Edtech is a crucial precursor to "work tech"— the tools
that today’s students will need in school, career training and eventually the
work environment. In an economy that is moving quickly toward more independent
workers executing high level projects for a variety of businesses, exploring an
ever changing eco system of new technologies will be a central skill for
workers. Students need access to tools that work. Be that as it may, today, the
choices teachers make in regards to the tools they use with students depend on hypothesis
instead of solid evidence.
School, district, and state leaders make decisions on technological
choices every day that will influence student’s tech fluency, also learning
results. These leaders burn through billions of dollars on equipment and
resources to implement their decisions. The New Schools Venture Fund evaluates
that K-12 schools on the whole spend about $9 billion every year on
instructional software, digital assessments, laptops and tablets for students
and teachers. But how do these pioneers know whether their investments will lead
to the students learning outcome they desire? What methods for evaluating
whether the tools work will lead to selection of the best tools for learning?
Unfortunately, many of them may never know because there
essentially is insufficient research about what works—and good, existing
research rarely makes it to the policymaking table. In addition, high-impact
practices and technologies remain comfortable at the "pilot" stage,
never accomplishing the transformative scale they promise because little is
known about effective scaling across different school and district contexts.
The time has arrived to dive in and investigate what works.
For much of the last year, roughly 150 researchers, policy makers, business
people, educators, investors, and institutional pioneers have been teaming up
in 10 working groups (each supported by a professional researcher) to study and
discuss data, procedures, and frameworks that show generous guarantee.
This May, these pioneers and another 150 or so partners will
met for the first ever EdTech Efficacy Research Academic Symposium, sorted out
by The University of Virginia Curry School of Education, Digital Promise and
the Jefferson Education Accelerator. At the symposium, we will keep on
developing a shared understanding of the concrete steps we can all take to ensure
that real research drives the development, determination, and organization of
education technology. We hope this will commence a more intense push to advance
research that leads to better strategy and practice in both adopting and using technology.
Five factors currently drive this demand for enhancing the
quality and scalability of education technology:
- Higher academic standards nationwide
- An attention on school and career training readiness
- The changing role of a diminishing supply of teachers
- Rapidly emerging technologies
- Static state budgets.
Rather than thinking of technology as a tool for implementing
old forms of pedagogy method, we should expand the notion of what great
teaching looks like—and the role of the teacher. Teachers aren't becoming less
vital in the period of quickly emerging technology; rather, they're becoming the
critical navigators of newly available tools and information. Research and technology
communities play an important part in helping instructors and leaders effectively
serve that part.
The Alliance for Excellent Education has been addressing the challenge
of utilizing new educational technologies to make education delivery better.
Working with 60 education partners and the U.S. Department of Education, we at
the Alliance for Excellent Education have created Future Ready Schools—a
venture that helps school district leaders to actualize digital learning
systems that customize learning and better serve the future needs of students
and the areas where they will live and work. Up until this point, 3,100 school
districts have vowed.
To best help these education leaders as they deploy proven
advanced learning strategies, we need to keep continue investigating practices
and offer strong proof with respect to the fidelity of new tools and strategies
that continually arise. The EdTech Symposium is designed to kick off this
procedure and inspire increased cooperation between tool developers who aim at
making exciting, engaging technologies and teachers who aim to ensure that each
students has access to the high- quality education she or he needs and deserves.
By beginning the dialogue, we intend to spur deeper, more research-driven
discussions that lead to the educational transformation our country requires.
