology in their classrooms:

1. Increased Engagement and Motivation for Learners

Educators can now create multimedia presentations, interactive games, or social media networks to increase learners’ curiosity about a topic. Educators can also use technology to help with motivation by allowing learners to interact with peers worldwide through social networks.

Read more: 5 Proven Strategies to Engage Students in Online Learning, Teachers Must Try!

2. Improved Communication and Collaboration Between Educators and Learners

Educators can communicate with learners and each other more effectively. This is particularly important in the classroom, where educators can share resources and ideas via technology like email, discussion boards, and online collaboration platforms. This helps learners feel more connected to their educators and make them feel like they are being treated as individuals rather than just another number in class

3. Greater Access to Educational Resources and Materials

Educational tools are improving the quality of education. Learners have better access to various educational resources such as online textbooks, videos, and simulations. These new tools benefit learners by giving them more hands-on experience with the material being taught. 

The learner also has access to their educator’s lesson plans, which allows them to work ahead if needed. This allows for more thorough preparation for future lessons by educators and learners.

4. Increased Flexibility and Convenience in Course Delivery

Education can now be done in various ways. Technology has made it possible for educators to create interactive lessons on the fly, and make them available to all learners regardless of their location or physical presence in class.

Learners can also learn at their own pace, which is especially beneficial for learners who find it difficult to fit into traditional classroom settings.

5. Enhanced Ability to Personalise and Differentiate Instruction

Technology has been shown to impact learners’ grades and future success. Learning management systems (LMS), educational apps and games, virtual reality (VR) tools, augmented reality (AR) tools, etc., can provide individualised learning experiences and help educators assess learner progress regularly so they can provide further instruction or remediation as needed.

6. Improved Organisation and Management of Class Materials and Assignments

The convenience of online tools benefit learners to easily access their assignments. Tools make it easier for learners to remain organised when keeping track of all their assignments. Educators can also use these tools to help assign homework and monitor progress, thus helping them keep track of work done outside the classroom.

7. Increased Learner Autonomy and Self-Directed Learning

Technology can be used in education in various ways. One way is to allow learners to be more autonomous learners who can direct their own learning and practice skills independently when necessary. This can help them develop an understanding of complex concepts on their own time through independent study rather than having to wait for instruction from educators.

8. Enhanced Ability to Assess Learner Progress and Understanding in Real-Time

Using technology and other tools in a classroom can help educators identify learner understanding and progress. This allows educators to quickly identify areas that need more attention or even reteach a concept if it’s clear that not everyone understands it. Learners are less likely to get frustrated if they know they can return and fix something immediately.

Read more: 2 Types of Assessment and How Technology Can Help to Assess your Students

9. Increased Multimedia and Interactive Tools for Enhanced Learning Experiences

Multimedia tools have had a major impact on educators by making lessons richer than before. These tools are useful because videos, animations, and simulations can make it easier for learners to understand complex concepts in new ways.

10. Greater Opportunities for Distance and Online Learning

Now, learners can take classes and earn degrees remotely. Thanks to the internet, they have available distance learning classes and can use resources online with guidance from educators. 

This has made education more accessible to those who may have previously encountered limitations such as geographical or time restrictions. Online learning platforms and virtual classrooms have opened up a world of information to learners worldwide.

11. Improved Ability to Monitor Learner Engagement and Participation in Class

With the help of learning analytics and tracking tools, it is possible to monitor learner engagement and participation in the classroom. These tools help educators understand what content learners are struggling with so they can focus on those areas during future lessons. This way, educators can tailor their lessons based on each learner’s needs, interests and abilities.

12. Improved Ability to Provide Feedback and Support for Learners

Learners who have difficulty with an assignment or concept can ask the educator questions through online chat or by email. Educators can provide real-time feedback and support, resulting in a tremendous impact of creating a safe space that encourages learners to take risks and make mistakes without fear of embarrassment or failure.

13. Greater Access to a Variety of Educational Apps and Software

Technology has impacted and benefited the education sector by providing new resources, including language learning apps, Math apps, interactive e-books, and more. For example, learners can use apps to learn a new language through games or use flashcards to help memorise words or even entire languages.

14. Enhanced Ability to Conduct Research and Gather Information

Learners today have a wealth of benefits by easily accessing information at their fingertips through the internet, which means they can quickly research topics for a homework assignment and find insight into questions. This can impact learners becoming more self-reliant learners who can find their solutions instead of waiting for someone to provide them with answers.

15. Improved Ability to Integrate Technology Into Curriculum and Instruction

One major benefit of using technology in education is that it allows educators to integrate it into their lesson plans more easily. Technology also can be used to teach Math and Science in a new way that makes it easier for all learners to understand.

Learners can also participate in collaborative projects or assignments at home or school with their peers worldwide!

Go Above and Beyond with Technology in Education

We can all agree that technology is quickly becoming crucial to education. Maybe you’re wondering what exactly this means? When it comes to technology and its impact on education, learners are now able to go beyond just learning in the classroom and beyond their textbooks, notes, and educators.

Learners can now expand and enhance their understanding of important and relevant topics, issues, and concepts. These days it only makes sense to continue exploring the place technology has in higher education and make it a part of more innovative learning environments.

If you are exploring any technology to be used in your classroom, we introduce you to SmartJen – the innovative digital assessment and personalised learning platform that empowers educators to effectively identify and address learners’ learning gaps. 

With SmartJen, educators can easily identify learners’ strengths and weaknesses through detailed analytics and reports. Moreover, the platform’s question bank feature enables educators to quickly create customised worksheets tailored to their learners’ needs. Say goodbye to tedious manual assessments and hello to efficient and effective learner evaluations with SmartJen. Click button below to get a demo!

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10 Importance of Technology in Education: A Comprehensive Overview

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The future of educational technology

Dan Schwartz is a cognitive psychologist and dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

He says that artificial intelligence is a different beast, but he is optimistic about its future in education. “It’s going to change stuff. It’s really an exciting time,” he says. Schwartz imagines a world not where AI is the teacher, but where human students learn by teaching AI chatbots key concepts. It’s called the Protégé Effect, Schwartz says, providing host Russ Altman a glimpse of the future of education on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast.

Listen on your favorite podcast platform:

Related : Dan Schwartz , professor of educational technology

[00:00:00] Dan Schwartz: You know, the tough question for me is, should you let the kid use ChatGPT during the test? Right? And we had this argument over calculators, right? And finally they came up with ways to ask questions where it was okay if the kids had calculators. Because the calculator was doing the routine stuff and that's not really what you cared about. What you cared about was, could the kid be innovative? Could they take another, a second approach to solve a problem? Things like that.

[00:00:33] Russ Altman: This is Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything, and I'm your host, Russ Altman. If you're enjoying The Future of Everything podcast, please hit the follow button in the app that you're listening to now. This will guarantee that you never miss an episode. 

[00:00:46] Today, Dan Schwartz will tell us how AI is impacting education. He studies educational technology and he finds that there's a lot of promise and a lot of worries about how we're going to use AI in the classroom. It's the future of educational technology. Before we get started, please remember to follow the show in the app that you listen to. You'll be alerted to all of our episodes and it'll make sure that you never miss the future of anything.

[00:01:16] You know, the rise of AI has been on people's minds ever since the release of ChatGPT. Especially the powerful one that started to do things that were scary good. We've seen people using it in business, in sports, in entertainment, and definitely in education. When it comes to education, there are some fundamental questions, however, are we teaching students how to use AI? Or are we teaching students? How do we assess them? Can teachers grade papers with AI? Can students write papers with AI? Why is anybody doing anything? Why don't we just have the AI talk to itself all day? These are real questions that come up in AI. 

[00:01:55] Fortunately, we're going to be talking to Dan Schwartz, who's a professor of education and a dean of the School of Education at Stanford University about how AI is impacting education.

[00:02:06] Dan, the release of ChatGPT has had an impact all over the world, people are using it in all kinds of ways. And clearly one of the areas that AI, especially generative AI has made impact is in education. Students are clearly using it, teachers are thinking about using it or using it. You're the Dean of Education at Stanford. What's your take on the situation right now for AI in education? 

[00:02:33] Dan Schwartz: Okay, so lots of answers to that, but, but, you know, the thing I've enjoyed the most is, uh, showing it to people and watching their reaction. So I'm a cognitive psychologist. I study creativity, learning, what it means to understand. And you show this to people and you just see them go, oh my lord.

[00:02:53] And then the next thing you see is they begin to say, uh, what's left for humans? Like what's left? And then they sort of say, wait a minute, will there be any jobs? And then finally they sort of say. Oh my goodness, education needs to change. And as a dean who raises money for a school, this is the best thing to ever happen. No, whether it's good or bad, it doesn't matter. Everybody realizes it's going to change stuff. And so it's really an exciting time. 

[00:03:22] Russ Altman: So that is really good news. I have to say going into this and I have to reveal a bias. I have often wondered if technology has any place in a classroom. And I think it's because I was, uh, I was injured as a youth.

[00:03:37] This is in the 1970s when some teachers tried to put a computer program in front of me and I was a pretty motivated student and I worked with this computer for about six minutes, and I should say, I'm not an anti-computer person. I literally spent all my time writing algorithms and doing computation work. But I just felt as a youth that I wanted to have a teacher in front of me, a human telling me things. Uh, and so that is clearly not the direction, I hear you laughing. So talk to me about the appropriate way to think about computers. Because I really have a big negative reaction to the idea of anything standing between me and a teacher.

[00:04:18] Dan Schwartz: You must have had very good teachers. 

[00:04:19] Russ Altman: I might have. 

[00:04:19] Dan Schwartz: So Russ, you sound like someone who doesn't play video games. 

[00:04:23] Russ Altman: I do not play video games. 

[00:04:24] Dan Schwartz: So there's this world out there where people can experience things they could never experience, uh, directly. And no teacher can deliver this immersive experience of you in the Amazon searching for anthropological artifacts. There's also something called social media that people use. 

[00:04:43] Russ Altman: I've heard about this. 

[00:04:43] Dan Schwartz: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:04:44] Russ Altman: I think we disseminate the show using it. 

[00:04:46] Dan Schwartz: So back in the day. 

[00:04:47] Russ Altman: Okay. So I'm a dinosaur. 

[00:04:49] Dan Schwartz: Uh, back in the day, you got the Apple 2 maybe, and it's about 64 K, maybe. It's got a big floppy drive and it takes all its CPU power to draw a picture of a two plus two on the screen. So I think things have changed a little bit Russ. But I appreciate your desire to be connected to teachers. I don't think we're replacing them. 

[00:05:14] Russ Altman: I'm not going to give you a lecture about teaching. But I will say this one sentence that was reverberating through my brain when I was getting ready for our interview, which was when I'm in a classroom, and this has been since I've been in third grade. I am watching the teacher trying to understand, how they think about the information and how they struggle with it to like understand it and then try to relay it to me.

[00:05:34] And so it is, that's where I'm learning. I'm, it's not even what they're saying. It's they're painting a picture for their cognitive model of what they're talking about. And that's what I'm trying to pull out to this day. And so that's why I have such a negative reaction to anything standing between me and this other human who has a model that is more advanced than mine about the material that we're struggling with and I just, I'm trying to download that model. 

[00:06:01] Dan Schwartz: Wow. You're, you are a cognitive psychologist, Russ? 

[00:06:03] Russ Altman: I don't know. 

[00:06:05] Dan Schwartz: Like I had a buddy who sort of became a Nobel laureate. And he talked about how he loved take apart cars, and I'd say I love to watch you take apart cars, just to figure out what you're doing. No, so I think, let's separate this. There's the part where you think the interaction with the teacher is important. I don't know that you need it eight hours a day. You know, that's an awful lot of interaction. I'm not sure I want to be with my mom and dad for eight hours a day trying to figure out their thinking. So you don't need it all the time.

[00:06:34] On the other side, you know, we can do creative things with the computers. So for example, I wrote a program where students learn by teaching a computer agent. And so they're trying to figure out how to get the agent to think the way it should in the domain. Turns out it's highly motivating. The kids learn a lot. The problem was the technology quickly became obsolete. Because after kids used it for a couple of days, they no longer needed it, 'cause they'd figured out sort of how to do the kind of reasoning that we wanted them to teach the agent to do for reasoning. 

[00:07:06] Russ Altman: That's exactly what I was talking about before, about my relationship with my teacher. And you just flipped it, but it's the same idea, which is that there's a cognitive model that you're trying to transfer. And by doing that transfer, you get in, you introspect on it and you understand what it is that you're thinking about. 

[00:07:22] Dan Schwartz: I think that's right. You know, so the concern is the computer does all the work, right? And so I'm just sitting there pressing a button that isn't relevant to the domain I'm trying to learn. But you know, uh, one of the things computers are really good at, like as good as casinos, is motivation. So some computer programs, they gamify it. I'm not sure that's a great use of it. Because you, you know, you try and you learn to just beat the game for the reward. 

[00:07:49] Russ Altman: Right.

[00:07:49] Dan Schwartz: As opposed to learn the content. But things like having, teaching an intelligent agent how to think. There's something called the protege effect, which is you'll try harder to learn the content to teach your agent than you will to prepare for a test. Right? So we can make the computer pretty social. 

[00:08:08] Russ Altman: Okay. So you are clearly a technology optimist in education. And in addition to the amazing fundraising and like, there's so many questions to be answered. What I think a lot of people are worried about is, are we at risk of losing a gen. We've already lost a few generations of students, some people argue, because of the pandemic and the terrible impact it had, especially on, uh, on people who weren't privileged in society and in their education.

[00:08:34] Are we about to enter yet another shock to the system where, because of the ease of having essays written and having, and grading papers, that we really don't serve a generation of students well? Or do you think that's a overhyped, unlikely to happen thing? 

[00:08:51] Dan Schwartz: No, it's a good question. You know, that part of this is people's view about cheating, you know? And so it's too easy for students to do certain things. But there's another response that I want to hang on to. I want to ask you, Russ, are you using, you teach. 

[00:09:07] Russ Altman: Yeah. 

[00:09:07] Dan Schwartz: Are you like putting in all sorts of rules to prevent students from cheating, or are you saying, use it, do whatever you can. I'm going to outsmart your technique anyway.

[00:09:17] Russ Altman: It's a little bit more on the latter. So we, uh, I teach an ethics class, which is a writing class. And we allow ChatGPT because the, my fellow instructor and I decided, and this was the quote, we want to be part of the future, not part of the past. So we said to the students, 

[00:09:33] Dan Schwartz: Sorry, The Future of Everything, Russ.

[00:09:34] Russ Altman: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks for the plug. So, uh, we allow it. We asked them to tell us what prompt they used and to show us the initial output that they got from that prompt. And then we, of course, have them hand in the final thing. And we instruct the TAs and ourselves, when we grade that we're grading the final product with or without a declaration of whether ChatGPT is used.

[00:09:56] We do have engineers as TAs, which means that they did a careful analysis. Students who used ChatGPT, and I don't think this is a surprise, got slightly lower grades, but spend substantially less time on the assignment. So if you're a busy student, you might say, I will make that trade off because the grades weren't a ton worse. It was like two points out of a hundred, like from a ninety to an eighty-eight, and they completed it in like half the time. 

[00:10:25] Dan Schwartz: Uh, do you think they learned less? 

[00:10:28] Russ Altman: So we don't know. We don't know. And, uh, the evaluation of learning is something that I'm looking to you, Dan. Uh, how do I tell? So, um, so we do try to use it. But we are stressed out. We have seen cases where people say they used ChatGPT, but tried to mislead us in how they use it. They said, I only used it for copy editing, but it was clear that they did more than copy editing with it. And so there's at the edges, there are some challenges. But in the end, we said motivated students who want to learn will use it as a tool and we'll learn. And the students who we have failed to motivate, and it is our failure, you could argue. They're just going to do whatever they do, and we're not going to be able to really impact that trajectory very much. 

[00:11:12] Dan Schwartz: Yeah, you know, you sort of see the same thing with video, video-based lectures. So I'm online. I've got this lecture. Do I really want to sit and listen to the whole thing? Not really. I'm going to skim forward to find the information. I skim back. I'm probably going to end up doing the minimum amount if it's not a great lecture. 

[00:11:29] Russ Altman: Yeah.

[00:11:29] Dan Schwartz: So I'm not sure this is a ChatGPT phenomenon. It's just, it's sort of an enabler. I think the challenge is thinking of the right assignment. So like, you can grade things on novel and appropriateness. So, are they novel? You know, if they use ChatGPT like everybody else, they won't be novel. They'll all produce the same thing. 

[00:11:48] Russ Altman: It's incredibly, yes. It, so it is, um, there's the most common type of, uh, moral theory is called common morality. And it turns out that ChatGPT does pretty well at that one because there's so many examples that it has seen. And it's terrible at Kant. Deontology, it really can't do. Okay, so let me. 

[00:12:07] Dan Schwartz: So let me get back to your question. 

[00:12:09] Russ Altman: Yeah. 

[00:12:09] Dan Schwartz: So here's what I see going on right now. There, there are like, uh, big industry conferences. Because they're going to, they're producing the technology that schools can adopt. Right? And there's a lot of money there. And twenty years ago, there were zero unicorns, and about, uh, I think last year, fifty-four billion dollar valuation companies in ed tech. So this is a big change. So what are they doing? They're basically creating things to do stuff to students, right? 

[00:12:42] So maybe they're marketing to the teachers, but it's, you know, it's, I'll make a tutor that, uh, is more efficient at delivering information to the students. Or, I will make a program that can correct their math very quickly. And so what's happening is the industry is sort of using the AI in the way that nobody else uses it.

[00:13:04] Because everybody who's got this tool wants to create stuff, right? Like, uh, my brother. It's my birthday, what does he do? He has ChatGPT to write me a poem about Dan Schwartz at Stanford. What he doesn't know is that there's a lot of Dan Schwartz's and so evidently I wear colorful ties, but this is what everybody wants to do. They want to create with it. Meanwhile, the field is trying to push towards efficiency. Can we get the kids done faster? Can we get them through the curriculum faster? Can we correct them faster? In which case the kids are going to optimize for being really efficient, right? As opposed to just trying to be creative, innovative, use it for deeper kinds of things. So this is my big fear. 

[00:13:42] Russ Altman: And so you're watching these companies and I'm guessing that they don't always ask your opinion about what's, what would you tell, so let's say a, one of these unicorn billion dollar or more companies comes to you and says, we want to do this right. We want to use the best educational research to create AI that can bring education to people who might otherwise not have quality education. What would you tell them? 

[00:14:04] Dan Schwartz: So this is a challenge, right? This is something we're actively trying to solve. So we've created a Stanford accelerator for learning to kind of figure out how to do this. 'Cause I've been in this ed tech position for quite a while. And the companies come in and they say, we really want your opinion. And then they present what they're doing. And I go, uh, have you ever thought of, and they go, wait, let me finish. And this goes on for fifty-five minutes. Where they're telling me what they want to do. And I'm trying to say, you know, if you just did this. And the way it ends is I say to them, look, you, if you do these three things, I'll consider being an advisor.

[00:14:42] Russ Altman: Right.

[00:14:42] Dan Schwartz: They never come back. 

[00:14:45] Russ Altman: So the message you're sending them is just not in their worldview. 

[00:14:50] Dan Schwartz: It's because they have a vision. Everybody wants to start their own school. 

[00:14:53] Russ Altman: Yeah. 

[00:14:53] Dan Schwartz: They have their vision of what it should be and they're urgent to get it done. And you know, it's a startup mentality. So trying to figure out how can we educate them? You know, I think we know a lot about how people learn that, uh, that we didn't know twenty years ago when they went to school. And the AI, you know, one of the things it can do is implement some of these theories of learning in ways that don't exist in textbooks and things like that.

[00:15:17] So that's the big hope. And the question is, how can you take advantage of industry? You know, education is a public good, but they still buy all their products. And so going through those companies is one way to sort of bring a positive revolution. But again, I'm a little worried that the companies are, and they're sort of optimizing for local minima.

[00:15:41] Russ Altman: Yeah. 

[00:15:41] Dan Schwartz: You know, to accommodate the current schools and things like that. 

[00:15:44] Russ Altman: Should we take, so what, should we take solace in the teachers? So many of us are fans of teachers, grammar school teachers, middle school teachers, high school teachers, but many of these folks are incredibly dedicated. Will they be a final, um, uh, a final filter that looks at these, uh, educational technologies and says, absolutely not. Or yeah, we'll use that, but we're going to use that in a way that makes sense for my way of teaching. Or are they not in a position to make those kinds of, what you could call courageous decisions, about kind of modifying the use of these tools to make them as good as possible in, uh, on the ground? 

[00:16:21] Dan Schwartz: So it's pretty interesting. The surveys I've seen, uh, sort of over the last year, the different groups do different surveys. It, it sort of, if I take the average, about sixty percent of K 12 teachers are using GenAI, right? And about thirty percent of the kids. If I go to the college level, about thirty percent of the faculty are using GenAI in teaching and about eighty percent of the kids are using it. So I do think in the pre K to 12 space, the teachers are making decisions. They do a lot of curriculum. There are, so a great application is, um, project-based learning. So project-based learning is a lot of fun. Kids learn a lot. They sort of develop a passion, a certain depth. As opposed to just mastering sort of the requirements, but it's really hard to manage. You know, when I was a high school teacher, I had a hundred and thirty kids, right?

[00:17:11] If all of them have a separate project, I have to help plan them and make them goal, you know, learning goal appropriate. So the GenAI can help me do that. It can help me, uh, have the kids sort of help use it to help them design a successful project. Uh, it can help me with a dashboard that helps manage them, hitting their milestones, things like that.

[00:17:31] And there, you know, it's, it, the, teacher is like, I can do something I just couldn't do before. 

[00:17:35] Russ Altman: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:17:36] Dan Schwartz: It's different than the model where you put the kids in the back of the room who finished early and say, go use the computer. I think, you know, most schools, kids are carrying computers in classes. So it's a little different. It's more integrated than it used to be. 

[00:17:52] Russ Altman: This is the Future of Everything with Russ Altman. More with Dan Schwartz, next.

[00:18:06] Welcome back to The Future of Everything. I'm Russ Altman and I'm speaking with Dan Schwartz, professor of education at Stanford University. 

[00:18:12] In the last segment, Dan told us about AI, education, some of the promises and some of the pitfalls that he's looking at on the ground, thinking about how to educate the next generation.

[00:18:23] In this segment, I'm going to ask him about assessment, grading. How do we do that with AI and how do we make sure it goes well? Also going to ask him about physical activity, which turns out physical ness is an important part of learning. 

[00:18:39] I want to get a little bit more detailed, Dan, in this next segment, and I want to start off with assessment, grading. I know you've thought about this a lot. People are worried that um, AI is going to start to doing, be doing all the grading. Everybody knows that a high school teacher with a big, couple of big classes can spend their entire weekend grading essays. It is so tempting just to feed that into ChatGPT and say, hey, how good is this essay? How should we think about, maybe worry about, but maybe just think about, assessment in education in the future? 

[00:19:11] Dan Schwartz: Yeah, this was, uh, you remember the MOOCs? 

[00:19:14] Russ Altman: Yes. 

[00:19:14] Dan Schwartz: Massively online, open courses. And, uh, you're hoping you have ten thousand students, and then you gotta grade the papers for ten thousand students. So what do you do? You give a multiple-choice tests, which can be machine coded, right? So, so I think that's always there. I'm going to take it a slightly different direction, which is, uh, I'm interacting with a computer system and while I'm interacting with it, it's, it can be constantly assessing in real time, right?

[00:19:41] And so there's a field that's sometimes called educational data mining or learning analytics. And there's thousands of people who are working on, how do I get informative signal out of students interactions. Like, are they trying to game the system? Are they reflecting? And so forth. So this is something the computer can do pretty well, right?

[00:20:02] It can sort of track what students are doing, assess, and then ideally deliver the right piece of instruction at the moment. So yours, you could use the assessments to give people a grade, but really the more important thing is, can you use the assessments to make instructional decisions? So I think this is a big area of advancement, but here's my concern.

[00:20:25] We've gotten very good at assessing things that are objectively right and wrong. Like did you remember the right word? Did you get two plus two correctly? For most of the things we care about now, they're like strategic and heuristic, which means it's not a guaranteed right answer. And so what you really want to do is assess students choices for what to do. So for example, uh, creativity, it's just for the most part, it's a large set of strategies. Right? There's a bunch of strategies that help you be creative. The question is, do the students choose to do that or do they take the safe route? 'Cause creativity is a risk, right? 'Cause you're not sure.

[00:21:02] So I think this is where the field needs to go. Is being willing to say that certain kinds of choices about learning are better than others. Uh, and it's a, it becomes more of an ethical question now. Instead of saying two plus two equals four, there's no ethics to it. 

[00:21:16] Russ Altman: Are you going to be able to convince non educators who hold purse strings, let's call them the government, that these kinds of assessments are important and need to be included? Because my sense is that when it filters up to boards of education or elected leaders, a lot of that stuff goes out of the window. And they just want to know how good are they at reading comprehensive and can they do enough math to be competitive with, you know, country X? 

[00:21:43] Dan Schwartz: Yeah. Yeah. So different assessments serve different purposes. Like the big year end tests that kids take, those aren't to inform the instruction of that child. They're not even for that teacher. They're for school districts to decide are our policies working. And so it's really a different kind of assessment than me as a teacher trying to decide what should I give the kid next. So I think it's going to vary. You know, the tough question for me is should you let the kid use ChatGPT during the test? Right?

[00:22:14] And we had this argument over calculators, right? And finally they came up with ways to ask questions where it was okay if the kids had calculators. Because the calculator was doing the routine stuff. And that's not really what you cared about. What you cared about was, could the kid be innovative? Could they take a, another, a second approach to solve a problem? 

[00:22:34] Russ Altman: Yeah. 

[00:22:34] Dan Schwartz: Things like that. 

[00:22:34] Russ Altman: We, so I teach another class where it's a programming class, the students write programs, and we have switched, um, and we've actually downgraded the value. So as you know, very well, just as background, there is now an amazing, ChatGPT can also write computer code essentially. And so a lot of coding now is kind of done for you and you don't need to do it. We are trying to make sure that they understand the algorithms that we ask them to code. And so what we're doing is we're downgrading the amount of points you get for working code.

[00:23:04] You still get some, but we're upgrading the quiz about how the algorithm works. Do you understand exactly why this happened the way it did? Why is this data structure a good choice or a bad choice? And so it's forcing us, and you could have argued that we should have done this twenty years ago in the same class, but this is making it a more urgent issue, because if we don't, people can just get an automatic piece of code. They can run it. It'll work. They have no understanding of what happened. And so it's really a positive. It's putting more of a burden on us to figure out why the heck did we have them write this code in the first place? 

[00:23:39] Dan Schwartz: No, this was my point. It makes you sort of rethink what is valuable to learn. And you stop doing what was easy to grade. So I have an interesting one. This is a little nerdy. 

[00:23:51] Russ Altman: Okay. I love it. I love it. 

[00:23:52] Dan Schwartz: I teach the intro PhD statistics course in education. And lots of students say, I took statistics, right? And I'm sort of like, well, that's great. Let me ask you one question. And I say, I'm going to email you a question and you'll have five minutes to respond. You let me know when you're ready for it. And I ask them, uh, this is just for you, Russ. But why is the tail of the T distribution fat in small sample sizes? And I, what I get back usually is because they're small sample sizes.

[00:24:24] Russ Altman: Right. Or because it's the T distribution. 

[00:24:27] Dan Schwartz: Or it's, yes, even better. And then I come back and I sort of say, well, have you ever heard of the standard error? And I begin to get at the conceptual stuff, right? And, uh, I suspect if I gave it, uh, so there are ways to get conceptual questions that are really important. But you know, being able to prompt or write R code, you know, that's a good thing. You want them to learn the skills as well. 

[00:24:50] Russ Altman: Exactly. 

[00:24:51] Dan Schwartz: So I don't know, you know, when the calculator showed up, there's a big debate, right? What should students learn? Can they use the calculator? The apocryphal solution was you had to learn the regular math and the calculator now. You just had to learn twice as much. And so maybe that's what it's going to be. 

[00:25:08] Russ Altman: And that's a very likely transitional strategy and then we'll see where we end up. Okay. In the final few minutes, I, this seems like it's unrelated to AI, but I bet it's not. You've done a lot of work on physical activity and learning. You've even been on a paper recently where you talk about having a walk during a teaching session and whether you get better outcomes than if you were just standing or sitting. So tell me about that interest and tell me if it has anything to do with today's topic. 

[00:25:37] Dan Schwartz: I can make the bridge. I can do it, Russ. Right. So we did some studies. Um, I've done a lot of it. It's called embodiment where, yeah, there was, I got clued into this where, uh, I was asking people about why, about gears. And I say, you know, you have three gears in a line, and you turn the gear on the left clockwise. What does the gear on the right do? Far right. And I'd watch them, and they'd go like this with their hands. They'd model with their hands. And then I was sort of like, well, what's the basis of this? And I'd say well why? And they say because this one's turning that way that one, I go but why. And in the end, they just bottom out. They just show me their hands. They didn't say things like one molecule displaces another. 

[00:26:20] Russ Altman: Right. 

[00:26:21] Dan Schwartz: So that sort of clued me in. 

[00:26:22] Russ Altman: This pinky is going up and this other pinky is going down. 

[00:26:26] Dan Schwartz: Yes. 

[00:26:26] Russ Altman: What don't you understand about that? 

[00:26:28] Dan Schwartz: Pretty much. Well, it was nonverbal. 

[00:26:31] Russ Altman: Yeah. 

[00:26:31] Dan Schwartz: So we went on, you know, we discovered that the basis for negative numbers, right? Is actually perceptual symmetry. And we did some neuro stuff. And so the question is sort of how does this perceptual apparatus, which some people, we're just loaded with perception, right? The brain's just one giant perceiving. So how do you get that going? So part of the embodiment is my ability to take action, right? And so this is where we started, right? Right now, the AI feels very verbal, very abstract. Even the video generation, it's amazing, but it's pretty passive for me. So enter virtual worlds, they're still working on the form factor where I can move my hand in space. 

[00:27:16] Russ Altman: Yeah. 

[00:27:17] Dan Schwartz: And something will happen in the environment in response to that. You know, I think medicine is, you know, really been working on haptics so surgeons can practice. Uh, there was a great guy who made a virtual world for different heart congenital defects, and you could go in and practice surgery and see what would happen to the blood flow. So I think, uh, that embodiment where you get to bring all your senses to bear, it's not just words, but it's everything, can really do a lot for learning, for engagement, uh, not just physical skills. 

[00:27:49] Russ Altman: So that's a challenge to, I'm hearing a challenge to AI, which is as an educator, you know that this physicality can be an critical part of learning. And by the way, would this be a surprise? I mean, we're, we've been on earth evolving for several hundred million years. And, uh, you would be surprised if our ability to manipulate and look at three dimensional situations wasn't critical to learning, and yet that's not what AI is doing right now. So this is a clear challenge to AI among other things. 

[00:28:17] Dan Schwartz: Right. So, uh, I have a colleague, Renate Fruchter. And, uh, she teaches architecture, and she has students make a blueprint for the building, right? And then she feeds the blueprint to a CAD system that creates the building. She then takes the building and puts it into a physics engine, it can basically render the building and make walls so you can't move through them, and it has gravity and things like that.

[00:28:42] She then puts the, uh, original student who designed the building in a wheelchair and has them try to navigate through that environment. At which point they sort of understand, oh this is why you need so much space so they can turn around, so they can navigate near the door. I am sure that is an incredibly compelling experience that allows them to be generative about all their future designs.

[00:29:03] So yeah, this is a challenge and part of the co-mingling of the AI and the virtual worlds, I think this is a big challenge. It's computationally very heavy, but it will open the door for lots of ways of teaching that you just couldn't do before. 

[00:29:17] Russ Altman: Thanks to Dan Schwartz. That was the future of educational technology.

[00:29:21] You've been listening to The Future of Everything and I'm Russ Altman. You know what? We have an archive with more than 250 back episodes of The Future of Everything. So you have instant access to a wide array of discussions that can keep you entertained and informed. Also, remember to rate, review, and follow. I care deeply about that request. 

[00:29:41] And also, if you want to follow me, you can follow me on X @ @RBAltman, and you can follow Stanford Engineering @ StanfordENG.

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The role of AI in modern education

Like so many of the technologies that have changed the world, artificial intelligence (AI) developed over many years before it seemed to suddenly burst on the scene. Today, AI is ubiquitous and offers revolutionary potential for education.

With AI, educators can tailor learning experiences to individual student needs, making education more effective and engaging. AI-enabled technologies also assist in administrative tasks, streamlining operations and freeing up educators to focus on teaching. Learn more about how teachers and school administrators are using AI-powered tools today and the possibilities for the future of artificial intelligence in education.

A short history of AI systems development

The term "artificial intelligence" was actually coined in 1956. In that year, John McCarthy, a Dartmouth College professor, organized a pivotal workshop that coined the term "artificial intelligence" and aimed to create machines capable of reasoning and using human language. 1

After a fast start, research interest in AI cooled for a few decades before developments in computer technology drove a resurgence in the 1990s with advances in machine learning and neural networks. The public release of Chat GPT in 2022 marked a significant milestone, showcasing unprecedented capabilities in natural language understanding and generation, and fueling further advancements in AI. Today, AI significantly impacts various sectors, from healthcare to finance, manufacturing, and transportation. Many think it is also poised to revolutionize education. 2

Paving the way for AI tools in education

Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) began in the 1960s, presenting instructional material with expensive mainframe computers. As computer technology became smaller and more affordable, more schools were able to adopt CAI.

Intelligent tutoring systems emerged with the advent of desktop computers, offering tutorial programs that provided immediate feedback and tailored learning paths based on student responses. These systems demonstrated the potential benefits of personalized learning, making technology adoption in education increasingly attractive. 3

Current applications of AI in education

AI is transforming K-12 education by offering innovative solutions in personalized learning, adaptive learning platforms, intelligent tutoring systems, automated grading and feedback, and administrative tasks.

Personalized learning

AI in education facilitates individualized learning by tailoring instructional content to individual student needs, benefiting students, teachers, and resource-constrained schools. This approach allows students to progress at their own pace, engage with activities aligned with their learning styles, and gain more autonomy over their educational journeys. Using AI assistants to differentiate assignments and devise data-driven, adaptive practices enhances the overall learning experience with minimal increase to the teacher's workload. 4

Intelligent tutoring systems

AI tutor systems can provide adaptive, accessible learning experiences, offering immediate feedback and corrective guidance based on student performance. These applications of modern educational technology are helping to close learning gaps, improve conceptual understanding, and free up teacher time by handling routine instructional tasks and providing detailed data on the student's learning process. 5, 6

Automated grading and feedback

Traditional grading for written work often involves subjectivity and biases, as teachers’ evaluations can be influenced by personal preferences, moods, and unconscious prejudices. This lack of objectivity can result in inconsistent and unfair assessments. Additionally, the time-consuming nature of grading large numbers of assignments limits teachers' capacity to provide thorough feedback, potentially hindering student learning. 7

Integrating AI into the grading process is revolutionizing traditional approaches to evaluating student performance. AI can enhance grading efficiency, precision, and fairness by significantly reducing grading time and providing instant, detailed feedback. This allows teachers to assign more writing tasks and offer timely, constructive feedback, which fosters better writing skills in students. 7

However, it's essential that teachers critically review AI-generated feedback to ensure it aligns with educational goals and addresses individual student needs. AI tools should be seen as assistants rather than replacements, helping teachers focus on assessing creativity and critical thinking while AI assists teachers with more objective metrics like grammar and structure. By staying engaged in the grading process and spot-checking AI output, teachers can maintain the integrity of assessments and ensure students receive meaningful and accurate feedback. 8, 9

Administrative applications

Artificial intelligence tools can streamline lesson planning and content creation, saving teachers valuable time. These AI tools can generate high-quality images, customized content, and focused research materials under tight time constraints. By using AI for efficient research and content generation, teachers can enhance lesson quality without increasing their workload, ultimately benefiting both students and resource-constrained schools. 10

School principals can also leverage AI technologies to reduce their substantial administrative burdens. AI chatbots assist with automating administrative tasks such as drafting emails, organizing schedules, and developing professional development sessions. AI models can be used to analyze large datasets to inform decision-making, like scheduling summer classes based on parent preferences. This allows administrators to focus more on strategic initiatives, human interaction and relationship-building. 11

Some ways teachers are using generative AI tools

Teachers are finding many different ways to use AI capabilities to enhance learning outcomes. Two notable applications include creating visual aids for vocabulary instruction and planning engaging math lessons.

Support for vocabulary instruction

An instructional designer has helped teachers create visuals for many different grade levels and subjects using AI. Her tips for doing so include: 12

• Identify challenging vocabulary words for upcoming lessons
• Choose an AI tool that fits your needs and is easy to access
• Craft specific prompts to generate images that illustrate vocabulary words
• Share and credit the AI-generated images with students to introduce the concept of AI 

Math lesson planning using artificial intelligence

The author, a high school math teacher and instructional coach, explains how to use generative AI to assist teachers in planning engaging math lessons. Her steps include: 13

• Use AI to connect math topics to real-world applications and student interests
• Generate word problems, performance tasks, and projects that align with curriculum standards
• Design comprehensive lesson plans with essential questions, practice problems, and extension opportunities
• Use AI to create inquiry-based activities that develop critical thinking and quantitative literacy skills 

For more ideas from teachers, visit Edutopia.org or search online using your favorite AI-enabled search tool.

AI-driven learning

AI applications in education can foster interactive collaboration and facilitate content creation and curation for students and teachers alike. These tools help teachers develop content aligned with curriculum standards, ensuring that educational materials effectively meet diverse student needs. Interactive tools like virtual labs and educational games engage students, while collaborative platforms facilitate peer learning. Teachers can use these technologies and the data-driven insights they provide to personalize learning paths and offer adaptive feedback, enhancing the overall learning experience.

The future of AI in education

The widespread adoption of AI in the last few years, including its growing use in schools, has caused reactions ranging from outright banning to enthusiastic embrace. Because the tools will continue to evolve and change the way we operate in all areas of life, teachers and educational administrators need to come to terms with several ethical considerations about AI in education.

Concerns about privacy, bias, and equity

Privacy is one major concern with artificial intelligence in education. AI tools often collect and process large amounts of data, raising questions about how this data is used and protected. To address this, educators should ensure transparency by informing students and parents about the data collected and seeking consent before using AI tools. 14

Bias in AI is another significant issue, as AI systems can inherit biases from their training data, leading to unfair or discriminatory outcomes. Educators should be aware of these biases and seek to use AI tools that have been rigorously tested for fairness. Additionally, incorporating diverse perspectives in AI development and regularly spot-checking for bias can help mitigate problems. 15

Equity concerns arise when considering access to AI tools. Not all students have equal access to technology, which can widen the digital divide. Schools should strive to provide equitable access to AI resources and offer training for both students and teachers to ensure everyone can benefit from these tools. 14

Concerns about student use of AI

Teachers worry about students using AI technology to bypass learning, such as using it to complete assignments. One way to address this is by designing assignments that require personal engagement and critical thinking, which are harder for AI technologies to replicate. 9

Teaching AI literacy is crucial. Students should understand AI's capabilities and limitations, including the potential for AI systems to generate biased or inaccurate content. Encouraging students to leverage AI tools for learning rather than shortcut assignments will help maintain academic integrity. 15

By considering these concerns and implementing thoughtful strategies, educators and administrators can harness AI's benefits while addressing its potential drawbacks.

AI technology implementation challenges and best practices

Resistance to change, high costs, and infrastructure needs are key challenges in implementing AI in education. Best practices for implementing artificial intelligence in education are similar to those for integrating any education technology. They include providing thorough training for educators, ensuring equitable access to AI tools, addressing ethical concerns, and maintaining open communication with all stakeholders to foster a supportive and informed community.

Confidently meet the future of AI in education with the University of Iowa

AI in education offers transformative potential by personalizing learning, streamlining administrative tasks, and enhancing instructional quality. However, ethical concerns such as privacy, bias, and equity remain significant challenges. By addressing these issues and implementing best practices, educators can harness AI’s benefits while maintaining academic integrity and equity.

The University of Iowa Online MA in Teaching, Leadership, and Cultural Competency program prepares you with the hands-on skills and theoretical frameworks to teach effectively today and tomorrow. Supported by the power of a Big Ten research university, the curriculum offers a balance of instruction on pedagogical, assessment, administrative, and technology topics within a framework of cultural competency. Schedule a call with an admissions outreach advisor to learn more about the powerful curriculum and the convenience of the online format.

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• Retrieved on August 12, 2024, from edutopia.org/article/using-ai-tutors-flipped-classroom
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• Retrieved on August 12, 2024, from edutopia.org/article/ai-tools-lesson-planning
• Retrieved on August 12, 2024, from edweek.org/leadership/how-principals-are-outsourcing-their-busywork-to-ai/2024/07
• Retrieved on August 12, 2024, from edutopia.org/article/using-ai-generated-images-teach-vocabulary
• Retrieved on August 12, 2024, from edutopia.org/article/using-chatgpt-plan-high-school-math-lessons
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• Retrieved on August 12, 2024, from aasa.org/resources/resource/ethical-considerations-artific%C4%B1al-intelligence

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