Education Technology Insights

A Step towards the Classrooms of the Future For Ed Tech to work, frame it around school improvement It might seem like the most exciting time for Ed Tech in over a decade. There is a government strategy, a sector leadership group (of which I am a member), and over 10,000 Ed Tech companies across the globe vying for our custom (gulp!). To be honest, I feel more nervous than excited. Not because I do not see the potential impact that technology can have in our schools, but because I am terrified of the time and money that schools may waste (and have wasted) along the way. Too often, schools select software or implement hardware strategies that do not deliver sustained benefits. The causes of this are widely known. In 2018, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) published a guide on how schools can implement new programmes and practice, noting  “it doesn’t matter how great an education idea or intervention is in principle — what really matters is how it manifests itself in t...

Technology to Support Online Learning One-third of all college students take at least one online course. Adult learners in particular gravitate to online learning, as they balance jobs and families alongside their studies. Communications tools are vitally important to students and faculty. They enable students to express needs and faculty to meet them in a timely way. Many online classes are fast paced — at my institution they are typically five or six weeks in length. Students don’t have time for delayed faculty responses to their questions. Ensuring technology supports online learners and their faculty is vital for colleges and universities. What technology do students need? Students need a reliable, always-on system. Learning systems should be available 24/7 without downtime, because many online students are fitting classes around busy schedules of work and family commitments. The online learning systems should be “snappy,” with items loading quickly after a click. While...

Navigating the Emerging World of Student Information Systems Perhaps the best news about student information systems (SIS) is that there are more robust, practical options for colleges and universities than at any time in history. Perhaps the worst news is that finding the ideal combination of SIS tools is probably the most challenging in history. “Traditional SIS vendors are taking varied approaches to emerging SaaS and cloud-hosted era, trying hard to gain new customers and perhaps even harder not to lose current ones” There have technically been many SIS choices for more than a generation now. In fact, more than two dozen companies claimed to provide some SIS functionality during the pre-Y2K era of the Late 1990s. But many were built to address specific institutions based upon size, staffing, and financial situation. The choices for any one institution were limited in most cases. Indeed, most of the largest institutions implementing SIS’ tended to congregate around one sol...

3 Texting Tips to Help High School Students Make a Successful Transition to College Brian Kathman, CEO, Signal Vine High school seniors have a lot on their minds, from college applications to campus visits to wrapping up their social and academic time in high school. With everything going on, it’s not uncommon for things to fall through the cracks–a missed deadline here, an incomplete task there. What do these students need from YOU as their trusted high school support staff to get these tasks finished correctly on time? And why is it important to “nudge” students in the right direction? According to a 2014 research published by Dr. Benjamin L. Castleman and Dr. Lindsay C. Page, 10 to 40 percent of college-intending students fail to matriculate in the fall following high school. Their research shows that this is especially prevalent in low-income families. Factors that contribute to this phenomenon include absence of school support, confusion over paperwork, lack of pare...

The IR Stack David Eubanks When Heinrich Schliemann excavated Troy, his team found layers of past civilizations: a striking physical manifestation of the dependency of present on past accomplishments. Today, about everything we think we know depends on a layer cake of processes that IT people call “the stack.” At the bottom is an integrated circuit chip and, if we extrapolate to neurology, the top of the stack — through layers of hardware and software, inference, and visualization — is the academic leader trying to predict enrollment next year or optimize debt payments. Futurists like Nick Bolstrom muse that the software stack may become self-aware and turn the world into paperclips, but for a university’s C-suites the challenge of this epistemological parfait lies in the two questions What do we know? and How do we know that? Given trustable answers to those questions, it’s their job to figure out What do we do? Plato was right about shadows on the wall. By one estimate our ey...

1. AI stands as a pillar for students education success Higher education institutions use machine learning platforms to break through the student’s achievement in academics. Education technology and data analytics stands as a pillar for students, especially to target student needs. The fusion of data analytics and automation lend a hand to track their students’ academic processes for those who fall behind, gets a greater support to reach out their goals. Student retention is important for every universities and colleges so AI in education improve every individual student in their academics especially those who need additional guidance. University administrative process gets benefit using artificial intelligence to handle the vast amount of data gathered, utilizing it in research and teaching activities. EdTech is used to monitor presentations against its mission and product frequently to assist more responsive management. It magnifies the quality of performance league tables ...

Going Beyond the Four Walls with Smart Classrooms Trouble-free access to technology provides teachers with a perfect opportunity to acquire the benefits of the tools that were once considered to be elements of distraction. In the recent past, people have witnessed the boisterous development of technology in the education industry . In the present time, if classroom instructions are not displayed on the screen, students might not be interested in studying actively. Some parents want to keep their kids at a distance from smart devices, but a few of them also encourage youngsters to learn from new-age technologies without being dependent on them. By having ample access to technology, teachers can easily find ways to cope with the student’s attention and do not have to fight for it. Technology will help teachers to establish a new educational environment , which can encourage partnerships automatically and give rise to student participation. Authorities at the school realize that...