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This tool is SO useful in my class.

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Flip is a video discussion and sharing app, free from Microsoft.

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Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a video discussion and video sharing app, free from Microsoft, built for classrooms and beyond. Learn more.

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I really like this one.

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The evidence is in the practice

ESSA Level 3 correlation evidence in math and ELA, earned by teachers running frequent formative assessments.

When teachers run 30+ formative questions a week, the research is clear: they get more data-driven, their students get more engaged. Wayground is built to make that practice enjoyable ot run, attainable to fit a class period, and habitual enough to last past September.

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Quizizz is now Wayground | Teacher AI and Resources

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Find standards-aligned resources that engage every student. Wayground (formerly Quizizz) helps teachers differentiate instruction with AI and track student progress.

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MY FAVORITE TOOL EVER

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Gimkit is a game show for the classroom that requires knowledge, collaboration, and strategy to win. Get started for free!

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EdTechTeacher brings resources together for teachers from teachers. Check out Apps

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Search Results for Common Sense Education

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Use filters and keywords to refine you search results for lessons, digital citizenship resources, videos, edtech reviews, and advice for teaching with technology.

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I have been searching high and low for an efficient, easy-to-understand list of criteria for evaluating hardware, software, tools, and everything in between. Most online articles that I found focus on selling things, or are incredibly vague or incomplete so I decided to do some brainstorming based on what I have found in my own practice speaking to students, teachers, specialists, and researching online. Here's what I came up with.

TechPudding's checklist for evaluating technology:

Always put learning first. What is it that you want your students to learn, examine, discuss, think about, use as assistive technology, and research? it is useful to create a list of what you want to do first so that you don't forget anything or get distracted by extra bells and whistles. How does the technology help to accomplish your learning goals? There are so many options for applications, software, and hardware out there that you will definitely be able to find a tool for every learning opportunity.

Higher order thinking skills. Does the tool support you and your student's engagement in higher-order thinking? Andrew Churches' Educational-Origami wiki provides a look at Bloom's Taxonomy (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation) and Bloom's Digital Taxonomy (remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, creating).

Does it follow universal design for learning (UDL) principles? Meaning, does it allow for: 1) multiple means of representation, 2) multiple means of expression, and 3) multiple means of engagement? UDL principles are becoming more and more important as we move toward personalized, real-world learning and away from teachers as conduits of knowledge that use limited modes of teaching and delivery.

How about usability? Is it user-friendly? Is it easy to learn for everyone who will need to learn it, including teachers, administrators, students, and parents? What kinds of training and support are necessary? How long does it take to get comfortable with it? One way in which you can "try before you buy" is by downloading a trial of a prospective application or service. It is useful to have people of varying comfort with technology try it out, and for students to try and evaluate it.

How much does it cost? What can you, your students, and your institution afford to spend on training, maintenence, upgrades, and the like?

Word-of-mouth. Researching online user discussion boards and asking specialists for recommendations can be very useful. But also be careful about word-of-mouth. I find that people often recommend anything that is new, just to sound like they are on top of the trends (or they try to sell you products and services).

Reliability and support. How much support is required? Are there frequent updates that need to be installed? Does it break down easily? You can find information about this from real users on discussion boards.

Flexibility. This refers to how the software is used, what it can produce, how much it can expand with increased use and access, and how it might expand to offer more services in the future. For instance, utilizing Google Apps may offer incredible options in the future as its services and access points expand.

Evaluation and monitoring tools. Does the technology come with tools for you to monitor how you and your students are using it? Does it come with tools for you to evaluate your students' learning? If these tools are built-in to the application, it can be a huge bonus for both teachers and students.

Security and privacy. How does this technology protect information and privacy of its users? Who has access to what is shared and how is it shared?

User interface. The more I use different tools, the more this has become a deal-breaker for me. When user interfaces are cluttered, illogically laid out, or overly complicated, they immediately turn me off. Information and commands should be laid out with the most-used ones easily accessible. There should be no more than 3 mouse clicks to access any option or command, and vocabulary should be readily accessible to new users. Again, UDL principles dictate that software and apps should offer visual, audio, text, and other forms of support, not just one. Furthermore, the user should be able to create their own shortcut keys and commands for exactly what she/he would like to accomplish.

Sharing and communication. We know that collaboration online and sharing with an authentic audience is important to both student learning and teacher collaboration. Therefore, the software should enable sharing either in a secure way to authorized users, or in a public way to all users online. The tool should make it easy to view, share, comment, communicate, evaluate, contribute, and socialize synchronously and asynchronously.

Integration with existing tools. Does this tool support or integrate well with the existing tools that you are currently paying for or using? Can you use it to "fill in the gaps" for existing applications? How can all of the tools that you use collaborate with each other and enable you to do more than you could with them independently?

Don't get attached to one tool. This is the most important thing to remember! There was a time when we all thought that Microsoft Word was the be-all and end-all of word processing tools. But now there are multiple ways to produce, share, collaborate, and contribute to written texts. There will always be new tools-one is released every second, so don't get stuck using only one. Always be on the look-out for recommendations and discussions about the next thing. That way, you will be able to find the best tool for whatever job you are engaged in. You can sign up for online newsletters, blogs, and other services to help stay up to date.

What are your criteria for evaluating technology, applications, software, tools, or hardware for the purposes of learning and teaching? What can you add to this list based on your experiences?

Checklist for Evaluating Tech Tools, Apps, Software, and Hardware

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Checklist for Evaluating Tech Tools, Apps, Software, and Hardware

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I have been searching high and low for an efficient, easy-to-understand list of criteria for evaluating hardware, software, tools, and everything in between. Most online articles that I found focus on selling things, or are incredibly vague or incomplete so I decided to do some brainstorming based on what I have found in my own practice speaking to students, teachers, specialists, and researching online.

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As an instructor, you realize that technology is here to stay. Most likely, technology has helped you with lesson planning and delivery, grading, and reporting. Yet when software or apps are poorly selected, designed, or understood, when equipment doesn't work, or when cellphones are abused for non-learning purposes, technology may seem more like a curse than a blessing. When technology feels overwhelming, it is time to evaluate current practice and consider future possibilities.

As you search for ways to productively integrate technology into your classroom instruction, or evaluate your current use of technology, ask yourself how well you are doing on each of the following points; or better yet, write a written report for yourself and a plan of action for improvement.

1. Analyze and describe exactly what equipment you have available and when it is available (already in your classroom, available for sign-up to be delivered to your classroom, offered in a lab or library). Note any Internet filters you are working with, and be sure you understand any school policies regarding use of school equipment.

2. Consider these reasons to integrate technology into the classroom. Rank them according to the greatest need for your students, as well as ease of implementation to create your plan of action.

Increase student motivation through curriculum-related hands-on projects (project-based learning)

Increase student motivation through self-guided, decision-based learning (individualized learning)

Increase student motivation through immediate feedback (clickers, apps like Nearpod or GoClass)

Increase student motivation through novelty, interactivity, and media-rich delivery of content

Increase classroom time and efficiency by using technology in cases of individual remediation or enrichment (differentiation)

3. Decide how available technology best enhances your curriculum; avoid making your curriculum fit the technology available.

4. Model productive use of technology. White boards, digital projectors, and creativity will help you demonstrate to students how to conduct effective searches, utilize informational websites, and conduct classroom-wide Skype conversations or Google Hang-outs. It can also maximize limited hardware availability.

5. Use technology to stay in touch with parents. At the beginning of the year during open house, offer parents the chance to give you an email address where you can send personal notes of praise or ask for more parental involvement. For public communication to all your students and parents, consider using Twitter.

Most of all, embrace all the opportunities you have available to learn about the latest uses of technology in the classroom. Modeling openness to learn new things is one of the greatest things a teacher can do in his or her classroom. Do not be afraid of failure. Showing students that, "It is better to try and fail, than not to try at all" is a great life lesson.

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Five Points for Evaluating Use of Technology in the Classroom

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As an instructor, you realize that technology is here to stay. Most likely, technology has helped you with lesson planning and delivery, grading, and reporting. Yet when software or apps are poorly selected, designed, or understood, when equipment doesn't work, or when cellphones are abused for non-learning purposes, technology may seem more like a curse than a blessing.

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ASSURE is an instructional design model that has the goal of producing more effective teaching and learning. "ASSURE" is an acronym that stands for the various steps in the model. The following is a breakdown of each step.

See also:
A - Analyze Learners
The first step in the process is that the teacher should analyze the attributes of her learners. There should be a focus on those learner characteristics which are associated with the learning outcomes desired. The information gathered will help you in the decisions that you make with respect to the other steps in the process. When you determine the character of the learners, it will guide you in choosing specific strategies and resources to aid the learning process.

The analysis of your learners should include:

The general attributes of your learners, such as age, academic abilities, gender, interests, etc.

Prior competencies

Learning styles, such as auditory, visual, and tactile

S - State Standards and Objectives
After the analysis of the learner attributes, the teacher must state standards and objectives for the learning module. This statement consists of a specification of what the learners will be able to do as a result of the instruction.

To be more concrete about things, this statement will focus on what the learner will know or be able to do as a result of the instruction. An example of this is with medical students. The learners will be able to name at least two databases and two search techniques that they can use to locate medical evidence for particular cases.

The objectives can be used in assessing the success of the students, perhaps for the grading process. Also, you can use them to let the learners know what they will accomplish through the class.

The mark of a good set of learning objectives is conformity to the ABCDs of well-stated learning objectives. They are as follows:

Audience - For whom is the objective intended?

Behavior - What is the behavior or performance to be demonstrated?

Conditions - What are the conditions under which the behavior or performance will be observed?

Degree - To what degree will the knowledge or skill be mastered?

The objectives statement should be formulated with verbs that pinpoint the learning objective. A useful guide to the appropriate verbs to use is contained in Bloom's Taxonomy. Remember that assessment can only be based on your learners' behavior. A learner may know some material backwards and forwards but may not be able to perform well on a test.
S - Select Strategies, Technology, Media, and Materials
The second "s" in the acronym stands for select strategies, technology, media, and materials. Given what your learning objectives are, it's necessary to pick instructional strategies, technology, and media that will bring about the results that you want.

First, you should figure out what which delivery method will be best for your instruction. For instance, what proportion of your instruction will be instructor-centered and what proportion of will be student-centered? The first of these are strategies such as lecture, demonstration or showing a video. The second are strategies such as group discussion or cooperative group work.

Common sense weighs in on the side of learner-centered strategies. Learning becomes more exciting when there is more class participation. Ultimately, it's the learner who must gain mastery over the material, not the teacher. However, there will be a certain amount of crucial information and technique that the teacher must give over and demonstrate.

Learning is at its best when the teacher merely leads the student into discovering the correct answer to a problem themselves. An effective teacher is merely a facilitator to the process of learning.

Once you select your teaching strategy, then it's time to figure out which technology, media, and materials best support the method of teaching that you're using. This ranges from simple tools such as chalk and blackboard to more sophisticated ones such as power-point presentations. What must be remembered is that the instructor is the essential ingredient in giving over the material. Fancy tools are useful, but it ultimately boils down to having someone who knows more than what the textbook contains.
U - Utilize Technology, Media, and Materials
This step in the ASSURE process concerns making a plan as to how you will utilize the technology, media, and materials that you have selected. As with all of the instructional steps, you must make sure that your plans contribute towards producing the objectives that you have laid down.

It's important to follow the "five p's" process to achieve this:
Preview the Technology, Media, and Materials
This means that it's important to plan ahead of time just how you're going to use them. It's good to do a dry run of your lesson before you actually teach it. Make sure that the whole lesson will go smoothly and seamlessly.
Prepare the Technology, Media, and Materials
You need to gather together all of the things that you will need to teach your lesson. They must be working properly. For example, if you are making a power-point presentation, then you'll need to create the text and graphics for each screen.
Prepare the Environment
There is some minimal preparation required to set up the learning environment. Simple things like making sure that you have enough desks are important. Also, if you have control over the situation, you should make sure that there are no sources of noise that will disturb the students.
Prepare the Learners
First, you need to clearly inform the learners as to what the learning objectives are. This will help the learners create a mental map of what they need to absorb. Next, it's important to tell the students how they will be assessed. You need to tell them what their assignments will be, how they will be graded, if there are tests, etc. Also, you should explain to the students what the benefits of learning the material are.
Provide the Learning Experience
You then actually carry out the lesson. This is where all of your planning takes effect. You should be prepared to carry out the lesson with every prior step of the process in mind. This will insure your success as a teacher.
R - Require Learner Participation
This step actually belongs within earlier steps. It requires that you make plans to how you are going to actively engage your students in the material that you are teaching. This needs to be figured out both at the class level and the individual level.

The most basic step that you can take is requiring participation of the students in class discussions. A more sophisticated approach would require that students prepare questions and comments at home to bring into the class. You might try even allowing individual students to lead classes or discussions in the style of a seminar.

Beyond this, you need to plan exactly how the students will participate in the learning process generally speaking. How will they learn the information and techniques included in a lesson? This plan needs to be more specific than just saying that they will listen and absorb the material. Maybe you will encourage a specific kind of note-taking or other learning strategies.
E - Evaluate and Revise
The final step in the ASSURE process is just as crucial as all of the others. In this step, you evaluate the impact of your teaching on student learning. This includes an evaluation of your teaching strategies and the technology, media, and materials that you used. The following questions are useful to ask during this evaluation:

Did your lesson meet the learning objectives that you planned? How will you determine whether the students reach the objectives? Is your way of assessing the students in line with your learning objectives?

Can this lesson be improved? How? How are you going to assess the weaknesses in your presentation?

Was your choice of media and materials a good one? How will you assess the effectiveness of these tools?

Is it possible that other technologies, media, and materials would have done a better job?

The final step in your evaluation should focus on feedback from your students. Was their experience positive overall? Do they feel that they have reached your objectives and their own personal objectives? How will you determine whether or not your performance was effective?

In conclusion, the ASSURE process is really just a matter of common sense. However, it is good to follow a regimented guide to improve your teaching technique. Any effective teacher knows that the perfection of their technique does not come overnight, and there is always room for improvement. By following the ASSURE process, you will be sure to improve your teaching for many years to come.

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ASSURE: Instructional Design Model - Educational Technology

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ASSURE is an instructional design model that has the goal of producing more effective teaching and learning. "ASSURE" is an acronym that stands for the

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Education Week - Leading From the Classroom

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On Tuesday, July 10, the US Department of Education (ED) hosted "What Teachers Need to Know about Personalized Learning" as part of their Teacher Summer Seminars.
Richard Culatta, Deputy Director of the Office of Educational Technology, Matthew McCrea, Science Instructional Lead Teacher at G. James Gholson Middle School in Maryland, and I discussed our perspectives on promoting personalized learning in schools from the policy, classroom, and staff development perspective. What is Personalized Learning?
ED describes Personalized Learning as:

1. Adjusting the pace of instruction so that instruction is more individualized.

2. Adjusting the learning approach so that instruction is differentiated.

3. Leveraging student interests and experiences so that learning is more... personalized.

Richard emphasized the following points in his presentation:

The traditional teaching model treats all learners the same despite unique needs and strengths.

We need a new educational model that takes classroom learning beyond a one-size fits-all mentality.

Personalized Learning is not about technology, but technology helps.

Richard gave some examples of how technology empowers personalized learning from 1:1 computing, use of handheld devices, classroom response systems, and learning management systems.

Matthew shared the wonderful examples from his classroom including a blended learning model in 7th grade Algebra class with 1:1 laptops and a project based learning in 7/8 STEM class with 1:1 laptops.
More than Technology Required
From my perspective, with this new emphasis on Personalized Learning, any special education teacher understands that Personalized Learning is not new. It's what is done everyday in special education classrooms where services and instructional delivery are designed from the needs of the individual.

This focus on Personalized Learning is exciting because we've combined the emphasis on individual needs and empowered this approach with the power of technology.

But, with our focus on technology, one should hope that educational leaders will not view the purchasing of devices as providing quick and easy solutions. More importantly, Personal Learning demands a shift in how lessons are designed, which requires certain levels of knowledge and skillsets.

I posed the following question to the teachers:
"Let's say that a delivery truck shows up at your school and suddenly you have all these devices such as iPads, netbooks, classroom response systems, and learning and data management portals.... Will teachers in your school teach any differently?"
Teachers understand that change does not happen so quickly and easily.

Personalized Learning, like all other models of instruction that attempt to introduce innovation in schools, is about professional development and support.

Teachers need to have certain skills for Personalized Learning to use these technologies. It's about pedagogy and content:
Personalized Learning requires that teachers should:
1) Know their students: Teachers should know their students ' interests, know their learning styles, and know their ability levels.

In Personalized Learning, the teacher needs to be personable to the students. Teachers who already do this will be prepared for that shift; teachers that do not have this knowledge may not see the value in the technology. In order to "leverage student interests, one must first know the interests of their students and know how to act on it.

2) Know their pedagogy and content: Teachers should be able to implement multiple paths to knowledge- having a variety of ways to help a diverse group of students learn rigorous standards. This means having more than one resource or activity to teach a lesson and meet a goal or objective. This means teachers should be able to differentiate instruction, find all opportunities for remediation to help struggling learners, and understand how to provide enrichment to challenge the advanced student.

Simply giving a teacher an iPad will not guarantee this level of expertise.

3) Manage student learning: As teachers will now have classrooms where multiple activities may be occurring at the same time, this requires a level of classroom management, data keeping, and use of a variety of assessments. Not to stereotype, but elementary school teachers are more familiar with managing a classroom with lots of movement and activities going on- those teachers who rely on lecture only may need additional resources and support, as well as seeing other teachers in their subject and grade level who have this level of flexibility.

4) Access available resources
These can be tremendous challenges if teachers work alone. There is no need for teachers to reinvent the wheel. A teacher should not have multiple preps for a single class period.

As Mathew suggested in his presentation, teachers should beg, borrow, and steal the great lessons whenever possible.

In this regard, district and schools will have to provide curriculum support and ensure that all teachers have the resources to focus on student learning.
Transforming the Teaching Profession
Ultimately, just as Personalized Learning transforms student learning, it can transform the teaching profession as opportunities will be created for teachers to be design the instructional resources and provide support for teachers in schools.

And in this regard, Personal Learning has exciting potential for both the student and the teacher.

It's time. And with technology and our information-on-demand society creating opportunities for more students to learn academics outside of school through opportunities such as through Udemy, Khan Academy, and LearnZillion, perhaps this change is inevitable.

It's time to harness the power of technology to start meeting the needs of the individual during the school day.
So, if that delivery truck appears at your school and delivers these technologies for Personalized Learning, are you ready? For a similar discussion on Personalized Learning, join me on July 26 for the Alliance for Excellent Education's Webinar: The Role of Teaching in a Learner-Centered, Digitally Empowered Environment from 2:00-3:00PM. Follow me on Twitter at @Patrick_Ledesma

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On Tuesday, July 10, the US Department of Education (ED) hosted "What Teachers Need to Know about Personalized Learning" as part of their Teacher Summer Seminars. Richard Culatta, Deputy Director of the Office of Educational Technology, Matthew McCrea, Science Instructional Lead Teacher at G.

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Goal: All learners will have engaging and empowering learning experiences in both formal and informal settings that prepare them to be active, creative, knowledgeable, and ethical participants in our globally connected society.

To be successful in our daily lives and in a global workforce, Americans need pathways to acquire expertise and form meaningful connections to peers and mentors. This journey begins with a base of knowledge and abilities that can be augmented and enhanced throughout our lives. Fortunately, advances in learning sciences have provided new insights into how people learn. ¹ Technology can be a powerful tool to reimagine learning experiences on the basis of those insights.

Historically, a learner's educational opportunities have been limited by the resources found within the walls of a school. Technology-enabled learning allows learners to tap resources and expertise anywhere in the world, starting with their own communities. For example:

With high-speed Internet access, a student interested in learning computer science can take the course online in a school that lacks the budget or a faculty member with the appropriate skills to teach the course.

Learners struggling with planning for college and careers can access high-quality online mentoring and advising programs where resources or geography present challenges to obtaining sufficient face-to-face mentoring.

With mobile data collection tools and online collaboration platforms, students in a remote geographic area studying local phenomena can collaborate with peers doing similar work anywhere in the world.

A school with connectivity but without robust science facilities can offer its students virtual chemistry, biology, anatomy, and physics labs-offering students learning experiences that approach those of peers with better resources.

Students engaged in creative writing, music, or media production can publish their work to a broad global audience regardless of where they go to school.

Technology-enabled learning environments allow less experienced learners to access and participate in specialized communities of practice, graduating to more complex activities and deeper participation as they gain the experience needed to become expert members of the community.²

These opportunities expand growth possibilities for all students while affording historically disadvantaged students greater equity of access to high-quality learning materials, expertise, personalized learning, and tools for planning for future education. 3, 4 Such opportunities also can support increased capacity for educators to create blended learning opportunities for their students, rethinking when, where, and how students complete different components of a learning experience.

Personalized Learning

Personalized learning refers to instruction in which the pace of learning and the instructional approach are optimized for the needs of each learner. Learning objectives, instructional approaches, and instructional content (and its sequencing) all may vary based on learner needs. In addition, learning activities are meaningful and relevant to learners, driven by their interests, and often self-initiated.

Blended Learning

In a blended learning environment, learning occurs online and in person, augmenting and supporting teacher practice. This approach often allows students to have some control over time, place, path, or pace of learning. In many blended learning models, students spend some of their face-to-face time with the teacher in a large group, some face-to-face time with a teacher or tutor in a small group, and some time learning with and from peers. Blended learning often benefits from a reconfiguration of the physical learning space to facilitate learning activities, providing a variety of technology-enabled learning zones optimized for collaboration, informal learning, and individual-focused study.

Agency in Learning

Learners with agency can "intentionally make things happen by [their] actions," and "agency enables people to play a part in their self-development, adaptation, and self-renewal with changing times." ⁶ To build this capacity, learners should have the opportunity to make meaningful choices about their learning, and they need practice at doing so effectively. Learners who successfully develop this ability lay the foundation for lifelong, self-directed learning.

What People Need to Learn

To remain globally competitive and develop engaged citizens, our schools should weave 21st century competencies and expertise throughout the learning experience. These include the development of critical thinking, complex problem solving, collaboration, and adding multimedia communication into the teaching of traditional academic subjects. ⁵ In addition, learners should have the opportunity to develop a sense of agency in their learning and the belief that they are capable of succeeding in school.

Beyond these essential core academic competencies, there is a growing body of research on the importance of non-cognitive competencies as they relate to academic success. 7, 8, 9 Non-cognitive competencies include successful navigation through tasks such as forming relationships and solving everyday problems. They also include development of self-awareness, control of impulsivity, executive function, working cooperatively, and caring about oneself and others.

Building Non-Cognitive Competencies: Providing Opportunities for Practice

Interacting with peers, handling conflicts, resolving disputes, or persisting through a challenging problem are all experiences that are important to academic success.

Digital games can allow students to try out varied responses and roles and gauge the outcomes without fear of negative consequences. ²⁸ Accumulating evidence suggests that virtual environments and games can help increase empathy, self-awareness, emotional regulation, social awareness, cooperation, and problem solving while decreasing the number of behavior referrals and in-school suspensions. ²⁹

Games such as Ripple Effects and The Social Express use virtual environments, storytelling, and interactive experiences to assess a student's social skill competencies and provide opportunities to practice. Other apps help bridge the gap between the virtual environment and the real world by providing just-in-time supports for emotional regulation and conflict resolution. A number of apps are available to help students name and identify how they are feeling, express their emotions, and receive targeted suggestions or strategies for self-regulation. Examples include Breathe, Think, Do with Sesame; Smiling Mind; Stop, Breathe & Think; Touch and Learn-Emotions; and Digital Problem Solver.

Fostering Growth Mindset: Technology-Based Program to Fuel Student Achievement

A key part of non-cognitive development is fostering a growth mindset about learning. Growth mindset is the understanding that abilities can be developed through effort and practice and leads to increased motivation and achievement. The U.S. Department of Education has funded several growth mindset-related projects, including a grant to develop and evaluate SchoolKit, a suite of resources developed to teach growth mindset quickly and efficiently in schools.

Jill Balzer, a middle school principal in Killeen, Texas, has seen success from using SchoolKit in her school. Balzer spoke with an eighth grader who achieved academic distinction for the first time in five years after using the using the program. "When I asked him what the difference was," recalled Balzer, "he said that now he understood that even though learning was not always going to come easy to him it didn't mean he was stupid, it just meant he needed to work harder on that subject." ³⁰

District of Columbia Public Schools also have made the SchoolKit available to all middle schools. Principal Dawn Clemens of Stuart-Hobson Middle School saw increases in reading scores for their seventh-grade students after using the program. "With middle-schoolers, there are always excuses," Clemens said. "But this shifts the language to be about payoff from effort, rather than 'the test was too hard' or 'the teacher doesn't like me.'" ³¹

Increased connectivity also increases the importance of teaching learners how to become responsible digital citizens. We need to guide the development of competencies to use technology in ways that are meaningful, productive, respectful, and safe. For example, helping students learn to use proper online etiquette, recognize how their personal information may be collected and used online, and leverage access to a global community to improve the world around them can help prepare them for successfully navigating life in a connected world. Mastering these skills requires a basic understanding of the technology tools and the ability to make increasingly sound judgments about the use of them in learning and daily life. For the development of digital citizenship, educators can turn to resources such as Common Sense Education's digital citizenship curriculum or the student technology standards from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).

Technology-Enabled Learning in Action

Learning principles transcend specific technologies. However, when carefully designed and thoughtfully applied, technology has the potential to accelerate, amplify, and expand the impact of powerful principles of learning. Because the process of learning is not directly observable, the study of learning often produces models and conclusions that evolve across time. The recommendations in this plan are based on current assumptions and theories of how people learn even while education researchers, learning scientists, and educators continue to work toward a deeper understanding.

The NETP focuses on how technology can help learners unlock the power of some of the most potent learning principles discovered to date. For example, we know that technology can help learners think about an idea in more than one way and in more than one context, reflect on what is learned, and adjust understanding accordingly. 10, 11 Technology also can help capture learners' attention by tapping into their interests and passions. ¹³ It can help us align how we learn with what we learn.

Following are five ways technology can improve and enhance learning, both in formal learning and in informal settings. Each is accompanied by examples of transformational learning in action.

1. Technology can enable personalized learning or experiences that are more engaging and relevant. Mindful of the learning objectives, educators might design learning experiences that allow students in a class to choose from a menu of learning experiences-writing essays, producing media, building websites, collaborating with experts across the globe in data collection-assessed via a common rubric to demonstrate their learning. Such technology-enabled learning experiences can be more engaging and relevant to learners.

Scaling Up Personalized Learning: Massachusetts' Innovation Schools Create Multiple Pathways to Learning

As part of Massachusetts' Achievement Gap Act of 2010, funding was set aside to give schools the opportunity to implement innovative strategies to improve learning. Through this legislation, educators can create Innovation Schools that can operate with increased flexibility in key areas such as schedule, curriculum, instruction, and professional development. ³²

As of 2015, there were 54 approved Innovation Schools and Academies in 26 school districts across Massachusetts. Some schools implemented a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) or STEM-plus-arts model, and others implemented a combination of one or more of the following educational models: multiple pathways, early college, dual-language immersion, or expanded learning time.

Students in a Safety and Public Service Academy combine rigorous college-style coursework available in a variety of formats (in class, online, blended learning, off-site for internships and job shadows) in areas such as forensics, computer science, criminal law, crisis management, psychology, and video production. Students at the Arts Academy may combine their coursework with off-site learning opportunities at local universities, combining high-tech design skills and knowledge of the creative arts to prepare them for post-secondary education and a career in the arts.

Pentucket Regional School District's program has scaled their innovation approach to every elementary school in the district. Their approach is centered on student choice and the use of opportunities for learning that extend beyond the classroom walls. Through the redesign of the school day and year, students engage in hands-on experiential learning with in-class lessons; online and blended coursework; and off-campus academic opportunities, internships, and apprenticeships.

2. Technology can help organize learning around real-world challenges and project-based learning-using a wide variety of digital learning devices and resources to show competency with complex concepts and content. Rather than writing a research report to be read only by her biology teacher and a small group of classmates, a student might publish her findings online where she receives feedback from researchers and other members of communities of practice around the country. In an attempt to understand the construction of persuasive arguments, another student might draft, produce, and share a public service announcement via online video streaming sites, asking his audience for constructive feedback every step of the way.

Project-Based Learning

Project-based learning takes place in the context of authentic problems, continues across time, and brings in knowledge from many subjects. Project-based learning, if properly implemented and supported, helps students develop 21st century skills, including creativity, collaboration, and leadership, and engages them in complex, real-world challenges that help them meet expectations for critical thinking. ¹³

Engaged Creation: Exploratorium Creates a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for Exploring Circuits and Electricity

In the summer of 2015, the Exploratorium in San Francisco launched its first MOOC, working with Coursera, called Tinkering Fundamentals to inspire STEM-rich tinkering; introduce a set of high-quality activities that could be replicated easily in the classroom; and foster robust discussions of the learning.

The six-week course included a blend of hands-on activities, short videos of five to eight minutes each, an active discussion forum, live Web chats, social media, and other resources. Each week the videos highlighted an introduction to a new tinkering activity, the learning goals, and tips for facilitation; step-by-step instructions for how to build and support others to build the tinkering contraption; classroom video and interviews with teachers about classroom implementation and student learning; profiles of artists; and comments by learning experts. Reflective prompts generated extensive conversation in the discussion forums.

To facilitate these online activities, the Exploratorium integrated multiple platforms, including Coursera and live video streaming tools. Instructors used these online platforms and spaces to reflect on the week's activities and forum posts and to provide real-time feedback to participants. In videoconferences, the instructors positioned themselves as questioners rather than as experts, enhancing a strong sense of camaraderie and collaborative exploration.

The Exploratorium used a social media aggregator to showcase photos and videos of participants' tinkering creations, underscoring the hands-on and material nature of the work of the MOOC. The course attracted more than 7,000 participants from 150 countries, of whom approximately 4,400 were active participants, resulting in more than 66,000 video views and 6,700 forum posts. For more information, visit the Exploratorium and Coursera on the Web.

Building Projects for Real Audiences: National Parks Service Deepens Engagement Through Technology

Journey Through Hallowed Ground is a partnership project of the National Park Service that encourages students to create rich connections to history through project-based learning, specifically making videos about their visits to historical sites. The students take the roles of writers, actors, directors, producers, costume designers, music directors, editors, and filmmakers with the support of professional video editors. The videos allow the students to speak about history in their own words as well as share their knowledge with their peers. In addition to learning about history, participating in the projects also teaches students to refine their skills of leadership and teamwork. All videos become official material of the National Park Service and are licensed openly for use by other students and teachers around the world.

3. Technology can help learning move beyond the classroom and take advantage of learning opportunities available in museums, libraries, and other out-of-school settings. Coordinated events such as the Global Read Aloud allow classrooms from all over the world to come together through literacy. One book is chosen, and participating classrooms have six weeks in which teachers read the book aloud to students and then connect their classrooms to other participants across the world. Although the book is the same for each student, the interpretation, thoughts, and connections are different. This setting helps support learners through the shared experience of reading and builds a perception of learners as existing within a world of readers. The shared experience of connecting globally to read can lead to deeper understanding of not only the literature but also of their peers with whom students are learning.

Upskilling Adult Learners: At Peer-to-Peer University (P2PU), Everyone Is a Teacher and a Learner

P2PU and the Chicago Public Library (CPL) have partnered to pilot Learning Circles-lightly facilitated study groups for adult learners taking online courses together at their local library. In spring 2015, the partnership ran a pilot program in two CPL branches, facilitating in-person study groups around a number of free, online courses. The pilot program has expanded to 10 CPL branches in fall 2015, with the ultimate goal of developing an open-source, off-the-shelf solution that can be deployed by other public libraries, allowing all libraries and their communities to harness the potential of blended learning for little to no expertise or cost.

Meeting once a week in two-hour sessions, a non-content expert librarian helps facilitate a peer-learning environment, with the goal that after six weeks the Learning Circles become self-sustainable. P2PU has designed a number of software tools and guidelines to help onboard learners and facilitators, easing administrative burdens and integrating deeper learning principles into existing online learning content. Initial results suggest that students in Learning Circles have far higher retention than do students in most online courses, participants acquire non-cognitive skills often absent from pure online learning environments, and a diverse audience is participating. By working with libraries and building in additional learning support, P2PU also is able to reach first-time online learners, many of whom do not have a post-secondary degree.

P2PU measures success in terms of both the progress of individual learners and the viability of the model. In addition to the number of branches involved, cost per user, and number of learners, attributes such as retention, returning to additional Learning Circles, advancing from the role of learner to that of facilitator, and transitioning from Learning Circles into other fields (formal education, new job) are all other factors that contribute to success. Furthermore, P2PU designs for and measures academic mindsets (community, self-efficacy, growth mindsets, relevance) as a proxy for learner success.

Helping Parents Navigate a Technological World: A Resource for Making Informed Technology Decisions

Family Time With Apps: A Guide to Using Apps With Your Kids is an interactive resource for parents seeking to select and use apps in the most effective ways with their children. ³³ The guide informs parents of the variety of ways that apps can support children's healthy development and family learning, communication, and connection with eight strategies. These strategies are playing games together, reading together every day, creating media projects, preparing for new experiences, connecting with distant family, exploring the outside world, making travel more fun, and creating a predictable routine. Tips on how to find the best apps to meet a child's particular needs and an explanation of how and why to use apps together also are included.

The guide references specific apps, which connect parents with the resources to select appropriate apps for their children. This online community is connected with various app stores and gives parents a menu for app selection on the basis of learning topic, age, connectivity, and device capability. Information also is included that describes exactly what other elements are attached to each app-for example, privacy settings, information collection, advertisements allowed, related apps, and so on.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop also recommends the Parents' Choice Award Winners as a tool for selecting child-appropriate apps. These apps, reviewed by the Parents' Choice Awards Committee within the Parents' Choice Foundation, have gone through a rigorous, multi-tiered evaluation process. The committee looks for apps that help children grow socially, intellectually, emotionally, and ethically while inspiring creativity and imagination and connecting parents and children.

4. Technology can help learners pursue passions and personal interests. A student who learns Spanish to read the works of Gabriel García Márquez in the original language and a student who collects data and creates visualizations of wind patterns in the San Francisco Bay in anticipation of a sailing trip are learning skills that are of unique interest to them. This ability to learn topics of personal interest teaches students to practice exploration and research that can help instill a mindset of lifelong learning.

Leveraging the Power of Networks: Cultivating Connections Between Schools and Community Institutions

Cities of LRNG helps close the opportunity gap by connecting young people with a wide range of learning opportunities throughout their cities. The program makes learning activities from hundreds of community organizations easily discoverable to youth and their families on a single online platform.

Each LRNG city has a website where partner organizations can make their offerings visible. Young people receive recommended activities on the basis of their personal passions. For example, in Chicago through the local Chicago Cities of Learning initiative, more than 120 organizations have provided a collective 4,500 engaging learning opportunities for tens of thousands of young people in all areas of the city through the platform.

As students participate in learning activities, they earn digital badges that showcase their skills and achievements. These digital badges signify mastery of a skill-for example, coding, games, design, or fashion-giving out-of-school learning greater currency by documenting and archiving learning wherever it occurs. Each time a young person earns a badge, he or she is recommended additional learning experiences and invited to broaden or deepen skills to propel him or her along academic, civic, or career trajectories. Because digital badges contain in-depth information about each individual's learning experiences, schools and potential employers can gain a comprehensive view of each person's interests and competencies.

Hive Learning Networks, a project of the Mozilla Foundation, organize and support city-based, peer-to-peer professional development networks and champion connected learning, digital skills, and Web literacy in youth-serving organizations in urban centers around the world. Using a laboratory approach and catalytic funding model, Hive re-imagines learning as interest based and empowers learners through collaboration with peer educators, youth, technology experts, and entrepreneurs.

Similar to Cities of LRNG, Hive networks are made up of community-based organizations, including libraries; museums; schools; after-school programs; and individuals, such as educators, designers, and artists. Hive participants work together to create learning opportunities for youth within and beyond the confines of traditional classroom experiences, design innovative practices and tools that leverage digital literacy skills for greater impact, and advance their own professional development.

The Hive model supports three levels of engagement:

1. Events. Organizations with shared learning goals unite to provide fun, engaging events, such as maker parties, as a first step toward exploring longer term collaborations.

2. Learning Communities. Community organizers with an interest in Hive's core principles come together in regular meet-ups and events to explore how to apply connected learning tools and practices. Learning communities are in seven cities in the United States, Canada, and India.

3. Learning Networks. With an operational budget and staff, Hive Learning Networks commit to promoting innovative, open-source learning models in partnership with a community's civic and cultural organizations, businesses, entrepreneurs, educators, and learners. Learning Networks are in New York, Chicago, and Pittsburgh.

For more information about Hive Learning Networks, visit Hive on the Web.

5. Technology access when equitable can help close the digital divide and make transformative learning opportunities available to all learners. An adult learner with limited physical access to continuing education can upskill by taking advantage of online programs to earn new certifications and can accomplish these goals regardless of location.

Building Equal Experiences: Black Girls Code (BGC) Informs and Inspires

Introducing girls of color to technology at an early age is one key to unlocking opportunities that mostly have eluded this underserved group. BGC, founded in 2001 by Kimberly Bryant, an electrical engineer, aims to "increase the number of women of color in the digital space by empowering girls of color to become innovators in STEM subjects, leaders in their communities, and builders of their own futures through exposure to computer science and technology." ³⁴

Through a combination of workshops and field trips, BGC gives girls of color a chance to learn computer programming and connects them to role models in the technology space. BGC also hosts events and workshops across the country designed to help girls develop a wide range of other skills such as ideation, teamwork, and presenting while exploring social justice issues and engaging in creating solutions to those issues through technology. ³⁵ One example of such an event occurred at DeVry University where 100 girls between the ages of 7 and 17 learned how to build a webpage in a day. Tech industry volunteers led sessions in how to code using HTML, change the look and formatting of webpages using CCS, and design a basic Web structure. The girls developed webpages that integrated text, images, videos, and music, according to their interests and creativity. Toward the end of the day, participants presented their websites to cheering parents, volunteers, and other attendees. Between 10 and 12 similar events by BGC are held in Oakland each year. ³⁶

BGC is headquartered in San Francisco, and BGC chapters are located in Chicago; Detroit; Memphis; New York; Oakland; Raleigh; and Washington, D.C., with more in development.

Creating for Accessibility: Hello Navi for the Visually Impaired

When Maggie Bolado, a teacher at Resaca Middle School in Los Fresnos, Texas, was approached about the unique challenge of helping a visually impaired student navigate the school's campus, she had not imagined the innovation that was about to happen. Bolado helped guide a group of seventh- and eighth-grade students to develop an app to navigate the school grounds called Hello Navi. Working mostly during extracurricular time, the students learned bracket coding via online tutorials that enabled them to develop the app. As they learned to program, they also were developing problem-solving skills and becoming more detail oriented.

When the app was made available for download, requests came in to tailor the app to the needs of other particular users, including one parent who wanted to know how to make it work for her two-year-old child. The students participated in a developers' forum to go through requests and questions on the app and problem-solve challenges and issues together. The students also interpreted various data sets, tracking the number of times the app was downloaded and monitoring the number of total potential users, making possible an improved next iteration of the app.

The Future of Learning Technologies

Although these examples help provide understanding of the current state of educational technologies, it is also important to note the research being done on early stage educational technology and how this research might be applied more widely in the future to learning.

As part of their work in cyberlearning, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is researching opportunities offered by integrating emerging technologies with advances in the learning sciences. Following are examples of the projects being funded by the NSF as part of this effort:

Increased use of games and simulations to give students the experience of working together on a project without leaving their classrooms. Students are involved actively in a situation that feels urgent and must decide what to measure and how to analyze data in order to solve a challenging problem. Examples include RoomQuake, in which an entire classroom becomes a scaled-down simulation of an earthquake. As speakers play the sounds of an earthquake, the students can take readings on simulated seismographs at different locations in the room, inspect an emerging fault line, and stretch twine to identify the epicenter. Another example is Robot-Assisted Language Learning in Education (RALL-E), in which students learning Mandarin converse with a robot that exhibits a range of facial expressions and gestures, coupled with language dialogue software. Such robots will allow students to engage in a social role-playing experience with a new language without the usual anxieties of speaking a new language. The RALL-E also encourages cultural awareness while encouraging good use of language skills and building student confidence through practice.

New ways to connect physical and virtual interaction with learning technologies that bridge the tangible and the abstract. For example, the In Touch With Molecules project has students manipulate a physical ball-and-stick model of a molecule such as hemoglobin, while a camera senses the model and visualizes it with related scientific phenomena, such as the energy field around the molecule. Students' tangible engagement with a physical model is connected to more abstract, conceptual models, supporting students' growth of understanding. Toward a similar goal, elementary school students sketch pictures of mathematical situations by using a pen on a tablet surface with representational tools and freehand sketching, much as they would on paper. Unlike with paper, they easily copy, move, group, and transform their pictures and representations in ways that help them to express what they are learning about mathematics. These can be shared with the teacher, and, via artificial intelligence, the computer can help the teacher see patterns in the sketches and support the teacher's using student expression as a powerful instructional resource.

Interactive three-dimensional imaging software, such as zSpace, is creating potentially transformational learning experiences. With three-dimensional glasses and a stylus, students are able to work with a wide range of images from the layers of the earth to the human heart. The zSpace program's noble failure feature allows students constructing a motor or building a battery to make mistakes and retry, learning throughout the process. Although the content and curriculum are supplied, teachers can customize and tailor lesson plans to fit the needs of their classes. This type of versatile technology allows students to work with objects schools typically would not be able to afford, providing a richer, more engaging learning experience.

Augmented reality (AR) as a new way of investigating our context and history In the Cyberlearning: Transforming Education EXP project, researchers are addressing how and for what purposes AR technologies can be used to support the learning of critical inquiry strategies and processes. The question is being explored in the context of history education and the Summarizing, Contextualizing, Inferring, Monitoring, and Corroborating (SCIM-C) framework developed for historical inquiry education. A combined hardware and software platform is being built to support SCIM-C pedagogy. Students use a mobile device with AR to augment their "field" experience at a local historical site. In addition to experiencing the site as it exists, AR technology allows students to view and experience the site from several social perspectives and to view its structure and uses across several time periods. Research focuses on the potential of AR technology in inquiry-based fieldwork for disciplines in which analysis of change across time is important to promote understanding of how very small changes across long periods of time may add up to very large changes.

E-rate: Source of Funding for Connectivity

The Schools and Libraries Universal Service Support Program, commonly known as E-rate, is a source of federal funding for Internet connectivity for U.S. schools and libraries. Created by Congress in 1996, E-rate provides schools and libraries with discounted Internet service based on need. The program was modernized in 2014 to allow schools to prioritize funding high-speed wireless connectivity in schools. For more information about E-rate, visit the website of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Across these examples, we see that learning is not contained within screens or classrooms and that technology can enrich how students engage in the world around them.

To see additional examples of cyberlearning, visit The Center for Innovative Research in CyberLearning. ¹⁴

Bringing Equity to Learning Through Technology

Closing the Digital Use Divide

Traditionally, the digital divide in education referred to schools and communities in which access to devices and Internet connectivity were either unavailable or unaffordable. ¹⁵ Although there is still much work to be done, great progress has been made providing connectivity and device access. The modernization of the federal E-rate program has made billions of dollars available to provide high-speed wireless access in schools across the country.

However, we have to be cognizant of a new digital divide-the disparity between students who use technology to create, design, build, explore, and collaborate and those who simply use technology to consume media passively. 16, 17, 18, 19

On its own, access to connectivity and devices does not guarantee access to engaging educational experiences or a quality education. ²⁰ Without thoughtful intervention and attention to the way technology is used for learning, the digital use divide could grow even as access to technology in schools increases. 21, 22, 23, 24

Providing Technology Accessibility for All Learners

Learning experiences enabled by technology should be accessible for all learners, including those with special needs. Supports to make learning accessible should be built into learning software and hardware by default. The approach of including accessibility features from the beginning of the development process, also known as universal design, is a concept well established in the field of architecture. Modern public buildings include features such as ramps, automatic doors, or braille on signs to make them accessible by everyone. In the same way, features such as text-to-speech, speech-to-text, enlarged font sizes, color contrast, dictionaries, and glossaries should be built into educational hardware and software to make learning accessible to everyone.

Three main principles drive application of universal design for learning (UDL): 25, 26, 27

1. Provide multiple means of representation so that students can approach information in more than one way. Examples include digital books, specialized software and websites, and screen readers that include features such as text-to-speech, changeable color contrast, alterable text size, or selection of different reading levels.

2. Provide multiple means of expression so that all students can demonstrate and express what they know. Examples include providing options in how they express their learning, where appropriate, which can include options such as writing, online concept mapping, or speech-to-text programs.

3. Provide multiple means of engagement to stimulate interest in and motivation for learning. Examples include providing options among several different learning activities or content for a particular competency or skill and providing opportunities for increased collaboration or scaffolding.

Digital learning tools can offer more flexibility and learning supports than can traditional formats. Using mobile devices, laptops, and networked systems, educators are better able to personalize and customize learning experiences to align with the needs of each student. They also can expand communication with mentors, peers, and colleagues through social media tools. Digital tools also can make it possible to modify content, such as raising or lowering the complexity level of a text or changing the presentation rate.

At a higher level of engagement, digital tools such as games, websites, and digital books can be designed to meet the needs of a range of learners, from novices to experts. Learners with little understanding might approach the experience first as a novice and then move up to an intermediate level as they gain more knowledge and skills. One example is McGill University's The Brain from Top to Bottom. The site includes options to engage with the content as a beginner, intermediate, or advanced learner and adjusts the learning activities accordingly.

To help in the selection of appropriate universally designed products and tools, the National Center on Universal Design for Learning has developed a resource linking each guideline to information about digital supports that can help a teacher put UDL into practice.

Reaching All Learners: Tools for UDL

Developed with support from the U.S. Department of Education, the tools listed here were designed to help educators implement UDL principles into classroom practice and make learning activities more accessible:

Nimble Assessment Systems developed Nimble Tools, to deliver standard versions of assessment instruments that are tailored with embedded accommodation tools to meet the specific needs of students with disabilities. Some examples of the accommodation tools include a keyboard with custom keyboard overlays, the capacity of the system to read text aloud for students, an on-screen avatar presenting questions in American Sign Language (ASL) or Signed English, and the magnification of text and images for students with visual impairments.

The Information Research Corporation developed eTouchSciences, an integrated software and hardware assistive technology platform to support STEM learning among middle school students with (or without) visual impairments. The product includes a haptic sensing controller device to provide real-time tactile, visual, and audio feedback. See video.

Filament Games developed the Game-enhanced Interactive Life Science suite of learning games to introduce middle school students to key scientific concepts and practices in the life sciences. These games, aligned to UDL, provide students with multiple means of representation, expression, and engagement and provide assistive features such as in-game glossaries and optional voice-over for all in-game text. See video.

Institute for Disabilities Research and Training developed the myASL Quizmaker to provide Web-based assessments for deaf or hard of hearing students who use ASL. This product provides automatic ASL graphic and video translations for students; enables teachers to create customized tests, exams, and quizzes that are scored automatically; and provides teacher reports with grades and corrected quizzes. See video.

Design in Practice: Indiana School District Adopts UDL for All Instruction for All Students

Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation is a public school district in Columbus, Indiana, serving approximately 12,000 students. The student population consists of 13 percent in special education, 50 percent receive free or reduced-price lunch, and more than 54 languages are spoken. UDL has been helpful as a decision-making tool in the deployment of technologies such as computers and other networked devices. The UDL guidelines help educators determine what strategies, accessible technologies, and teaching methods will enable all students to achieve lesson goals.

In one instance, a social studies teacher held an online discussion during a presidential debate. Realizing that some students were not taking part in class discussions, the teacher used technology to provide multiple means of representation, expression, and engagement. Some students who were reluctant to speak up in a face-to-face setting felt safe to do so online, becoming engaged participants in the class discussion.

Since they adopted a universal design approach, graduation rates increased by 8 percent for general education students and 22 percent for special education students. Also, the number of students taking and passing Advanced Placement tests has increased.

Physical Spaces and Technology-Enabled Learning

Blended learning and other models of learning enabled by technology require educators to rethink how they organize physical spaces to facilitate best collaborative learning using digital tools. Considerations include the following:

Are the design and layout of the physical space dynamic and flexible enough to facilitate the technology-enabled learning models and practices selected? Can a space in which an educator delivers whole-class instruction also be shifted to facilitate individual online practice and research?

Do the physical spaces align in their ability to facilitate individual and collaborative work? When practices such as project-based learning require students to be working together with multiple devices for research and presentation building, is the space as useful as when individual learners need time and space to connect with information and experts online for personalized learning?

Can the physical spaces and tools be shaped to provide multiple contexts and learning experiences such as Wi-Fi access for outdoor classrooms? Are library spaces able to become laboratories? Can a space used as a history lecture hall for one class become a maker space for engineering the next period?

For more information and tools for aligning physical spaces, visit the Centre for Effective Learning Environments and the Clayton Christensen Institute's Blended Learning Universe.

Innovation From the Ground Up: Denver School for Science and Technology (DSST) Uses Space to Promote Student Achievement

The DSST is an innovative high school located in Stapleton, Colorado, a redeveloped neighborhood near downtown Denver. Behind the bright colors and unique geometry of spaces at DSST lies a relationship to the way academic subjects are taught and community is formed at the high school. The school is designed to be flexible and aims to support student achievement through the design of its physical spaces.

The school features a series of gathering spaces that can be used for various academic and social purposes throughout the day. The largest of the gathering areas, near the school's entrance, is where the school's daily morning meeting for both students and faculty is held. Student and faculty announcements, skits, and other community functions are all encouraged in this communal setting.

Each of the three academic pods also includes informal spaces for gathering, studying, and socializing. These academic clusters are linked by a galleria, or large open hallway, that is lined with skylights and also serves as a gathering place for students and faculty members.

DSST has demonstrated results in the academic achievement of its students and in its attendance record. In 2005, the school's founding Grade 9 class was the highest scoring Grade 9 class in Denver in mathematics and the second highest scoring class in reading and writing. DSST was also the only Denver high school to earn a significant growth rating on the Colorado Student Assessment Program test scores from one year to the next. Student attendance at the school is typically about 96 percent.

Recommendations

States, districts, and post-secondary institutions should develop and implement learning resources that embody the flexibility and power of technology to create equitable and accessible learning ecosystems that make learning possible everywhere and all the time for all students.
Whether creating learning resources internally, drawing on collaborative networks, or using traditional
procurement procedures, institutions should insist on the use of resources and the design of learning experiences that use UD practices to ensure accessibility and increased equity of learning opportunities.

States, districts, and post-secondary institutions should develop and implement learning
resources that use technology to embody design principles from the learning sciences.
Educational systems have access to cutting-edge learning sciences research. To make better use of the existing body of research literature, however, educators and researchers will need to work together to determine the most useful dissemination methods for easy incorporation and synthesis of research findings into teachers' instructional practices.

States, districts, and post-secondary institutions should take inventory of and align all learning technology resources to intended educational outcomes. Using this inventory, they should
document all possible learner pathways to expertise, such as combinations of formal and informal learning, blended learning, and distance learning.
Without thoughtful accounting of the available tools and resources within formal and informal learning spaces within a community, matching learners to high-quality pathways to expertise is left to chance. Such an undertaking will require increased capacity within organizations that have never considered such a mapping of educational pathways. To aid in these efforts, networks such as LRNG, the Hive Learning Networks, and education innovation clusters can serve as models for cross-stakeholder collaboration in the interest of best using existing resources to present learners with pathways to learning and expertise.

Education stakeholders should develop a born accessible standard of learning resource design to help educators select and evaluate learning resources for accessibility and equity of learning experience.
Born accessible is a play on the term born digital and is used to convey the idea that materials that are born digital also can and should be born accessible. If producers adopt current industry standards for producing educational materials, materials will be accessible out of the box. Using the principles and research-base of UD and UDL, this standard would serve as a commonly accepted framework and language around design for accessibility and offer guidance to vendors and third-party technology developers in interactions with states, districts, and institutions of higher education.
Feedback / Share Your Thoughts

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Learning - Office of Educational Technology

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To be successful in our daily lives and in a global workforce, Americans need pathways to acquire expertise and form meaningful connections to peers and mentors. This journey begins with a base of knowledge and abilities that can be augmented and enhanced throughout our lives.

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technological pedagogical and content knowledge  tpack tpck

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Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge

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The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) provides a framework for describing and targeting the use of technology to enhance learning. The TIM is supported by a complementary suite of online tools and a large collection of professional development resources.

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The future or that is to say the technologies of tomorrow are already being tested in classrooms today in the advancement of how students can learn. Some of these technologies have already found their way into education while some are already being prepared for mass distribution. They are all expected to enhance the learning capability of not just students but individuals who are and who will be exposed to these new technologies.

Using the themes: mesh, digital, and intelligent - a top list of technologies has been announced to break out in 2017 which promises an intelligent future. These are smart systems that adapt, learn, and can possibly act independently instead of just executing predefined directions.

Advance Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

Machine learning (ML) and Artificial intelligence covers tech that uses neural networks, deep learning, and natural language processing, which make these technologies learn, understand, adapt, predict, and operate on its own. These are specifically useful in banks to use updated instantaneous transactions and in businesses to develop transparent and precise business values. The ability of the previous system to learn and change future behavior has lead to the advancement of more intelligent devices and programs.

Intelligent Applications

Intelligent Applications include technologies such as virtual personal assistants (VPA), security tools, advanced analytics and more. VPAs make tasks easier and more efficient by focusing first on emails, as well as highlighting vital data or interactions while security tools are used for business apps for marketing. It is expected that majority of the world's biggest companies will be exploiting this kind of technology to utilize analytics tools and big data to fine-tune their services and develop customer service in 2018.

Intelligent Objects

Intelligent things include drones, robots, and autonomous vehicles. They are expected to advance the impact of the bigger cut of the market and back up the new level of virtual business, representing a facet of all the intelligent things making the office, home, medical facilities, and factory more productive and efficient. As these technologies progress or turn into significantly prevalent, they will change from being detached to being more collaborative wherein they are able to communicate with each other and act as one to accomplish more tasks. Although it will slow down some scenarios like privacy and liability.

Virtual and Augmented Reality

Virtual and augmented reality changes the way people interrelate with others, creating a more immersive environment. VRs can be utilized for training and remote activities while ARs enable a merger of both the virtual and real worlds. These technologies can help businesses integrate graphics onto tangible objects in real life. Eventually, they can be developed until they can include the five human senses other than visual.

Digital Twins

There are over several billion objects, which will soon be characterized by digital twins, within three to five years to be exact. A digital twin is an interactive software model of a physical object or structure used in the analysis and simulation of real-life conditions through physics information on how the parts of an object operates and responds to its setting. It also functions as a proxy for the mixture of talented individuals and conventional monitoring tools and devices. However, the introduction of this technology would require a change in the culture and perception as real-life things cooperate with information technologists and data scientists. When mixed with virtual representations of environments and facilities as well as individuals, enterprises, and systems, it can increase the precise virtual representation of real life for analysis, control, and simulation.

The use of these technologies in the future will surely boost the educational system and further the developments of other tools that will pave the way for a better and brighter future not just for students but for everyone in the society.

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5 Tech Trends That Could Supercharge Education in 2017

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The future or that is to say the technologies of tomorrow are already being tested in classrooms today in the advancement of how students can learn. Some of these technologies have already found their way into education while some are already being prepared for mass distribution.

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Saying that it has always been this way, doesn't count as a legitimate justification as to why it should stay that way. Teachers and administrators all over the world are doing amazing things, but some of the things we are still doing, despite all the new solutions, research and ideas out there are, to put it mildly, incredible.

I'm not saying we should just make the current system better... we should change it into something else.

I have compiled a list of 14 things that are obsolete in 21st-century schools and it is my hope that this will inspire lively discussions about the future of education.

1. Computer Rooms

The idea of taking a whole class to a computer room with outdated equipment, once a week to practice their typewriting skills and sending them back to the classroom 40 minutes later, is obsolete.

Computers or technology shouldn't just be a specific subject, that's not sufficient anymore but rather it should be an integral part of all the subjects and built into the curriculum.

2. Isolated classrooms

Classrooms can be isolated in two ways. One where parents, teachers or guests are not welcome because the door and drapes are always shut... which has the words "Don't come in here" written all over it. The other way is being isolated to all the knowledge outside the 4 walls. For example from the internet, videos, blogs, websites, and visits from authors or scientists through Skype, to name a few.

Tony Wagner, the author of the Global Achievement Gap says: "Isolation is the enemy of improvement". The classroom should be open, teachers should be able to walk in and learn from each other, parents should visit often, f.x. with so-called Extra Open Schooldays (where all parents are encouraged to visit classrooms anytime during the day). Isolated classrooms are therefore obsolete.

3. Schools that don't have WiFi

Schools that don't have a robust WiFi network for staff and students are not only missing a big change for teaching and learning but robbing the students of access to knowledge and also limiting their chances to learn about the internet and using technology in a safe way.

21st-century schools make it possible for students and staff to learn anywhere, anytime and schools that don't allow that are obsolete.

4. Banning phones and tablets

Taking phones and tablets from students instead of using them to enhance learning is obsolete. We should celebrate the technology students bring and use them as learning tools.

Phones are no longer just devices to text and make phone calls... when they were, then banning them was OK. Today there is more processing power in the average cellular telephone than NASA had access to when they sent a man to the moon in 1969. Yet most students only know how to use these devices for social media and playing games.

Today you can edit a movie, make a radio show, take pictures, make posters, websites, blog, tweet as a character from a book, have class conversations over TodaysMeet and Google most answers on a test with the device in your pocket. We should show our students the learning possibilities & turn these distractions into learning opportunities that will reach far outside the classroom.

5. Tech director with an administrator access

Having one person responsible for the computer system, working from a windowless office in the school basement, surrounded by old computers, updates the programs and tells the staff what tech tools they can and cannot use... is obsolete.

Today we need technology co-ordinators that know what teachers and students need to be successful and solve problems instead of creating barriers. Someone who helps people to help themselves by giving them responsibility and finds better and cheaper ways to do things.

6. Teachers that don't share what they do

Teachers who work silently, don't tweet, blog and discuss ideas with people around the world are obsolete. Teachers are no longer working locally but globally and it's our job to share what we do and see what others are doing. If a teacher is no longer learning then he shouldn't be teaching other people.

We should all be tweeting, blogging and sharing what works and doesn't work, get and give advice to and from co-workers around the world. We should constantly be improving our craft because professional development isn't a 3-hour workshop once a month but a lifelong process.
"We do not learn from experience...we learn from reflecting on experience." -John Dewey
7. Schools that don't have Facebook or Twitter

Schools that think putting a news article on the school website every other week and publish a monthly newsletter is enough to keep parents informed are obsolete.

The school should have a Facebook page, share news and information with parents, have a Twitter account and their own hashtag, run their own online TV channel where students film, edit and publish things about school events.

If you don't tell your story, someone else will.

8. Unhealthy cafeteria food

School cafeterias that look and operate almost like fast food restaurants where staff and students get a cheap, fast and unhealthy meals are obsolete.

A few schools in Iceland and Sweden have turned almost completely to organic foods and given thought into the long term benefit of healthy food rather than the short term savings of the unhealthy. For example at Stora Hammar school in Sweden, 90% of the food served is organic.

Children should put the food on their own plate, clean up after themselves and even do the dishes. Not because it saves the school money on the workforce but because it is a part of growing up and learning about responsibility. What 21st-century schools should be doing as well is growing their own fruits and vegetables where students water them and learn about nature. Setting up a farm to feed students would be optimal, but if that is not an option (for example in big city schools) then they can at last set up a window farm in some of the school windows.

The goal of providing students a healthy meal is not only to give them enough nutrition to last the school day but to make healthy food a normal part of their daily life and get them to think about nutrition which is something that will benefit them for the rest of their lives.

9. Starting school at 8 o'clock for teenagers

Research has shown over and over again that teenagers do better and feel better in schools that start later. Often parents or administrators get in the way of that change. Research (f.x. from the The Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics and University of Minnesota - video) show that delaying school start as little as 50 minutes and making it longer by 30 minutes instead has a positive effect both on learning and activities after school. Schools that don't do this are obsolete.

Starting later is easy and teachers could use the extra time in the morning to prepare class... it's a win-win situation.

10. Buying poster-, website- and pamphlet design for the school

When your school needs a poster, pamphlet or a new website they shouldn't buy the service from somewhere else (although that can sometimes be the case) and have students do it instead. In the best schools of the future, they will be the ones doing it as a real project that has meaning and as a collaborative project in language and art....using technology.

11. Traditional libraries

Libraries that only contain books and chess tables are obsolete.

A 21st-century library should be at the heart of the school and a place where both students and staff can come in to relax, read, get advice, access powerful devices, edit videos, music, print in 3D and learn how to code to name a few. This 21st-century learning space should give people an equal chance to use these devices and access information. Otherwise, these libraries will turn into museums where people go to look at all the things we used to use.

12. All students get the same

Putting kids in the same class because they are born in the same year is obsolete. School systems were originally set up to meet the needs of industrialism. Back then we needed people to work in factories, conformity was good and nobody was meant to excel or be different in that environment. That doesn't fit our needs today, let alone the future but many schools are still set up like the factories they were meant to serve 100 years ago.

We should increase choice, give children support to flourish in what interests them and not only give them extra attention to the things they're bad at. In most schools, if you are good at art but bad in german you get german lessons to get to par with the other students instead of excelling at art... All even, all the same!

Education should be individualized, students should work in groups regardless of age and their education should be built around their needs.

13. One-Professional development-workshop-fits-all

A school that just sends the entire staff to a workshop once a month where everyone gets the same is obsolete. Professional development is usually top-down instead of the ground up where everyone gets what they want and need. This is because giving everyone (including students) what they need and want takes time & money.

With things like Twitter, Pinterest, articles online, books, videos, co-operation & conversations employees can personalize their professional development. (Read about my article on Personalized Professional Development here)

14. Standardized tests to measure the quality of education

Looking at standardized tests to evaluate whether or not children are educated or not is the dumbest thing we can do and gives us a shallow view of learning.

The outcomes, although moderately important, measure only a small part of what we want our kids to learn and by focusing on these exams we are narrowing the curriculum. Alfie Kohn even pointed out a statistically significant correlation between high grades on standardized tests and a shallow approach to learning.

The world today and the needs of society are completely different from what they used to be. We are not only training people to work locally but globally. With standardized tests, like PISA, we are narrowing the curriculum, and all the OECD countries are teaching the same thing. Because of that, we all produce the same kind of workers, outdated workers, to work in factories. People who can comply, behave and be like everybody else.

In the global world today it is easy to outsource jobs to someone who is willing to do the same job, just as fast for less money. Therefore we need creative people that can do something else and think differently.

Andreas Schleicher (2010) said:

"Schools have to prepare students for jobs that have not yet been created, technologies that have not yet been invented and problems that we don't know will arise."

Standardized education might have been the answer once but saying that it's obsolete is putting it mildly and is only a way to try to repair the broken system. The results of those tests are, according to Daniel Pink (A Whole New Mind, 2005) in direct contradiction to the skills we need today. Those skills are for example design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning.

We should be solving real problems, asking questions that matter instead of remembering and repeating facts. Adults' accomplishments are linked far more strongly to their creativity than IQ ( source) and we should be celebrating diverse knowledge and interest instead of trying to standardize knowledge and skills.

I wonder if schools would finally change their direction if we designed a new standardize test that wouldn't measure numeracy, science, and literacy but empathy, creative thinking and communication skills... Maybe that is all we need.

Final thoughts

All the education systems on the planet are being reformed, but I don't think reform is what we need. We need a revolution and change the education system into something else. It isn't an easy task, but as S.E. Phillips once said:

Anything worth having is worth fighting for.

Doing something new and getting poor results on the old test shouldn't surprise anyone. What is the point of doing something new and different if we get the same results on standardized tests... then we might as well just do factory schooling, conform and comply.

"If I had asked the people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses"

That is exactly what we are doing today. We are asking our students to remember more, write better and repeat faster than before... just like we wanted the faster horse when really we should be asking for the car. Sure the car wasn't better than the horse in the beginning and our education system won't be perfect either. It will never be perfect, it should be constantly evolving and we should strive to make it better every day.

I don't know what a perfect education system looks like, and don't think it even exists. But I believe that if we talk, try something different, fail forward, investigate and share what we do, not only locally but globally, we can get a lot closer.

If you want to see a change in education, you should start in your own classroom.

"Education can be encouraged from the top-down but can only be improved from the ground up" - Sir Ken Robinson
Icelandic Educator. Creator. Designer. Stanford Graduate School of Education Alumn
Ingvi Hrannar Ómarsson

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14 things that are obsolete in 21st century schools

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Saying that it has always been this way, doesn't count as a legitimate justification as to why it should stay that way. Teachers and administrators all over the world are doing amazing things, but some of the things we are still doing, despite all the new solutions, research and ideas out there are, to put [...]

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Photo by Kevin Jarrett via Flickr, CC BY 2.0

My first year of teaching, my administrator handed me an iPad and said, "Play around with it." Like I had all the time in the world as a first-year teacher to play around with a piece of technology I'd never used! Even though my administration didn't pressure me about integration right away, I pressured myself. It's hard enough to battle for students' attention against romantic relationships, hormones, fatigue and cell phones. Now, we are suppose to hand them another distraction. Being the people-pleasing person I am, I jumped right in.

I would love to tell you that technology integrates itself, but it doesn't. There are no technology faeries that come into your classroom to plug all the wires into the right places, create interesting videos for lessons or keeps students engaged. What I can offer you is five tips that I've learned along the way, so you can benefit from my blood, sweat and tears. If you have ever been fearful of integrating technology into your classroom, fear no more.

1. Create clear instructions

Students act like they know everything there is to know about technology, but they don't. It is helpful to have clear instructions that you review, model and have accessible throughout the year. I post easy, step-by-step instructions on my wall that are color coordinated and include visual icons. For larger projects, I create videos that go over the instructions using screencastify. This way the student can watch the video as many times as necessary.

2. Recruit student tech support

Students are more likely to ask another student for help than the teacher. I suggest recruiting at least two students (diligent, helpful and encouraging students) per class to become the student tech support team. I try to develop a team atmosphere between them. They have lunch meetings in my class where I feed them snacks and train them on programs that I will be using. They even have a cool name "Browning's Tech Squad." They are able to troubleshoot with their peers and decide when a problem needs my assistance.

3. Get up and move

First-year teachers are told that proximity will solve many of their class management issues. The same can be said for integrating technology. My students are in groups of six with their Chromebooks all facing different directions; therefore, I am up and moving around the room a lot. There is no management strategy that is better that your presence around the room, however, there are some ways keep them on track and minimize your walking-around time. During tests, I move students to pair seating. This way I can see all the screens at the same time. Also, they are not allowed to dim their screen and iPads are to be kept flat on the table.

4. Engage their interests

Using technology shouldn't mean doing the same boring worksheets on the computer instead of paper. Be mindful of all the opportunities that technology offers, including engaging videos, music, programs and online communication (like blogs) to help your students relate to the content materials. Finding these resources can be time consuming. Recruit your teaching team to lighten the load. Each of the teachers in your team can research one way to integrate technology into your next unit. By time you start, you can have four or five different engaging strategies or resources ready.

5. Create a professional online community

Digital citizenship may be the buzzword of the decade, but it is of great importance. Students are often thrown onto computers without any direction on how to behave or perform. Without guidance, students will approach academic digital work with the same relaxed mindset they bring to social media or online games outside the classroom. It is much easier to be proactive and teach them how to be professional than to deal with cyberbullying, or worse, later.

Schools have students sign technology user agreements, but students don't read them. I have my students create their own contract. First, we watch videos of professionals talking about online practices (inviting a business leader as a guest speaker would be powerful). We read stories about misconduct online. They even share their own experiences. Based on all that information, they create their contract. They take ownership of the level of professionalism they want in their online classroom.

You also need to create an authentic audience for their work, and discuss how to develop the correct level of professionalism for each type of audience. My students' update stream on Schoology is their place to chat. They can tell jokes, post polls, share information, etc. They have discussion posts within their assignments, where their peers are also their audience, but this time their writing is academic and purpose-driven. They also have presentations, interviews and projects that they share with business leaders from the community, and they must learn how to adjust their language, style and content to communicate with them effectively.

You might not have technology faeries to help you, but you don't have to fear fighting for your students' attention. You can't plan for every possible scenario when integrating technology into your instruction, but a well-developed and interesting plan can make all the difference. You don't have to overhaul your whole instructional plan, just pick one thing and try it out. Be patient with your students and be prepared to laugh at the problems (if you don't, you will cry). And when it finally does work, you can pat yourself on the back, give your students well-deserved praise and share your success with your friendly neighborhood technology faery.

5 Classroom Management Tips for Technology Integration

Author

Crystal Browning

Crystal Browning teaches English Language Arts in the Multimedia Technology Academy at Monache High School in Porterville, CA. She currently serves as the English Department Co-Chair. She is passionate about creating a safe and loving learning environment through mutual tolerance and transparency. She laughs, cries, and learns alongside her students. You can reach her on Twitter @MrsBteachagape.

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5 Classroom Management Tips for Technology Integration

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
My first year of teaching, my administrator handed me an iPad and said, "Play around with it." Like I had all the time in the world as a first-year teacher to play around with a piece of technology I'd never used! Even though my administration didn't pressure me about integration right away, I pressured myself....

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Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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Using Technology Vs Technology Integration- An Excellent Chart for Teachers

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A platform that provides reviews of educational web tools and apps to help educators, teachers, and students integrate technology in education.