new technology in education 2022

How technology is reinventing education

Stanford Graduate School of Education Dean Dan Schwartz and other education scholars weigh in on what's next for some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom.

Image credit: Claire Scully

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

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

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

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

AI in the classroom

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

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

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

Immersive environments

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

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

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

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

Gamification

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

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

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

Data-gathering and analysis

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

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

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

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

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

America's Education News Source

Copyright 2024 The 74 Media, Inc

• Pine Bluff, Arkansas
• absenteeism
• Future of High School
• Artificial Intelligence
• science of reading

Pandemic Gave Teachers New Insight into Ed Tech. Now, it May Be the Next Big Thing in 2022 — and Beyond

Untangle Your Mind!

Sign up for our free newsletter and start your day with clear-headed reporting on the latest topics in education.

74 Million Reasons to Give

Support The 74’s year-end campaign with a tax-exempt donation and invest in our future.

Most Popular

Interactive: in many schools, declines in student enrollment are here to stay , what’s the right goal for student achievement is 50% proficiency enough 63%, teacher prep programs see ‘encouraging’ growth, new federal data reveal, survey finds many gen zers say school lacks a ‘sense of purpose’, kids, screen time & despair: an expert in economics & happiness sounds the alarm.

Help fund stories like this. Donate now!

The spotlight was bright on education technology during the early days of the pandemic in 2020, but the technology’s value didn’t come into focus for every teacher, experts say. Now, with that perspective, school districts and teachers are taking a new look at ed tech, opening a new future for tech in classrooms. 

“People seem to be waking up to the reality that ed tech is no longer a separate category and that nearly everything students do has a technology component,” says Bart Epstein, CEO of the EdTech Evidence Exchange . “Accordingly, educators are demanding more information about which students are engaging with various tools — how frequently and successfully.” 

Ryan Baker, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, says that during the pandemic, school districts adopted pretty much anything they could. There were great platforms that contributed to a better learning experience for students while providing quality data for teachers, and poor platforms that Baker says were basically a waste of time, made for an unpleasant experience and provided no benefits for learning. 

Because of this mass adoption, teachers had an opportunity to see a wealth of options and try some things they wouldn’t have before. And that means a big shift coming in 2022, as successful platforms will continue to see growth — even if not at the rate seen at the height of the pandemic  — while others will be cast aside. “A lot of the teachers who adopted something really quickly” during the pandemic “are de-adopting it really quickly,” Baker says. “The vendors who have high-quality offerings, their numbers aren’t dropping below where they were pre-pandemic.” 

What does this mean for 2022? 

Epstein says that while some districts are still spending stimulus money just to spend it instead of taking the time to research and evaluate their options, most have a better understanding of technology than they did before COVID-19 struck and are demanding information about the tools students use. Dan Carroll, former teacher and founder of Clever , a company that helps school districts integrate ed tech solutions, says that more than half the teachers he’s surveyed expect to continue using most of the new technology they’ve adopted. But the pandemic still left a giant learning loss hole across the country — and that’s where ed tech may focus. 

“The next big thing is going to be tutoring and quasi-learning center experiences for students who have fallen behind,” Epstein says, even though, he notes, the transition will endure a “giant mess” that wastes money in the process as people figure out the best way to implement the technology. 

With districts not set up to hire local, outside tutors and then run a completely new program that integrates their work with classroom teachers’ lessons, Epstein believes tutoring represents a market that technology companies should fill. “Some students need ongoing tutoring support for a few classes,” Epstein says. “Others were socially promoted last year and are so far behind that what they need is someone to teach them an entire year of math. We’re starting to see more real-time tutoring embedded into various programs, and I expect that trend to continue.” 

The ability to provide tutoring virtually offers an opportunity, he says. 

Baker agrees. He says virtual tutoring will expand in the coming years, led by an effort to link both computer-based and human tutoring in one application for improved efficiency and effectiveness. “We will see a lot more of that over the next couple of years,” he says. 

Baker also hopes to see a greater push into simulation technology, applications that make it easy for teachers to integrate tech directly into the classroom while students experience a new skill or learn a new concept through a hands-on virtual experience. 

Through it all, Baker and Carroll say, the best companies will not only provide a quality experience for the students in a given classroom, but collect useful information for the teacher. 

“I don’t think teachers or administrators want another big thing right now, so, with that in mind, I think the next big thing in ed tech will be about sustainability, improving experiences for end users, finding ways to collect information about what’s working and what needs improvement and making sure that the massive investments that have been made in ed tech over the past 18 months show value,” Carroll says.

He expects popular tools will make teachers’ lives easier by streamlining operations and saving time, as will technologies that can help students master a missing skill or get tutoring support without putting more of a burden on the classroom teacher. Those, he says, “will be in high demand.”

Tim Newcomb is a sports, education, and pop culture writer based out of Washington state. He is the author of the book “STEM in Sports: Engineering,” published by Mason Crest, and a father to three girls.

We want our stories to be shared as widely as possible — for free.

Please view The 74's republishing terms.

The Next Big Thing in Education Technology for 2022 — and Beyond

By Tim Newcomb

This story first appeared at The 74 , a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.

On The 74 Today

What Schools Can Do Now to Ensure Their New Technology Lasts Beyond the COVID Cash Boom

• Share article

Billions of dollars in unanticipated funding for new laptops, tablets, 3D printers, and hotspots sounds like a district technology leader’s lucky day, not a slow moving train wreck.

But that’s what some educators and experts see when they consider the current picture in many schools. Driven by an urgent need to make it possible for millions of students to learn virtually and fueled by tens of billions in federal relief cash, districts tripled or quadrupled their fleet of devices over the course of just one school year.

Many of those districts have embraced 1-to-1 computing initiatives and the changes to instruction, classroom management, and professional development that come with them. But in a few short years, the devices bought with federal emergency funds are going to be outdated or even stop working altogether, experts warn. Districts have different deadlines for spending various pots of federal funding, but the last of it must be allocated by September of 2024.

Many districts are not planning for that reality.

“I’m hearing from other CTOs across the nation that there are leadership groups and school boards that feel like ‘You’re good, you don’t need anything else,’’’ said Kelly May-Vollmar, the assistant superintendent of educational technology services for the Desert Sands school district in southern California. “It’s all fine for today, but a few years from now, about the same time the money runs out, we’re going to have a big problem on our hands.”

The complication goes beyond just the cost of laptops and tablets, added May-Vollmar, whose own district went 1-to-1 several years ago after carefully crafting a sustainability plan.

“You’re teaching teachers how to use [devices],” she said. “You’re teaching kids how to use them. You’re spending a lot of time and money. The investment goes far beyond the cost of the device.”

I'm hearing from other CTOs across the nation that there are leadership groups and school boards that feel like ‘You’re good, you don't need anything else.' It's all fine for today, but a few years from now, about the same time the money runs out, we're going to have a big problem on our hands

The time to start planning is now

Districts don’t usually go on a tech buying binge. Instead, school systems with a lot of hardware to manage typically have a set replacement cycle. For instance, they might swap out a quarter of their old laptops and tablets each year and replace with them new ones. That way, no student is typically given a device that is more than four or five years old, and the district can space out its spending over a longer period.

But the federal relief money—and the immediate need to help kids secure devices and internet capability in order to learn virtually—meant many districts purchased a slew of laptops, tablets, hotspots, even 3D-printers and interactive screens, all at once.

“They had to do the quick spend, and it was a lot of money,” said Diane Doersch, the technical project director at Digital Promise, a nonprofit that works to improve learning through more-effective use of technology. “But now, they’re gonna have to start planning: ‘How am I going to divide this fleet up intelligently so that I don’t have these high-spending years to replace the whole fleet at once?’”

If districts don’t think ahead, four or five years from now they may be “stuck with a whole bunch of devices that don’t work and no money for replacements,” said Doersch, who previously worked as a chief technology and information officer in Wisconsin.

That’s particularly problematic because districts are reimagining professional development and curriculum to make the most of the new technology. Three or four years from now, teachers will likely have grown used to working with laptops and other devices, particularly in districts that went 1-to-1. It would be a big U-turn to go back to Chromebook carts and computer labs, Doersch said.

What’s more, for some lower-income families, the school-issued laptop or tablet is the sole device for an entire household.

“I have heard of families where that is the only computer that the whole family has, and mom and dad have been able to apply for jobs on it and, you know, do these other things that the family needs a computer for,” Doersch said. While there are federal programs to help families obtain devices, they can be hard to navigate, she added.

The first step is to take a hard look at what devices you have and how old they are

One of the first steps many districts must take in coming up with a sustainability plan: Figuring out what hardware they already have, how old those devices are, what kind of shape they’re in, and where they are, physically.

Doersch suggests districts spend this coming summer analyzing their inventory, asking questions like: Which devices came back from students’ homes? What didn’t come back? What’s damaged, but fixable? What needs replacing?

Districts also need to consider expenditures beyond just replacing and repairing many more devices. For instance, if a district bought iPads, the tablets themselves may last up to six years. But the power cords will likely need to be replaced long before that. Interactive whiteboards come with remote controls that run on batteries that will wear out. And on and on.

“There are always hidden costs and tentacles,” Doersch said.

But more devices can open additional savings elsewhere, she added. For instance, if a district has gone 1-to-1, can it purchase fewer textbooks? Save on printing costs? Digitize student documents?

Districts also have the option to seek outside funding. Wichita Public Schools in Kansas is working with Verizon Innovative Learning to ensure that kids at low-income schools can continue to have access to a device and internet services at home—initiatives that were initially funded by federal programs that are likely to be phased out. The district has also crafted a five-year sustainability plan for the 50,000 devices it purchased with the help of federal relief funding.

Wichita also brought on new software for teaching and learning, including Nearpod, which allows teachers to create digital presentations and share them with student devices, and BrainPOP, which offers online learning games.

When the federal money runs out, the district may have to take a close look at its software programs and phase out those that aren’t getting much use or are duplicative , said Rob Dickson, the district’s chief information officer.

The district may have to be “OK with not doing some things, maybe those are old pieces of software, or old pieces of curriculum that you’re not using that you just need to say, ‘No, I’m not going to renew that, because I’m not seeing the usage’,” he said.

It may ultimately be tough for many districts to completely blunt the impact of the federal money running dry, even if they are thoughtful about sustainability, Doersch said.

“It is going to be a big challenge, no matter what, because money that was there is no longer going to be there,” she added.

Although school districts invested a lot of the federal money in new devices, most opted not to use the one-time cash to hire additional staff to help with repair, administration, and technical support. Salaries and benefits can be a hefty, ongoing expense, Doersch said.

That choice left some district IT departments overwhelmed and understaffed, dealing with far more devices but the same number of personnel.

Wichita Public Schools’ creative solution to the staffing problem: “We started hiring students to do our tech work,” Dickson said.

The district teamed up with Wichita State University and WSU Tech, another local postsecondary institution, to help train the students. The kids get high school credit and dual enrollment credit, plus $15 an hour, in exchange for their work. If the students perform well, Dickson anticipates hiring some of them after they graduate.

Paint the picture of what this looks like in four years if there is not proper planning

The sustainability push may require district tech leaders to wear yet another hat: Public relations professional. They will need to convince school boards to finance new technology to replace pandemic-purchased devices once they become outdated.

Those conversations should start now, May-Vollmar said. When her district launched a 1-to-1 initiative in 2018, prior to the pandemic, she had frank discussions about sustainability with the local board of education, ultimately persuading members to commit to replacing one-sixth of the district’s devices every year, as a regular part of the budget.

District tech leaders may have to go on a charm offensive, she said, without sugar-coating the fallout of inaction.

“You have to paint the picture of what does this look like four or five years from now, if we don’t have a sustainability plan, and what’s the impact to our students?” she said. “You got to be able to tell that story and you have to be able to tell the story now, before you’re in a position that it’s an immediate need, because technology is not cheap.”

To make her case in Desert Sands—a district with students from a wide variety of socioeconomic circumstances—May-Vollmar collected data on how many students had quality internet access and a device at home. She worked methodically, promoting her plan first to the school board, then school leaders, teachers, parents, and students.

Equity was at the center of her pitch. She told the school community that when students go home, “if they have a device and internet connectivity, the world of learning is open to them. [If they] don’t have that, they’re limited to what’s in their textbook.”

To be sure, crafting a long-term sustainability plan and selling it to district leaders is a big-time commitment for IT departments that are already stretched thin.

But that’s become the nature of the job for district tech directors these days.

“Starting with the pandemic, tech leaders had to do more than manage boxes and wires,” Doersch said. “They were the visionaries. They had to build strategy. Everything seemed to depend on the technology. And so their leadership game was upped, most definitely.”

Sign Up for EdWeek Tech Leader

Edweek top school jobs.

Sign Up & Sign In

Global education trends and research to follow in 2022

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, emily gustafsson-wright , emily gustafsson-wright senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @egwbrookings helen shwe hadani , helen shwe hadani former brookings expert @helenshadani kathy hirsh-pasek , kathy hirsh-pasek senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @kathyandro1 maysa jalbout , maysa jalbout nonresident fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @maysajalbout elizabeth m. king , elizabeth m. king nonresident senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education jennifer l. o’donoghue , jennifer l. o’donoghue deputy director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development @jennodjod brad olsen , brad olsen senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @bradolsen_dc jordan shapiro , jordan shapiro nonresident fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @jordosh emiliana vegas , and emiliana vegas former co-director - center for universal education , former senior fellow - global economy and development @emivegasv rebecca winthrop rebecca winthrop director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development @rebeccawinthrop.

January 24, 2022

• 12 min read

As the third calendar year of the pandemic begins, 2022 promises to be an important one—especially for education. Around the world, education systems have had to contend with sporadic closures, inequitable access to education technology and other distance learning tools, and deep challenges in maintaining both students’ and teachers’ physical and emotional health. At the same time, not all of the sudden changes precipitated by the pandemic have been bad—with some promising new innovations, allies, and increased attention on the field of global education emerging over the past three years. The key question is whether 2022 and the years ahead will lead to education transformation or will students, teachers, and families suffer long-lasting setbacks?

In the Center for Universal Education, our scholars take stock of the trends, policies, practices, and research that they’ll be closely keeping an eye on this year and likely in the many to come.

More than ever, in 2022 it will be critical to focus on strengthening the fabric of our global education system in order to achieve positive outcomes—particularly through an increased focus on data-informed decisionmaking. We have seen a renewed focus on different forms of data that are critical to enhanced education outcomes, such as real-time performance data, which allow teachers and other decisionmakers to course-adjust to the needs of learners to better support their educational journeys. Additionally, high-quality program cost data are needed for decisionmakers to plan, budget, and choose the most cost-effective interventions.

One way we are seeing these areas strengthened is through innovative financing for education, such as impact bonds , which require data to operate at full potential. This year, pooled funding through outcomes funds—a scaled version of impact bonds—should make a particularly big splash. The Education Outcomes Fund organization is slated to launch programs in Ghana and Sierra Leone, and we also expect to see the launch of country-specific outcomes funds for education such as OFFER (Outcome Fund For Education Results) in Colombia, the Back-to-School Outcomes Fund in India, and another fund in Chile. At the Center for Universal Education, we will be following these innovations closely and look forward to the insights that they will bring to the education sector.

As we look ahead to 2022, one continued challenge for many families is navigating the uncharted territory of supporting children’s learning with a growing number of school closures . But while the pandemic forced an abrupt slowdown in modern life, it also provided an opportunity to reexamine how we can prioritize learning and healthy development both in and out of school. Moreover, the cascading effects of the pandemic are disproportionally affecting families living in communities challenged by decades of discrimination and disinvestment—and are very likely to widen already existing educational inequities in worrisome ways.

One innovative approach to providing enriching learning opportunities beyond school walls that address the inequities in our current systems is Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL) —installations and programming that promote children and families’ learning through play in the public realm. A current focus for PLL at Brookings is measuring the impact of these spaces to show that PLL works and to garner greater investment in them. To that end, Brookings and its partners developed a framework and an initial set of indicators from both the learning science and placemaking perspectives to help assess the positive effects of PLL on learning outcomes , as well as its potential to enhance social interaction and public life in revitalized spaces. The framework will continue to evolve as we learn from communities that are testing the expansion and adaptation of PLL—this important work is just beginning.

The pandemic highlighted several trends in education that promise to be the focus of future policy and practice in 2022 and beyond: the importance of skills that supplement the learning of content, systemic inequities in education systems, and the role of digital technology in the education of the future. It has become increasingly clear that the memorization of content alone will not prepare children for the jobs and society of the future. As noted in a Brookings report “ A new path for education reform, ” in an automated world, manufacturing jobs and even preliminary medical diagnoses or legal contracts can be performed by computers and robots. Students who can work collaboratively—with strong communication skills, critical thinking, and creative innovation—will be highly valued. Mission statements from around the globe are starting to promote a “whole child” approach to education that will encourage the learning of a breadth of skills better aligning the education sector with needs from the business sector.

The past year also demonstrated weaknesses and inequalities inherent in remote learning that I’ll be closely tracking in the years to come. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that virtual learning presents risks to social-emotional learning . Further, research suggests that academic progress during the pandemic slowed such that students demonstrated only 35 to 50 percent of the gains they normally achieve in mathematics and 60 to 68 percent in reading. The losses are not experienced uniformly , with children from underresourced environments falling behind their more resourced peers.

The failure of remote learning also raises questions about the place of digital learning in the classroom. Learning will become more and more hybrid over time, and keeping an eye on advances in technology—especially regarding augmented reality and the metaverse—will be particularly important, as both have real consequences for the classrooms.

In 2022, I’ll be focusing on one group of children in particular–refugees–who are among those children who have historically had the least access to preprimary education. The pandemic has affected them disproportionally , as it pushed them and their families into poverty and deprived them from most forms of education during the school closures.

While much more investment in early childhood education research and evaluation is needed to improve evidence and channel scarce resources effectively, there are a few important efforts to watch. A report commissioned by Theirworld last year provided an overview of the sector and focused on a critical gap and opportunity to address the inequity of access to early childhood education in refugee settings by better supporting teachers and community workers. This year, Theirworld and partners will pursue two of the report’s recommendations–making the science of early childhood brain development widely accessible in refugee communities and building the evidence base on what works in supporting early childhood education teachers and the young refugee children they teach.

The report was informed by existing initiatives including Ahlan Simsim, which in 2017 received the largest known grant to early education in a humanitarian context. While the evaluation of Ahlan Simsim will not be complete until two more years, the Global Ties for Children research center, Sesame Workshop, and the International Rescue Committee will share critical insights into their learning to date in a forthcoming episode of the podcast the Impact Room .

This coming year I’ll be focused on how education systems can prepare for future disruptions, whatever the cause, with more deliberateness. The past two years of the COVID pandemic have seen education systems throughout the globe struggle to find ways to continue schooling. Additionally, there have been other public health crises, natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and severe storms, and wars and terrorism in different parts of the world that have gravely tested school systems’ ability to minimize the cost of catastrophes on students and teachers. Finding safer temporary learning places outside the school and using technologies such as radio, TV broadcasts, and online learning tools have helped, but quick fixes with little preparation are not effective approaches for sustaining and advancing learning gains.

In the age of broadcast and digital technologies, there are many more ways to meet the challenges of future emergency situations, but life- and education-saving solutions must be part of the way school systems operate—built into their structures, their staffing, their budgets, and their curricula. By preparing for the emergencies that are likely to happen, we can persevere to reach learning goals for all children.

By the close of 2021, a number of studies began to document the impact of COVID-19 on girls’ educational trajectories across the Global South. These studies point to promising trends –lower than expected dropout rates and reenrollment rates similar to (if not greater than) those of boys–while still highlighting the particular challenges faced by adolescent girls and girls living in poverty , conflict, and crisis .

In 2022, it will be critical to continue to generate more nuanced evidence—carefully considering questions such as “for which girls,” “where,” “when,” and “why.” And then we must put this knowledge to use to protect and promote girls’ and young women’s rights not just to education, but to participate and thrive in the world around them. Ensuring that marginalized girls and young women become transformative agents in improving their lives and livelihoods—as well as those of their families and communities—requires us to develop new strategies for learning and acting together.

At the Center for Universal Education, this means strengthening our work with local leaders in girls’ education: promoting gender-transformative research through the Echidna Global Scholars Program ; expanding the collective impact of our 33 Echidna alumni; and co-constructing a learning and action community to explore together how to improve beliefs, practices, programs, and policies so that marginalized adolescent girls’ can develop and exercise agency in pursuing their own pathways.

Going into year three of COVID-19, in 2022 I’m interested to see whether countries will transform their education systems or largely leave them the way they are. Will leaders of education systems tinker around the edges of change but mostly attempt a return to a prepandemic “normal,” or will they take advantage of this global rupture in the status quo to replace antiquated educational institutions and approaches with significant structural improvement?

In relation to this, one topic I’ll be watching in particular is how countries treat their teachers. How will policymakers, the media, parent councils, and others frame teachers’ work in 2022? In which locations will teachers be diminished versus where will they be defended as invaluable assets? How will countries learn from implications of out-of-school children (including social isolation and child care needs)? Will teachers remain appreciated in their communities but treated poorly in the material and political conditions of their work? Or will countries hold them dear—demanding accountability while supporting and rewarding them for quality work?

I’m interested in learning more about how pandemic lockdowns have impacted students. So far, we’ve only gotten very general data dealing with questions that are, in my opinion, too simple to be worthwhile. It’s all been about good and bad, positive and negative, learning loss and achievement. But I’ll be watching for more nuanced studies, which ask about specific ways increased time away from school has impacted social-emotional development. How do those results differ between gender, race, socioeconomic status, and geographic location? I suspect we’re going to learn some things about the relationship between home environment and school environment that will challenge a lot of our taken-for-granted assumptions.

In 2022, I’ll be tracking emerging evidence on the impact of the COVID-19 school closures on children and youth. Several researchers, including my co-authors and me , have provided estimates of the school closures’ impact on student learning losses, unemployment, future earnings, and productivity globally. But only recently are researchers analyzing actual evidence of learning losses , and an early systematic review finds that “Although robust and empirical research on COVID-19-related student learning loss is limited, learning loss itself may not be.”

Likewise, there is little rigorous reviews of remote learning tools’ and platforms’ impact on student learning during the school closures. After the pandemic, it is almost certain that remote and hybrid learning will continue—at a minimum occasionally and often periodically—in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. It is urgent that we build the evidence base to help education decisionmakers and practitioners provide effective, tailored learning experiences for all students.

Finally, a key issue for education is how to redesign curricula so that this generation (and future generations) of students gain a key set of skills and competencies required for technologically-advancing labor markets and societies. While foundational literacy and numeracy skills continue to be essential for learning, a strong foundational knowledge of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is ever more important in the 21st century, and I look forward to contributing research this year to help make the case for curricula redesign efforts.

I will be interested to see how parent-teacher relationships progress after the pandemic has (hopefully) faded into the background. COVID-19 has had an inescapable impact on the way we deliver education globally, but none more so than on how education leaders and teachers interact with students and their families.

For the past three years, I have been studying family-school collaboration. Together with my colleagues and partners, we have surveyed nearly 25,000 parents and 6,000 teachers in 10 countries around the world and found that the vast majority of teachers, parents, and caregivers want to work together more closely. Quality family-school collaboration has the potential to significantly improve educational outcomes, spur important discussions on the overall purpose of school, and smooth the path for schools and families to navigate change together. From community schools in New Mexico  to text message updates from teachers in India , new innovations are popping up every day—in every corner of the world. I’m excited to see what the future holds for family-school collaboration!

Education Technology Global Education

Global Economy and Development

Center for Universal Education

Thinley Choden

May 3, 2024

Ghulam Omar Qargha, Rachel Dyl, Sreehari Ravindranath, Nariman Moustafa, Erika Faz de la Paz

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Rebecca Winthrop, Sweta Shah

May 2, 2024

22 Educational Technology & Online Learning Trends for 2022

• December 16, 2021

22 online learning trends and changes to expect in 2022

1. using metaverse for a realistic online learning environment, what is metaverse.

To summarize it, Metaverse provides a realistic virtual “world” that blends things like virtual reality, social media, gaming, collaboration technologies, and even e-commerce.  Metaverse creates an immersive experience with lifelike avatars and ultra-realistic virtual environments that you can fully interact with by seeing and meeting people, touching objects around you in real-time, buying and selling products, and more.

Why Metaverse may be used in 2022

• Makes online classrooms feel extremely real

Instructors can build literal classrooms that students can enter, sit at a desk, raise their hand, and speak to others.

• Improves communication and engagement
• Students and faculty can collaborate in many ways in and outside of class
• Students can create study groups to connect and collaborate
• Faculty can hold department meetings and office hours

2. Increasing awareness and use of Open Educational Resources (OER)

What is oer.

OER refers to digital teaching and learning materials that are accessible to everyone and almost always free to use. OER materials come in various formats such as digital online textbooks, audio/video, gamification, and more.

Instructors and students can find a variety of materials from sites such as OER Commons , where they can filter based on the resource type, subject, education level, standard, and language.

How does Metaverse work?

• Makes it easier to customize online course content

Instead of being tied to a single textbook that students have to purchase, instructors can easily find OER resources and then pick and choose different resources to use in their course.

• OER materials are free or low cost for students

Did you know that a 2021 survey found that 65% of students chose to not purchase a textbook due to the cost? With textbook prices continually increasing, OER materials are a cost savings game-changer for many students.

3. Focusing on improving web accessibility in online courses

About 1 in 5 students have reported a disability. And with the wealth of web accessibility software and tools, assistive devices, and information available there’s no excuse to not create accessible online courses . It’s a foundational piece of improving online learning and creating an inclusive learning environment for every student. 

Why focusing on web accessibility in online courses may increase in 2022

• Web accessibility can help increase student retention

While it varies from state to state and institution type, there are usually web accessibility standards that higher education institutions are required to.

4. Implementing strategies to help reduce student test anxiety

Testing can be inherently stressful for many students – especially in an online learning environment. In a 2020 survey, 64% of students responded that online exams make them nervous. The survey found that technology concerns and not knowing what to expect about certain aspects of the exam were the main causes of test anxiety.

Why strategies to reduce student test anxiety may increase in 2022

• Simple strategies can make a big difference

Simple strategies such as offering a practice exam and letting students know what to expect can help alleviate test anxiety.

• Some software can help decrease student test anxiety

The 2020 student survey showed that online proctoring services that blend AI and trained human proctors helped reduce student test anxiety.

5. Using online proctoring services

While some expected the use of online proctoring to be a quick-fix band-aid during the rapid shift to online learning due to covid, it’s continuing to be used – even as more institutions are transitioning to in-person classes.

Why institutions using online proctoring will continue in 2022

• Lets instructors use class time to teach instead of test

If you’re an instructor, think about how much of your class time is spent administering exams. With some online proctoring services, you get that time back because students can take exams outside of class and still get support if they have any issues.

• Creates a fair testing environment

With features such as detecting cell phones , locking down the browser , and video monitoring, online proctoring creates an equitable testing experience so that no students will have an ​​unfair advantage.

• It can help reduce student test anxiety

Online proctoring can help reduce student test anxiety because students have the convenience of testing when and where they want which helps alleviate the stress of scheduling exams.

Additionally, online proctoring services that combine AI software with live remote proctors can help reduce student test anxiety . This approach to online proctoring creates a minimally invasive testing experience because students don’t feel like they’re being watched by a live proctor the entire time because the AI monitors the exam and alerts a live proctor to intervene only if potential dishonesty has occurred. 

• It’s easy to use and quick to implement

LMS integration with online proctoring software should make implementation quick and easy. Meaning, it shouldn’t take weeks to get up and running. 

If the online proctoring software directly integrates with the LMS, it’s easy to use because it’s pretty much the same experience for instructors and students. Faculty will create the exam in the LMS like they already do and students simply log into the LMS and launch the proctored exam as normal and then verify their identity.

6. Incorporating more visual content

Just as many other industries , such as marketing, nonprofits, and healthcare are seeing the benefits of visual content, expect online learning to do the same.  

To be clear, this doesn’t mean that online courses will suddenly become a picture book, but you may see more visuals used in alignment with other course materials to help reinforce learning.

Why incorporating more visual content may increase in 2022

• Helps improve comprehension and engagement

Educators are always looking to create more engaging course content and visuals are a great way to help break up heavily text-based content and improve comprehension .

7. Adopting user-friendly educational technology

Online learning significantly increased in 2019-2020, largely due to COVID-19. By how much exactly? Y ou may be surprised.

According to recent IPEDS data , almost 52% of students took an online course in 2020 compared to 37% in fall 2019. 

With the sudden shift to online learning and educational software constantly evolving, some students and faculty have struggled to adjust. 

Why educational technology that’s easy to use may increase in 2022

• Helps improve adoption rates

If educational software is easy to use, faculty may be more likely to use it, which aligns with the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The TAM model essentially says that the main drivers of technology adoption are perceived usability and ease of use.

• Usually requires less training, which can save time and associated costs

8. Microlearning to help make online course content more digestible

What is microlearning.

Long story short: microlearning means breaking course content into smaller, more digestible chunks. Instead of providing a 30-minute video lecture with overall notes, microlearning would mean breaking the lecture down into a few short videos and infographics with consolidated notes.

Why microlearning may increase in 2022

• Repurposing course content into bite-sized learning modules can be simple

Microlearning doesn’t mean that instructors will have to recreate course content. It can be as simple as reworking existing content into smaller chunks that are more specific to a topic.

• Uses more visuals

Microlearning aligns with #5, where we discussed the increasing use of visual content in online courses. Visual content such as infographics and videos, for example, are easier to digest and help with learner retention.

9. Making learning fun and interactive with gamification

Gamification, sometimes called game-based learning , means applying games or elements of game playing to a nongame environment such as an online course. If used correctly, gamification can seem completely natural – you’ve probably encountered it without even realizing it (e.g., an app on your phone that rewards you for logging in each day or redeeming Starbucks rewards).

Ultimately, gamification is used to encourage students to participate and to engage in any number of activities. 

Why gamification in online courses may increase in 2022

• Helps make learning fun and interactive
• Applies to a variety of subjects

Game-based learning isn’t something that’s just for kids or generic subjects. It can apply to complex subjects to help reinforce learning and even make “dull” topics more fun.

• Supplements microlearning and the use of visuals

Gamification is ideal for microlearning because it can reward learners to achieve small learning objectives and it’s inherently visual.

10. Keeping test questions and answers off the Internet

It’s no secret that students can easily share test questions and answers on homework help sites. We all know it happens but there are ways for instructors to help reduce the problem. 

Institutions can implement software to help reduce the amount of illicit test content available on the Internet. This software searches the internet to identify exam questions that have been shared online and alerts the instructor. 

Why efforts to reduce the number of test questions and answers shared on the internet may increase in 2022

• Saves instructors time

Instructors won’t have to manually search the Internet for leaked test content and they’ll spend less time recreating test content.

• Helps create a fair testing environment

The software provides instructors with the tools needed to help create a fair test environment. If instructors can reduce the amount of test content available, students will have a level playing field during the online exam because others won’t be able to get an unfair advantage.

11. Using CBE to help students show what they know and prepare for the real-world

Competency-based education (CBE) is gradually increasing in popularity because it helps increase engagement, ensures mastery, and prepares students for real-world situations.

What is competency-based education?

CBE focuses on students mastering course content and what they can do rather than emphasizing the number of hours spent in class. Students progress only after they have demonstrated applicable knowledge and mastery.

Why the use of CBE in online classes may increase in 2022

• Helps increase student engagement

CBE can increase student engagement because students can personalize their learning paths and progress at their own pace.

• Applies to any teaching and learning modality and provides flexibility

Whether it’s a synchronous or asynchronous online course or blended learning, CBE applies to any modality .

Because students progress at their own pace, they have the flexibility of learning on their schedule.

• Prepares students for real-world situations

CBE requires that students demonstrate mastery of course content, which means that students will need to show that they can apply what they’ve learned to real-world situations.

12. Emphasis on mobile course design

Mobile devices in online learning are here to stay.

A student survey found that:

• 94% of students want to use cell phones for academic purposes
• 75% of students feel cell phones help them learn better

Why mobile-friendly course design may increase in 2022

• Provides learning flexibility

Most people have a cell phone and most students want to learn on their own time. Being able to learn on their cell phone on the go, whether it’s on their lunch break or scrolling before bed, is a huge benefit for students.

• Supports gamification and microlearning

People already play games on their cell phones, which are perfectly poised to allow gamification for course content as well. Likewise, cell phones are a great way to incorporate microlearning for students who may only have a few minutes while they’re at lunch.

• Enhances communication

Almost every LMS that supports mobile functionality also allows notifications and alerts via student cell phones. If a class gets rescheduled or students need a reminder of a due date, it’s a perfect channel for communication.

13. Protecting student data privacy

Students have concerns with data privacy and they want to know that their information is protected and secure . Even though the majority of students trust their institution, expect more institutions to focus efforts on improving data privacy and providing more transparency about their processes.

Why focusing on protecting data privacy may increase in 2022

• Higher ed institutions are aware of the importance and consequences

A 2019 study showed that more and more institutions are aware of the importance of data privacy and that privacy weaknesses carry serious consequences. Institutions face potential financial repercussions for data privacy breaches in the form of fines and may also suffer decreased enrollments due to a negative hit on their reputation.

• Students trust their institution but want to know how data is used

According to a recent student survey , about 70% of students trust that their data is safe with their institution, but about the same percentage believe they have the right to know how it’s being used.

14. Focusing on STEM education

Science, technology, engineering, and math are growing in importance as our jobs and economy evolve. That said, it’s no surprise that more higher education institutions are emphasizing STEM in their curriculum.

Why STEM education may increase in 2022

• To keep up with the projected STEM-related job growth

According to the S. Bureau of Labor Statistics , STEM-related jobs are projected to grow 8% by 2029. Some fields, including healthcare, computer science, and data science are expected to grow at an even faster rate.

• STEM courses are well-suited for CBE teaching and learning

CBE is ideal for preparing students for real-world situations and that’s ideal for STEM with the projected job growth in the coming years. CBE allows students to master STEM course content and prove that they can apply it to the real world.

• STEM exams can be remote proctored

Although there are many instances where students will need to use calculators during an exam and provide written responses, effective remote proctoring services can still protect the academic integrity of STEM exams. Accommodations can be provided to allow students to use pen and paper to show their work on a math problem and certain applications on the computer, such as calculators, can be allowed.

15. Online collaboration tools to build a learner community and improve learning

Collaboration tools can come in many forms and they play an important role in connecting with students in the online classroom . Some are inherently offered by the LMS, such as forums, chats, and messages, and others are sometimes supported by an LMS that includes video conferencing tools.

Why online collaboration tools may be used more in 2022

• Helps build a sense of community

By using online collaboration tools, students can share ideas, arrange study groups, and engage with other students. These tools are particularly important for an online learning environment where collaboration with other students may be lacking.

• Usually works with cell phones

If the LMS supports mobile devices, the collaboration tools mentioned earlier will generally work seamlessly on a cell phone. Other collaboration platforms outside the LMS, such as Zoom video conferencing or shared Google Docs, can be accessed on a modern cell phone as well.

Depending on whom you ask, Massive Open Online Courses ( MOOCs ) can be seen as a benefit or impediment for higher education institutions.

What is a MOOC?

A MOOC is an online course that’s open and available to anyone for free. Depending on the topic and where they’re offered, they mostly operate as a normal online course with structured, interactive content and opportunities to collaborate with others.

Pros and cons of MOOCs

• MOOCs open educational opportunities up to a larger audience
• They can be seen as a “foot in the door” for students who may eventually enroll at the institution

The perceived negatives of MOOCs

• Some believe they can negatively impact revenue and enrollment because they’re free and available to anyone

Regardless of your viewpoint, MOOCs are likely here to stay, and the pandemic further solidified their use . From March 2020 to April 2020 alone, enrollments at Coursera, an online education platform that offers MOOCs, increased 640%.

Why MOOCs may be used more in 2022

• They’re free and accessible for everyone

Education can be expensive, and MOOCs are a free resource for learners. Along with being free to use, they’re accessible for anyone and there are no admission requirements.

• MOOCs may lead to actual enrollments

Institutions that embrace MOOCs have learned that they can easily repurpose their standard course content and open educational opportunities up to a larger audience which can be a potential segue to create actual student enrollments.

17. Providing schedule flexibility and self-paced learning with asynchronous online classes

Whether they’re full-time students or adult learners, schedule flexibility and the ability to learn at their own pace is important to those seeking higher education.

Asynchronous vs synchronous classes

• Asynchronous classes allow students to progress at their own pace by watching recordings and reviewing materials.
• Synchronous classes typically include set times to attend live lectures and take exams.

Why asynchronous online classes may increase in 2022

• Learner flexibility

Similar to CBE, asynchronous online courses provide students with the ability to progress through courses at their own pace.

• Institutional scalability and students can start anytime

Institutions and instructors can provide the learning materials to as many students as they want at any time.

Because asynchronous online courses are already created and ready to go, students can enroll and begin the course at any time without waiting for the next semester to start.

18. Using automation to save time and provide quicker feedback

Instructors want to spend more time teaching and less time dealing with tasks such as proctoring online exams, grading, and searching the Internet to see if their test questions are being shared by students. AI software plays an important role in their success.

Why automation may be used more in 2022

From grading assignments and administering online proctored exams to reviewing student behavior and providing remedial course materials based on performance, software can be used to automate processes and save instructors valuable time.

• Provides students with quicker feedback

When an exam is automatically graded, the student essentially receives instant feedback on their performance.

19. Improving integration for ease of use and diverse content

Using integrated online learning technologies is key to providing a better online learning experience and protecting privacy – both keys to advancing and improving online education moving forward.

Why a focus on improving integration may increase in 2022

• Helps create a better online learning experience

Seamless integration can help faculty and students use different aspects of online courses with less hassle. For example, if the LMS directly integrates with the online proctoring software, it’s virtually the same testing experience for both faculty and students and there are no additional logins or passwords to remember.

• Better integration can help protect student privacy

Generally speaking, direct integration between online learning software means that data is being securely exchanged and there are fewer instances of students having to enter passwords into other websites and applications.

• Allows third-party platforms

Although there are endless third-party platforms used in online learning, a few common platforms are used for online testing, such as MyMathLab, ALEKS, Pearson, and McGraw Hill. A strong integration allows these platforms to be used effortlessly and intuitively within the LMS and with online proctoring software . This way, instructors can be sure that any exams offered outside the LMS can be protected.

20. Continuing to develop emotional intelligence

Students face many challenges, and the stress from the pandemic can impact them in different ways. While some believe is something you have or don’t have, emotional intelligence is a skill that can be learned over time and continually developed.

Why faculty may look to further develop and use emotional intelligence in online classes in 2022

Using emotional intelligence can help students reduce anxiety and stress because it can build trust, improve communication, and increase engagement.

21. Less face recognition technology

Face recognition and face detection are increasingly powerful and have a variety of uses. While many use the two terms interchangeably, they’re different .

Face detection detects that a face is present. Face recognition uses biometric technology to recognize that a face is present and then matches it to an owner in a database.

Why face recognition may be used less in 2022

Face recognition is increasingly powerful, which can raise privacy concerns. For face recognition to work, faces and other unique identifiers are stored in a database. Institutions using facial recognition may need to take a closer look at their security and privacy practices to ensure that the plethora of data is truly secure.

22. Fewer online exams only using browser lockdown software to prevent cheating

While browser lockdown software may have helped prevent cheating years ago, it isn’t enough to truly protect exams today.

Browser lockdown software can restrict students from accessing other browsers and using certain keyboard functions.

Why you may see fewer online exams only using browser locks in 2022

Browser lockdown software can protect exams to a certain extent, but they’re easy for students to get around. If an exam only uses a browser lock, students can still use their cell phones or other devices to look up test answers or even have a friend in the room. Instructors need to implement advanced proctoring software and services to protect all aspects of online exams.

We’re looking forward to 2022 and all of the educational technology and online learning innovation that it will bring.

Sign up below for more higher education and online learning resources, submit your email below to download our 5-part dei ebook.

The eBook covers everything you need to know about establishing and using diversity, equity, and inclusion in your online classes.

Part 1: Addressing the need for DEI in online education

Part 2: Strategies to develop diverse, equitable, and inclusive online courses

Part 3: How to create accessible online courses (with real examples)

Part 4: Tips to improve your connection with students in an online learning environment

Part 5: How to use educational technology to create a fair testing environment

Tyler Stike

Become an Insider

Sign up today to receive premium content.

The Evolution of Technology in K–12 Classrooms: 1659 to Today

Alexander Huls is a Toronto-based writer whose work has appeared in  The New York Times ,  Popular Mechanics ,  Esquire ,  The Atlantic  and elsewhere.

In the 21st century, it can feel like advanced technology is changing the K–12 classroom in ways we’ve never seen before. But the truth is, technology and education have a long history of evolving together to dramatically change how students learn.

With more innovations surely headed our way, why not look back at how we got to where we are today, while looking forward to how educators can continue to integrate new technologies into their learning?

DISCOVER:  Special education departments explore advanced tech in their classrooms.

Using Technology in the K–12 Classroom: A History

1659: magic lantern.

• Inventor:  Christiaan Huygens
• A Brief History:  An ancestor of the slide projector, the magic lantern projected glass slides with light from oil lamps or candles. In the 1680s, the technology was brought to the education space to show detailed anatomical illustrations, which were difficult to sketch on a chalkboard.
• Interesting Fact:  Huygens initially regretted his creation, thinking it was too frivolous.

1795: Pencil

• Inventor:  Nicolas-Jacques Conté
• A Brief History : Versions of the pencil can be traced back hundreds of years, but what’s considered the modern pencil is credited to Conté, a scientist in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army. It made its impact on the classroom, however, when it began to be mass produced in the 1900s.
• Interesting Fact:  The Aztecs used a form of graphite pencil in the 13th century.

1801: Chalkboard

• Inventor:  James Pillans
• A Brief History:  Pillans — a headmaster at a high school in Edinburgh, Scotland — created the first front-of-class chalkboard, or “blackboard,” to better teach his students geography with large maps. Prior to his creation, educators worked with students on smaller, individual pieces of wood or slate. In the 1960s, the creation was upgraded to a green board, which became a familiar fixture in every classroom.
• Interesting Fact:  Before chalkboards were commercially manufactured, some were made do-it-yourself-style with ingredients like pine board, egg whites and charred potatoes.

1888: Ballpoint Pen

• Inventory:  John L. Loud
• A Brief History:  John L. Loud invented and patented the first ballpoint pen after seeking to create a tool that could write on leather. It was not a commercial success. Fifty years later, following the lapse of Loud’s patent, Hungarian journalist László Bíró invented a pen with a quick-drying special ink that wouldn’t smear thanks to a rolling ball in its nib.
• Interesting Fact:  When ballpoint pens debuted in the U.S., they were so popular that Gimbels, the department store selling them, made $81 million in today’s money within six months.

LEARN MORE:  Logitech Pen works with Chromebooks to combine digital and physical learning.

1950s: Overhead Projector

• Inventor:  Roger Appeldorn
• A Brief History:  Overhead projects were used during World War II for mission briefings. However, 3M employee Appeldorn is credited with creating not only a projectable transparent film, but also the overhead projectors that would find a home in classrooms for decades.
• Interesting Fact:  Appeldorn’s creation is the predecessor to today’s  bright and efficient laser projectors .

1959: Photocopier

• Inventor:  Chester Carlson
• A Brief History:  Because of his arthritis, patent attorney and inventor Carlson wanted to create a less painful alternative to making carbon copies. Between 1938 and 1947, working with The Haloid Photographic Company, Carlson perfected the process of electrophotography, which led to development of the first photocopy machines.
• Interesting Fact:  Haloid and Carlson named their photocopying process xerography, which means “dry writing” in Greek. Eventually, Haloid renamed its company (and its flagship product line) Xerox .

1967: Handheld Calculator

• Inventor:   Texas Instruments
• A Brief History:  As recounted in our  history of the calculator , Texas Instruments made calculators portable with a device that weighed 45 ounces and featured a small keyboard with 18 keys and a visual display of 12 decimal digits.
• Interesting Fact:  The original 1967 prototype of the device can be found in the Smithsonian Institution’s  National Museum of American History .

1981: The Osborne 1 Laptop

• Inventor:  Adam Osborne, Lee Felsenstein
• A Brief History:  Osborne, a computer book author, teamed up with computer engineer Felsenstein to create a portable computer that would appeal to general consumers. In the process, they provided the technological foundation that made modern one-to-one devices — like Chromebooks — a classroom staple.
• Interesting Fact:  At 24.5 pounds, the Osborne 1 was about as big and heavy as a sewing machine, earning it the current classification of a “luggable” computer, rather than a laptop.

1990: World Wide Web

• Inventor:  Tim Berners-Lee
• A Brief History:  In the late 1980s, British scientist Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web to enable information sharing between scientists and academics. It wasn’t long before the Web could connect anyone, anywhere to a wealth of information, and it was soon on its way to powering the modern classroom.
• Interesting Fact:  The first web server Berners-Lee created was so new, he had to put a sign on the computer that read, “This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!”

Click the banner  to access customized K–12 technology content when you sign up as an Insider.

What Technology Is Used in Today’s K–12 Classrooms?

Technology has come so far that modern classrooms are more technologically advanced than many science labs were two decades ago. Students have access to digital textbooks,  personal devices , collaborative  cloud-based tools , and  interactive whiteboards . Emerging technologies now being introduced to K–12 classrooms include voice assistants, virtual reality devices and 3D printers.

Perhaps the most important thing about ed tech in K–12 isn’t what the technology is, but how it’s used.

How to Integrate Technology into K–12 Classrooms

The first step to integrating technology into the K–12 classroom is  figuring out which solution to integrate , given the large variety of tools available to educators. That variety comes with benefits — like the ability to align tech with district objectives and grade level — but also brings challenges.

“It’s difficult to know how to choose the appropriate digital tool or resource,” says Judi Harris, professor and Pavey Family Chair in Educational Technology at the William & Mary School of Education. “Teachers need some familiarity with the tools so that they understand the potential advantages and disadvantages.”

Judi Harris Professor and Pavey Family Chair in Educational Technology, William and Mary School of Education

K–12 IT leaders should also be careful not to focus too much on technology implementation at the expense of curriculum-based learning needs. “What districts need to ask themselves is not only whether they’re going to adopt a technology, but how they’re going to adopt it,” says Royce Kimmons, associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University.

In other words, while emerging technologies may be exciting, acquiring them without proper consideration of their role in improving classroom learning will likely result in mixed student outcomes. For effective integration, educators should ask themselves, in what ways would the tech increase or support a student’s productivity and learning outcomes? How will it improve engagement?

Integrating ed tech also requires some practical know-how. “Teachers need to be comfortable and confident with the tools they ask students to use,” says Harris.

Professional development for new technologies is crucial, as are supportive IT teams, tech providers with generous onboarding programs and technology integration specialists. Harris also points to initiatives like YES: Youth and Educators Succeeding, a nonprofit organization that prepares students to act as resident experts and classroom IT support.

KEEP READING:  What is the continued importance of professional development in K–12 education?

But as educational technology is rolled out and integrated, it’s important to keep academic goals in sight. “We should never stop focusing on how to best understand and help the learner to achieve those learning objectives,” says Harris.

That should continue to be the case as the technology timeline unfolds, something Harris has witnessed firsthand during her four decades in the field. “It’s been an incredible thing to watch and to participate in,” she notes. “The great majority of teachers are extremely eager to learn and to do anything that will help their students learn better.”

• Professional Development

Related Articles

Unlock white papers, personalized recommendations and other premium content for an in-depth look at evolving IT

Copyright © 2024 CDW LLC 200 N. Milwaukee Avenue , Vernon Hills, IL 60061 Do Not Sell My Personal Information

Global Education Monitoring Report

Technology in education

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

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

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

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

Background material

Watch the launch event

Consultations

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

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

Related resources

on technology and education

in quality and school infrastructure

Related content

Monitoring SDG 4: Quality

How advanced technologies are transforming education

Mit leaders and professors eric grimson, cynthia breazeal, and christopher capozzola discuss challenges and opportunities of ai in education.

By Duyen Nguyen

Spurred on by the rapid advancement of generative AI like ChatGPT, much of the current conversation on artificial intelligence has emphasized its threat to humanity. Yet, this technology and other recent innovations also hold promise for the future.

“Today’s technologies in education — generative AI, responsible design, and the future of learning,” was a recent event hosted on MIT campus by MIT Open Learning. As part of the MIT Tech Reunions, this session welcomed over 60 alumni and friends. Vice President for Open Learning Eric Grimson, Dean for Digital Learning Cynthia Breazeal, and Senior Associate Dean for Open Learning Christopher Capozzola discussed both the challenges and opportunities that AI presents in education. Here are some of the most important takeaways from their conversation.

Technology is reshaping residential education

With MIT faculty dedicated to innovating in the classroom, digital tools have been a mainstay of on-campus teaching. Technologies like automated grading in computer science courses enable more time for teaching staff to interact with students, while students are able to correct their learning with immediate feedback on their problem sets. Prof. Grimson pointed to some of these technologies in improving residential education even before the Covid-19 pandemic necessitated a temporary shift to remote learning.

But remote learning pivots have expanded approaches to residential education. For example, using the Zoom chat feature to ask and answer questions during lectures allows more timely opportunities for students to clarify their understanding and engage more deeply in the subject matter and with their classmates. Faculty also gain a better sense of where students need bolstering in mastering concepts. The adoption of blended learning (a mix of in-person and online learning) would make it easier for students to pursue internships and experiences abroad while still receiving an MIT education, said Breazeal, Capozzola, and Grimson.

MIT can expand its role in education globally by leveraging today’s technologies

Several of MIT Open Learning ’s initiatives bring MIT’s resources to learners worldwide. In addition to popular programs like OpenCourseWare and MITx that open up MIT’s curriculum to the globe, efforts to serve under-resourced and vulnerable communities, such as refugee and migrant populations, pave the way for more equitable access to learning and employment opportunities. The MIT Refugee Action Hub (ReACT), which was incubated within Open Learning and is now part of the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL), offers a successful example of how to combine online courses, a virtual learning community, and remote apprenticeship and independent project opportunities with on-site support hubs to address the needs of learners facing challenging circumstances.

There’s an opportunity to strengthen the education pipeline

Grimson noted that, while nearly 75% of jobs in the U.S. paying $35,000 or more require a bachelor’s degree, only one-third of Americans have completed a four-year college education. Digital learning innovations, like flexible learning modalities, can help close this gap. MIT Open Learning is exploring an agile, continuous education (ACE) model that, Prof. Breazeal explained, will give learners more pathways to advance their education at their own pace. The ACE model, which MIT ReACT adopted for its Computer and Data Science certificate program, combines online, in-person, and at-work learning modalities that provide learners with flexible, cost- and time-efficient options for advancing their education. Innovating new ways to meet different learners’ needs, like experimenting with short-form content, is part of this effort, said Prof. Capozzola.

“We know there’s a lot more talent in the world” whom innovative educational approaches could reach, Capozzola added. MIT Open Learning is exploring digital learning innovations in the space between the end of high school and the start of college or university — “pre-matriculation” — as well as collaborations with community colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to support more learners, particularly those whom the traditional higher education model has overlooked or shut out.

Education is inherently human

While a future where AI can create code is on the horizon, the goal of courses like 6.0001 Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python is to teach students to think like computer scientists. “It’s not just about code, it’s about computational thinking,” said Grimson. ChatGPT is currently causing society to rethink what’s possible, but Breazeal noted that the promise of AI has been around for decades. Breazeal, who founded the Personal Robots Group at MIT’s Media Lab, has been researching and building socially intelligent personal robots for over a decade. Her work has led to the development of personalized AI tutors that help young learners improve their linguistic skills, improve literacy instruction, and nurture children’s curiosity and learning. “We don’t want an oracle, we want something that will help us learn,” she said, allaying fears that generative AI will displace the motivation and need to learn certain skills.

MIT is playing an important role in creating guidelines for the use of AI and other emerging technologies

Faculty from every school at the Institute are working in AI. At MIT Open Learning, the Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) initiative is advancing AI literacy for K-12 students, higher education, and the workforce through programs like Day of AI . The hands-on, team-based approach that RAISE uses to teach young learners about AI has the potential to be adapted to educational programs for learners of all ages. Breazeal explained that the recent program developed by MIT researchers to prepare U.S. Air and Space Forces personnel to understand and utilize AI technologies draws on the same teaching and learning philosophy as Day of AI curricula.

“We need humans interacting with humans,” Breazeal said, in response to an audience question about the likelihood of a future AI-only university. While the session emphasized that the challenges of AI and advanced technologies to education — and humanity — should be taken seriously, the prevailing sentiment was one of hope, not fear.

Learn more about MIT RAISE , Day of AI , and other Open Learning efforts to explore the impact of today’s technologies in education.

How advanced technologies are transforming education was originally published in MIT Open Learning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Open Learning newsletter

Trends and Topics in Educational Technology, 2022 Edition

• Column: Guest Editorial
• Published: 23 February 2022
• Volume 66 , pages 134–140, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

• Royce Kimmons 1 &
• Joshua M. Rosenberg 2  

9887 Accesses

11 Citations

9 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

This editorial continues our annual effort to identify and catalog trends and popular topics in the field of educational technology. Continuing our approach from previous years (Kimmons, 2020 ; Kimmons et al., 2021 ), we use public internet data mining methods (Kimmons & Veletsianos, 2018 ) to extract and analyze data from three large data sources: the Scopus research article database, the Twitter #edtech affinity group, and school and school district Facebook pages. Such data sources can provide valuable insights into what is happening and what is of interest in the field as educators, researchers, and students grapple with crises and the rapidly evolving uses of educational technologies (e.g., Kimmons et al., 2020 ; Trust et al., 2020 ; Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2020 ). Through this analysis, we provide a brief snapshot of what the educational technology field looked like in 2021 via each of these lenses and attempt to triangulate an overall state of our field and vision for what may be coming next.

What Were Trending Topics in Educational Technology Journals in 2021?

Educational technology research topics for 2021 were very similar to previous years, with a few exceptions. In total, we collected titles for 2368 articles via Scopus published in top educational technology journals as identified by Google Scholar. We then analyzed keyword and bigram (two words found together) frequencies in titles to determine the most commonly referenced terms. To assist in making sense of results, we also manually grouped together keywords and bigrams into four information types: contexts, methods, modalities, and topics. Contexts included terms referring to the research setting, such as “COVID-19” or “higher education.” Methods included terms referring to research methods involved in the article, such as “systematic review” or “meta-analysis.” Modalities included terms referring to the technical modality through which the study was occurring, such as “virtual reality” or “online learning.” Last, Topics included terms referring to the intervention, objective, or theoretical goal of the study, such as “computational thinking,” “learning environment,” or “language learning.” The most common bigrams and keywords for each type may be found in Table  1 ; a few items of interest follow.

Bigrams generally provide more specificity for interpreting meaning than do keywords, simply because keywords might have greater variety in usage (e.g., “school” might be used in the context of “primary school,” “secondary school,” “school teacher,” and so forth). So, when interpreting Table 1 , the bigram column is generally more useful for identifying trending topics, though the keyword column may at times be helpful as a clarifying supplement.

“Computational thinking” and “learning environments” were the two most-researched topical bigrams in 2021, and “virtual reality” and “online learning” were the most-researched modality bigrams. Most-referenced methods included “systematic review” and “meta-analysis,” which is noteworthy because such methods are used to conduct secondary analyses on existing studies, and their dominance may suggest an interest in the field to identify what works and to synthesize findings across various contexts within a sea of articles that is ever-increasing in size.

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this contextual term was regularly mentioned in many article titles (5.4%). “Pandemic” (3.4%), “emergency” (1.2%), and “shift to” (e.g., digital, online, blended; 0.9%) were also commonly referenced. This suggests that as the world continues to grapple with this multifaceted crisis, educational technology researchers are heavily engaged in addressing educational concerns associated with it (and remote teaching, particularly).

Grade level references in titles further suggested that educational technology research is being conducted at all levels but that it is most prominent at the higher education or post-secondary level and reduces in frequency as grade levels go down, with high school or secondary terms being more prominent than elementary or primary terms, with “higher education” (3.5%) being referenced twice as frequently as “K-12” (1.7%). This is noteworthy as it suggests that research findings associated with educational technology are currently mainly focused on older (and even adult) students and that if results are applied to understanding learners generally, then the needs of adolescents and younger children may currently be relatively underrepresented.

What Were Trending #Edtech Topics and Tools on Twitter in 2021?

Twitter is a valuable source of information about trends in a field because it allows researchers and practitioners to share relevant resources, studies, and musings and categorize posts via descriptive hashtags. The #edtech hashtag continued to be very popular during 2021, and we collected all original tweets (ignoring retweets) that included the #edtech hashtag for the year. This included 433,078 original tweets posted by 40,767 users, averaging 36,090 tweets per month ( SD  = 2974).

Because users can include multiple hashtags on a tweet, we aggregated the frequencies of additional (co-occurring) hashtags to determine the intended audiences (e.g., #teachers, #k12) and content topics (e.g., #elearning, #ai) of tweets. Some of the most popular additional hashtags of each type are presented in Table  2 . To better understand results, we also calculated the representation of each additional hashtag in the overall dataset (e.g., 2% of all #edtech tweets also included the #teachers hashtag) and the diversity of authorship (i.e., the number of users divided by the number of tweets). This diversity score was helpful for understanding how some hashtags were used by relatively few accounts for purposes such as product promotion. For example, the #byjus hashtag, which refers to an educational technology company founded in India, was tweeted 19,546 times. Still, the diversity score was only 3%, revealing that though this was a very popular hashtag in terms of tweet counts, it was being included by relatively few accounts at very high frequencies, such as via focused marketing campaigns.

Notably, several community or affinity space hashtags (Carpenter & Krutka, 2014 ; Rosenberg et al., 2016 ) were among the most common included with #edtech, such as #edchat, #edutwitter, and #teachertwitter. In particular, 13.9% of #edtech tweets also were tagged as #educhat, and 25.7% of #educhat tweets were also tagged as #edtech, revealing relatively high synchronicity between these two spaces. Furthermore, regarding institutional level, #k12 ( n  = 1712) and #highered ( n  = 1770) exhibited similar user counts, as did #school ( n  = 1284) and #highereducation ( n  = 1161), but, interestingly, the #k12 and #school hashtags exhibited nearly twice as many tweets as their #highered and #highereducation counterparts. This suggests that although the communities tweeting about topics for each group may be of similar size, the K-12 community was much more active than the higher education community.

Regarding topics, #elearning, #onlinelearning, #remotelearning, #distancelearning, #virtuallearning, and #blendedlearning were represented at a relatively high rate (in 16.1% of tweets), perhaps reflecting ongoing interest associated with #covid19. Other prominent topical hashtags included emerging technologies, such as #ai ( n  = 2112), #vr ( n  = 917), #ar ( n  = 679), and #blockchain ( n  = 545), as well as subject areas (e.g., #stem) and general descriptors (e.g., #innovation).

Furthermore, one of the primary reasons for tweeting is to share resources or media items. An analysis of these #edtech tweets revealed that 94.4% included either a link to an external site or an embedded media resource, such as an image or video. Regarding external links, prominent domains included (a) news sites, such as edsurge.com , edtechmagazine.com , or edutopia.org , (b) other social media, such as linkedin.com , instagram.com , or facebook.com , (c) multimedia resources, such as youtube.com , anchor.fm, or podcasts.apple.com , and (d) productivity and management tools, such as docs.google.com , forms.gle, or eventbrite.com (cf., Table  3 ).

Twitter communications in 2021 regarding #edtech included chatter about a variety of topics and resources. Shadows of #COVID-19 might be detected in the prevalence of this hashtag with others, like #remotelearning and #onlinelearning, but in many ways it seems that conversations continued to focus on issues of #education and #learning, as well as emerging topics like #ai, #vr, and #cybersecurity, suggesting some level of imperviousness to the pandemic.

What Were Trending Topics among Schools and School Districts on Facebook in 2021?

To examine trending educational technology topics on Facebook, we studied the posts by 14,481 schools and school districts on their public pages. First, one aspect of this analysis concerned the number of posts shared. In our last report, we documented how schools and districts posted more posts than in any other month during March, April, and May 2020—during the earliest and perhaps most tumultuous months of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting the importance of communication during this crisis period, as others have documented with Twitter data (Michela et al., 2022 ). Notably, in 2021, those months remained the most active; apart from those months, the numbers of posts by schools and districts in 2021 were roughly comparable to the numbers in 2019 and 2020 (see Fig.  1 ).

The Number of Posts on Facebook by Schools and School Districts

To understand which technologies were shared on these Facebook pages, we examined the domain names for all of the hyperlinks that were posted. Despite the myriad social and other changes experienced by schools from 2019 to 2021, link domains shared on Facebook exhibited remarkable consistency: Youtube, Google Docs, Google, and Google Drive—Google or tools created by Google—were the four most frequently shared for each of these years (Table  4 ). Note that the n represents the number of schools or districts sharing one or more links to these domains (of the 14,481 total school and school district pages). Thus, the 8278 indicates that 57.2% of schools and districts posted one or more links to YouTube over the 2021 year. These were followed by Zoom, which was also widely shared in 2020 (though not in 2019), and then Google Sites (which was shared frequently in 2020). The CDC and 2020 Census’s websites dropped from the list of the top ten most frequently shared domains in 2021, despite having been widely shared in 2020. Otherwise, the results are largely comparable between 2019, 2020, and 2021, indicating that schools and districts continued to use a core set of productivity tools despite the many disruptions and changes over this period.

We also examined the contents of the messages of schools’ and school districts’ posts. To do so, we considered the technologies identified by Weller ( 2020 ) in his history of the past 25 years of educational technology, as in our report for last year. Specifically, we searched the contents of the messages posted by schools and districts for the inclusion of the terms that correspond to technologies Weller identified as being representative of a particular year. While the domains shared by schools and districts demonstrated remarkable consistency, the contents of the messages posted by schools and districts varied substantially, especially when considering the changes from 2019 to 2020 and from 2020 to 2021. To illustrate, consider mentions of “e-learning,” which Weller identified as the focal point of 1999. In 2019, 834 messages that mentioned “e-learning” were posted by schools and districts, but in 2020, the number increased around ten-fold to 8326 mentions. Though it may have been expected for mentions of “e-learning” to remain somewhat constant during 2021, instead we saw a marked downturn to 1899 (or a 78% drop). This trend—a sizable increase in how often certain technologies were mentioned in 2020 relative to 2019 that was not sustained in 2021—was also found for mentions of “learning management systems,” “video,” and “Second Life and virtual worlds,” among others. Indeed, the only noteworthy increase in mentions of these technologies from 2020 to 2021 was for “artificial intelligence”.

Summary and Discussion

By triangulating the 2021 snapshots of each of these three data sources—Scopus, Twitter, and Facebook—we can begin to see a state of the educational technology field pressing into the future. Results on specific terms or topics may be useful for individual researchers and practitioners to see the representation of their areas of interest. Still, some common takeaways that emerge from all three sources include the following.

First, we found an emphasis on “e-learning”—particularly in Twitter and Facebook posts—as well as “blended learning” (Twitter) and “online learning” (journal articles). Notably, COVID-19 (and related terms) were also frequently mentioned. These findings align with how mentions of “e-learning” spiked during the 2020 year when the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on education were especially disruptive, but their ongoing presence also suggests that interest in these topics will likely extend outside and beyond the context of the pandemic.

Second, we note a keen interest in emergent technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality, particularly on the part of researchers (as evidenced by how frequently these terms were mentioned in journal articles published in 2021). At the same time, we note that this interest has not yet crystallized into the sustained adoption and use of these emergent technologies—a point bolstered by the relatively limited mention of these technologies in the Facebook posts of schools and school districts. Thus, we think we as a field must wait and see whether interest in these technologies is lasting or transient.

Last, we found an ever-increasing reliance on several corporate entities for productivity and sharing. This was especially the case for Google and tools created by Google: YouTube, Google Docs, and Google Drive, in particular. Indeed, such tools are such an established part of our work (and educational) context that we might hardly think of them as tools. Furthermore, tools created by Google and several other corporations—including social media platforms themselves—were also prevalent in the content of the tweets we analyzed. While we do not believe it is a bad decision on the part of individuals or educational institutions to use these and other tools, there are also some potential downsides to their use that we think invite critical questions (Burchfield et al., 2021; Krutka et al., 2021 ).

As a result of these common takeaways, we will now conclude with three questions for educational technology researchers and practitioners to consider.

Pandemic Bump Vs. Ubiquity

First, many have wondered whether changes in educational technology catalyzed by the pandemic will yield sustained, ubiquitous changes to the field, or if adjustments represent only a short-term bump of interest—as may be the case with emergency remote teaching tools and strategies used in the early days of the pandemic (Hodges et al., 2020 ). One of the takeaways from our Facebook analysis was that while some productivity technologies appeared to have remained consistently used on the basis of our domain analysis (e.g., Google Docs), mentions of many specific technologies in the messages of the posts by schools and districts appeared to have been more transitory in nature, such as in the cases of “e-learning” and “learning management systems.” This suggests at least two possible interpretations. One is that these technologies were used in transient response to an unprecedented period of emergency remote instruction—though tools associated with remote teaching and learning continue to be used, their use was primarily a temporary, emergency measure. Another is that these tools were mentioned less because they have become a more ubiquitous but less visible tool used by teachers and learners. Learning management systems may still, of course, be widely used, but schools and districts may be sharing about their role less through their public social media platforms because they may already be familiar to students and their parents. While we cannot say why there was a dramatic increase followed by a decrease in the use of many educational technologies over the period from 2019 through 2021, our analysis indicates that many tools are, at least, being communicated about much less over the past year than in the preceding year when the pandemic began in the U.S.

Technocentrism Vs. Focusing on Learners and Improving Educational Systems

Second, though emerging technologies are obviously an essential component of our field, one of the perennial challenges we must grapple with is our relationship to these technologies. Are we technocentric, as Papert ( 1987 , 1990 ) warned, or do we focus on learning and improvement? In our results, we notice that technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality were very frequently referenced in comparison to most other modalities or topics of research. As processing and graphical rendering capabilities continue to become more compact and inexpensive via headsets, smartphones, and haptic devices, we would expect these technologies to continue to receive ongoing attention. Though there are certainly valuable learning improvement opportunities associated with such technologies (Glaser & Schmidt, 2021 ), we might also justifiably wonder whether the volume of attention that these technologies are currently receiving in the literature is concomitant to their actual (or even hypothetical) large-scale learning benefits—or whether current fascination with such technologies represents a repeat of other historical emphases that may not have panned out in the form of systemic educational improvement, such as in the case of MUVEs (cf., Nelson & Ketelhut, 2007 ).

Limited Broader Impacts on Larger Social Issues

Finally, to reiterate our critiques from previous years (Kimmons, 2020 ; Kimmons et al., 2021 ), we continued to see a dearth of references to important social issues in scholarly article titles, including references to social matters upon which educational technology should be expected to have a strong voice. For instance, terms relating to universal design ( n  = 0), accessibility ( n  = 4), privacy ( n  = 8), ethics ( n  = 12), security ( n  = 8), equity ( n  = 6), justice ( n  = 1), and (digital and participatory) divides ( n  = 1) were all very uncommon. Though “ethics” was the most common of these terms, it only was represented in 1-in-200 article titles, and though current “practices with student data represent cause for concern, as student behaviors are increasingly tracked, analyzed, and studied to draw conclusions about learning, attitudes, and future behaviors” (Kimmons, 2021 , para. 2; cf., Rosenberg et al., 2021 ) and proctoring software becomes increasingly ubiquitous (Kimmons & Veletsianos, 2021 ), “privacy” was only mentioned in 1-in-333 article titles and “proctor*” was only in 1-in-600 titles. In our current pandemic context, we have often heard educational technologists lament the fact that decision-makers and those in power may not seek our guidance in addressing issues related to the pandemic that would clearly benefit from our expertise. And yet, the absence of other socially-relevant topics from our research suggests that we may be challenged to leverage our work toward addressing matters of larger social or educational importance ourselves. A focus on the social matters and the social context around educational technology use, then, remains an opportunity for research and development by the educational technology community in the years ahead. This seems especially salient as our data suggests that the field is heavily influenced by big technology corporations like Google and Facebook that historically have been critiqued for violating ethical expectations of privacy and failing to support social good. As educational technology researchers and practitioners, we are primed with the position and expertise necessary to shape the future of ethical technology use in education. Hopefully, we can step up to this challenge.

Carpenter, J. P., & Krutka, D. G. (2014). How and why educators use twitter: A survey of the field. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 46 (4), 414–434.

Article   Google Scholar  

Glaser, N., & Schmidt, M. (2021). Systematic literature review of virtual reality intervention design patterns for B with autism Spectrum disorders. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction , 1–36.

Hodges, C.B., Moore, S., Lockee, B.B., Trust, T., & Bond, M. A. (2020). The difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning. EDUCAUSE Review. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning

Kimmons, R. (2020). Current trends (and missing links) in educational technology research and practice. TechTrends, 64(6). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-020-00549-6 .

Kimmons, R. (2021). Safeguarding student privacy in an age of analytics. Educational Technology Research & Development, 69 , 343–345. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-021-09950-1

Kimmons, R., & Veletsianos, G. (2018). Public internet data mining methods in instructional design, educational technology, and online learning research. TechTrends, 62 (5), 492–500. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-018-0307-4

Kimmons, R., & Veletsianos, G. (2021). Proctoring software in higher ed: Prevalence and patterns. EDUCAUSE Review. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2021/2/proctoring-software-in-higher-ed-prevalence-and-patterns

Kimmons, R., Veletsianos, G., & VanLeeuwen, C. (2020). What (some) faculty are saying about the shift to remote teaching and learning. EDUCAUSE Review. https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2020/5/what-some-faculty-are-saying-about-the-shift-to-remote-teaching-and-learning

Kimmons, R., Rosenberg, J., & Allman, B. (2021). Trends in educational technology: What Facebook, twitter, and Scopus can tell us about current research and practice. TechTrends, 65 , 125–136. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00589-6

Krutka, D. G., Smits, R. M., & Willhelm, T. A. (2021). Don’t be evil: Should we use Google in schools? TechTrends, 65 (4), 421–431.

Michela, E., Rosenberg, J. M., Kimmons, R., Sultana, O., Burchfield, M. A., & Thomas, T. (2022). “We are trying to communicate the best we can”: Understanding districts’ communication on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic. AERA Open . https://osf.io/qpu8v/

Nelson, B. C., & Ketelhut, D. J. (2007). Scientific inquiry in educational multi-user virtual environments. Educational Psychology Review, 19 (3), 265–283.

Papert, S. (1987). Computer criticism vs. technocentric thinking. Educational Researcher, 16 (1), 22–30.

Google Scholar  

Papert, S. (1990). A critique of technocentrism in thinking about the school of the future. MIT Epistemology and Learning Memo No. 2. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory.

Rosenberg, J. M., Greenhalgh, S. P., Koehler, M. J., Hamilton, E. R., & Akcaoglu, M. (2016). An investigation of state educational twitter hashtags (SETHs) as affinity spaces. E-learning and Digital Media, 13 (1–2), 24–44.

Rosenberg, J. M., Burchfield, M., Borchers, C., Gibbons, B., Anderson, D., & Fischer, C. (2021). Social media and students’ privacy: What schools and districts should know. Phi Delta Kappan, 103 (2), 49–53.

Trust, T., Carpenter, J., Krutka, D. G., & Kimmons, R. (2020). #RemoteTeaching & #RemoteLearning: Educator tweeting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 28 (2), 151–159.

Veletsianos, G., & Kimmons, R. (2020). What (some) students are saying about the switch to remote teaching and learning. EDUCAUSE Review . https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2020/4/what-some-students-are-saying-about-the-switch-to-remote-teaching-and-learning

Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of ed tech . Athabasca University Press.

Book   Google Scholar  

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

Royce Kimmons

University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

Joshua M. Rosenberg

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Royce Kimmons .

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Kimmons, R., Rosenberg, J.M. Trends and Topics in Educational Technology, 2022 Edition. TechTrends 66 , 134–140 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-022-00713-0

Download citation

Published : 23 February 2022

Issue Date : March 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-022-00713-0

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

2022 Educational Technology Trends

by Emma | Jan 20, 2022 | Blog , Cyberbullying , Digital Literacy , Digital Safety , Distance Learning , Educational Technology , Emergency Preparedness , Interactive learning , Online Learning , Pedagogy , Safe Learning Environment , Teaching Topics , Technology

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic led to nationwide school closures. Districts turned to technology to continue educating students. Though our classrooms are no longer entirely digital, it’s clear that educational technology is here to stay – and that it’s going to play a larger role than ever in face-to-face learning. For one, coronavirus variants continue to threaten school closures. Schools currently face closures and disruptions due to the Omicron variant. According to US News and World Report , 5,409 schools announced remote learning or closures by the end of the first week of January, 2022. In Philadelphia alone, over ninety schools moved to remote learning. However, technology doesn’t just offer a way to learn safely during times of emergency. During the initial school closures, students and teachers realized that certain aspects of online learning greatly benefitted student performance. Moreover, technology can help teachers with basic tasks, giving them more time to work with students individually. These three 2022 educational technology trends make learning easier both in digital and face-to-face learning environments.

Asynchronous Learning

When the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020, school closures led to the adoption of remote learning. Often, this in turn led to different modes of teaching and learning. Many teachers used asynchronous learning, allowing students to complete and turn in work on their own time. For many students, this proved a welcome change. Many students flourished under the freedom and flexibility offered by asynchronous learning. Students could work at the times and the pace that worked best for them. In fact, asynchronous learning was so successful that 20% of districts have added or are considering permanent remote learning opportunities based on what they learned about student and family needs during the pandemic. Asynchronous learning has the added bonus of building executive functioning skills like planning, organization, and time management. As Mickey Revenaugh, who serves as Pearson Online Academy’s vice president for global online learning, told EdTech , “Management of your own learning is something that students of all ages really need to learn, and they learn it pretty quickly.” 

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence can help teachers with complex tasks, such as classroom management. This is especially helpful in classrooms where hybrid learning is taking place. For instance, according to EdTech ,  “ Voice assistants in products that help manage classrooms are an example of AI students and teachers may see and interact with.” AI can also help students in asynchronous learning situations. According to Teaching Made Practical , “One excellent example of AI in action is the question bot, which was built by David Kellerman.” This bot “was programmed to answer students’ questions and deliver videos of past lectures.” In this way, AI can help some students review while teachers assist others with different learning activities. Plus, one of the best features of AI is that it adapts to the needs of each individual classroom by “learning” from students. The question bot, for example, contains “ machine learning capabilities [that] ensure that it gets better and better the more it’s exposed to different queries. ” 

• Cybersecurity

AI can also help keep students safe. EdTech mentions “ AI-powered content filtering and cybersecurity tools” that “work intelligently in the background” on classroom computers. This helps relieve some of the responsibilities of computer monitoring from a teacher’s already full plate. However, it’s important for schools to remember that content filters are not foolproof . Moreover, they don’t detect or prevent all risky online behavior. In order to make sure students are safe online, schools should combine content filters and other cybersecurity initiatives with screen monitoring software. Screen monitoring platforms like LearnSafe can detect risky behavior both online and offline. This includes cyberbullying, pornography, weapons, threats, and predatory grooming . Moreover, LearnSafe’s Digital Safety Representatives alert designated school officials to captures that show issues of concern that may require action. These captures may include threats, searches for weapons, and discussions of suicide and self-harm .

Automated Student Computer Monitoring

Human Monitoring

Review and Alert

SEL Solution

Tele-Mental Support

Remote Therapy Services

Type your email…

SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG

Recent Posts

• How Schools Can Support the Mental Health of Teenage Girls
• Teenagers and Social Media: A Mental Health Expert’s Perspective
• The Safety Risks of Educational Apps
• Ghost Guns and Teenagers: What Schools Need to Know
• Online Safety on School Computers
• Administrators
• Creative Learning
• Criminal Activity
• Cyberbullying
• Digital Citizenship
• Digital Literacy
• Digital Safety
• Distance Learning
• Education Law
• Educational Technology
• Emergency Preparedness
• Gun Violence
• Interactive learning
• Internet Regulations
• Learning and the Law
• Lesson Planning
• Media Literacy
• Mental Health
• Mississippi
• Net Neutrality
• Online Dangers
• Online etiquette
• Online Learning
• Online Testing
• Safe Learning Environment
• School Counselors
• School Resource Officers
• School Safety
• School Violence
• Smartphones
• Social Learning
• Social Media
• Social-Emotional Learning
• Special Needs Students
• State Boards of Education
• Study Skills
• Suicide Prevention
• Teaching Topics
• The Digital Divide
• Uncategorized
• Virtual Reality

How technology is shaping learning in higher education

About the authors.

This article is a collaborative effort by Claudio Brasca, Charag Krishnan , Varun Marya , Katie Owen, Joshua Sirois, and Shyla Ziade, representing views from McKinsey’s Education Practice.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a shift to remote learning overnight for most higher-education students, starting in the spring of 2020. To complement video lectures and engage students in the virtual classroom, educators adopted technologies that enabled more interactivity and hybrid models of online and in-person activities. These tools changed learning, teaching, and assessment in ways that may persist after the pandemic. Investors have taken note. Edtech start-ups raised record amounts of venture capital in 2020 and 2021, and market valuations for bigger players soared.

A study conducted by McKinsey in 2021 found that to engage most effectively with students, higher-education institutions can focus on eight dimensions  of the learning experience. In this article, we describe the findings of a study of the learning technologies that can enable aspects of several of those eight dimensions (see sidebar “Eight dimensions of the online learning experience”).

Eight dimensions of the online learning experience

Leading online higher-education institutions focus on eight key dimensions of the learning experience across three overarching principles.

Seamless journey

Clear education road map: “My online program provides a road map to achieve my life goals and helps me structure my day to day to achieve steady progress.”

Seamless connections: “I have one-click access to classes and learning resources in the virtual learning platform through my laptop or my phone.”

Engaging teaching approach

Range of learning formats: “My program offers a menu of engaging courses with both self-guided and real-time classes, and lots of interaction with instructors and peers.”

Captivating experiences: “I learn from the best professors and experts. My classes are high quality, with up-to-date content.”

Adaptive learning: “I access a personalized platform that helps me practice exercises and exams and gives immediate feedback without having to wait for the course teacher.”

Real-world skills application: “My online program helps me get hands-on practice using exciting virtual tools to solve real-world problems.”

Caring network

Timely support: “I am not alone in my learning journey and have adequate 24/7 support for academic and nonacademic issues.”

Strong community: “I feel part of an academic community and I’m able to make friends online.”

In November 2021, McKinsey surveyed 600 faculty members and 800 students from public and private nonprofit colleges and universities in the United States, including minority-serving institutions, about the use and impact of eight different classroom learning technologies (Exhibit 1). (For more on the learning technologies analyzed in this research, see sidebar “Descriptions of the eight learning technologies.”) To supplement the survey, we interviewed industry experts and higher-education professionals who make decisions about classroom technology use. We discovered which learning tools and approaches have seen the highest uptake, how students and educators view them, the barriers to higher adoption, how institutions have successfully adopted innovative technologies, and the notable impacts on learning (for details about our methodology, see sidebar “About the research”).

Double-digit growth in adoption and positive perceptions

Descriptions of the eight learning technologies.

• Classroom interactions: These are software platforms that allow students to ask questions, make comments, respond to polls, and attend breakout discussions in real time, among other features. They are downloadable and accessible from phones, computers, and tablets, relevant to all subject areas, and useful for remote and in-person learning.
• Classroom exercises: These platforms gamify learning with fun, low-stakes competitions, pose problems to solve during online classes, allow students to challenge peers to quizzes, and promote engagement with badges and awards. They are relevant to all subject areas.
• Connectivity and community building: A broad range of informal, opt-in tools, these allow students to engage with one another and instructors and participate in the learning community. They also include apps that give students 24/7 asynchronous access to lectures, expanded course materials, and notes with enhanced search and retrieval functionality.
• Group work: These tools let students collaborate in and out of class via breakout/study rooms, group preparation for exams and quizzes, and streamlined file sharing.
• Augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR): Interactive simulations immerse learners in course content, such as advanced lab simulations for hard sciences, medical simulations for nursing, and virtual exhibit tours for the liberal arts. AR can be offered with proprietary software on most mobile or laptop devices. VR requires special headsets, proprietary software, and adequate classroom space for simultaneous use.
• AI adaptive course delivery: Cloud-based, AI-powered software adapts course content to a student’s knowledge level and abilities. These are fully customizable by instructors and available in many subject areas, including business, humanities, and sciences.
• Machine learning–powered teaching assistants: Also known as chatbot programs, machine learning–powered teaching assistants answer student questions and explain course content outside of class. These can auto-create, deliver, and grade assignments and exams, saving instructors’ time; they are downloadable from mobile app stores and can be accessed on personal devices.
• Student progress monitoring: These tools let instructors monitor academic progress, content mastery, and engagement. Custom alerts and reports identify at-risk learners and help instructors tailor the content or their teaching style for greater effectiveness. This capability is often included with subscriptions to adaptive learning platforms.

Survey respondents reported a 19 percent average increase in overall use of these learning technologies since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Technologies that enable connectivity and community building, such as social media–inspired discussion platforms and virtual study groups, saw the biggest uptick in use—49 percent—followed by group work tools, which grew by 29 percent (Exhibit 2). These technologies likely fill the void left by the lack of in-person experiences more effectively than individual-focused learning tools such as augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR). Classroom interaction technologies such as real-time chatting, polling, and breakout room discussions were the most widely used tools before the pandemic and remain so; 67 percent of survey respondents said they currently use these tools in the classroom.

About the research

In November 2021, McKinsey surveyed 634 faculty members and 818 students from public, private, and minority-serving colleges and universities over a ten-day period. The survey included only students and faculty who had some remote- or online-learning experience with any of the eight featured technologies. Respondents were 63 percent female, 35 percent male, and 2 percent other gender identities; 69 percent White, 18 percent Black or African American, 8 percent Asian, and 4 percent other ethnicities; and represented every US region. The survey asked respondents about their:

• experiences with technology in the classroom pre-COVID-19;
• experiences with technology in the classroom since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic; and
• desire for future learning experiences in relation to technology.

The shift to more interactive and diverse learning models will likely continue. One industry expert told us, “The pandemic pushed the need for a new learning experience online. It recentered institutions to think about how they’ll teach moving forward and has brought synchronous and hybrid learning into focus.” Consequently, many US colleges and universities are actively investing to scale up their online and hybrid program offerings .

Differences in adoption by type of institution observed in the research

• Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and tribal colleges and universities made the most use of classroom interactions and group work tools (55 percent) and the least use of tools for monitoring student progress (15 percent).
• Private institutions used classroom interaction technologies (84 percent) more than public institutions (63 percent).
• Public institutions, often associated with larger student populations and course sizes, employed group work and connectivity and community-building tools more often than private institutions.
• The use of AI teaching-assistant technologies increased significantly more at public institutions (30 percent) than at private institutions (9 percent), though overall usage remained comparatively higher at private institutions.
• The use of tools for monitoring student progress increased by 14 percent at private institutions, versus no growth at public institutions.

Some technologies lag behind in adoption. Tools enabling student progress monitoring, AR/VR, machine learning–powered teaching assistants (TAs), AI adaptive course delivery, and classroom exercises are currently used by less than half of survey respondents. Anecdotal evidence suggests that technologies such as AR/VR require a substantial investment in equipment and may be difficult to use at scale in classes with high enrollment. Our survey also revealed utilization disparities based on size. Small public institutions use machine learning–powered TAs, AR/VR, and technologies for monitoring student progress at double or more the rates of medium and large public institutions, perhaps because smaller, specialized schools can make more targeted and cost-effective investments. We also found that medium and large public institutions made greater use of connectivity and community-building tools than small public institutions (57 to 59 percent compared with 45 percent, respectively). Although the uptake of AI-powered tools was slower, higher-education experts we interviewed predict their use will increase; they allow faculty to tailor courses to each student’s progress, reduce their workload, and improve student engagement at scale (see sidebar “Differences in adoption by type of institution observed in the research”).

While many colleges and universities are interested in using more technologies to support student learning, the top three barriers indicated are lack of awareness, inadequate deployment capabilities, and cost (Exhibit 3).

Students want entertaining and efficient tools

More than 60 percent of students said that all the classroom learning technologies they’ve used since COVID-19 began had improved their learning and grades (Exhibit 4). However, two technologies earned higher marks than the rest for boosting academic performance: 80 percent of students cited classroom exercises, and 71 percent cited machine learning–powered teaching assistants.

Although AR/VR is not yet widely used, 37 percent of students said they are “most excited” about its potential in the classroom. While 88 percent of students believe AR/VR will make learning more entertaining, just 5 percent said they think it will improve their ability to learn or master content (Exhibit 5). Industry experts confirmed that while there is significant enthusiasm for AR/VR, its ability to improve learning outcomes is uncertain. Some data look promising. For example, in a recent pilot study, 1 “Immersive biology in the Alien Zoo: A Dreamscape Learn software product,” Dreamscape Learn, accessed October 2021. students who used a VR tool to complete coursework for an introductory biology class improved their subject mastery by an average of two letter grades.

Faculty embrace new tools but would benefit from more technical support and training

Faculty gave learning tools even higher marks than students did, for ease of use, engagement, access to course resources, and instructor connectivity. They also expressed greater excitement than students did for the future use of technologies. For example, while more than 30 percent of students expressed excitement for AR/VR and classroom interactions, more than 60 percent of faculty were excited about those, as well as machine learning–powered teaching assistants and AI adaptive technology.

Eighty-one percent or more of faculty said they feel the eight learning technology tools are a good investment of time and effort relative to the value they provide (Exhibit 6). Expert interviews suggest that employing learning technologies can be a strain on faculty members, but those we surveyed said this strain is worthwhile.

While faculty surveyed were enthusiastic about new technologies, experts we interviewed stressed some underlying challenges. For example, digital-literacy gaps have been more pronounced since the pandemic because it forced the near-universal adoption of some technology solutions, deepening a divide that was unnoticed when adoption was sporadic. More tech-savvy instructors are comfortable with interaction-engagement-focused solutions, while staff who are less familiar with these tools prefer content display and delivery-focused technologies.

According to experts we interviewed, learning new tools and features can bring on general fatigue. An associate vice president of e-learning at one university told us that faculty there found designing and executing a pilot study of VR for a computer science class difficult. “It’s a completely new way of instruction. . . . I imagine that the faculty using it now will not use it again in the spring.” Technical support and training help. A chief academic officer of e-learning who oversaw the introduction of virtual simulations for nursing and radiography students said that faculty holdouts were permitted to opt out but not to delay the program. “We structured it in a ‘we’re doing this together’ way. People who didn’t want to do it left, but we got a lot of support from vendors and training, which made it easy to implement simulations.”

Reimagining higher education in the United States

Takeaways from our research.

Despite the growing pains of digitizing the classroom learning experience, faculty and students believe there is a lot more they can gain. Faculty members are optimistic about the benefits, and students expect learning to stay entertaining and efficient. While adoption levels saw double-digit growth during the pandemic, many classrooms have yet to experience all the technologies. For institutions considering the investment, or those that have already started, there are several takeaways to keep in mind.

• It’s important for administration leaders, IT, and faculty to agree on what they want to accomplish by using a particular learning technology. Case studies and expert interviews suggest institutions that seek alignment from all their stakeholders before implementing new technologies are more successful. Is the primary objective student engagement and motivation? Better academic performance? Faculty satisfaction and retention? Once objectives are set, IT staff and faculty can collaborate more effectively in choosing the best technology and initiating programs.
• Factor in student access to technology before deployment. As education technology use grows, the digital divide for students puts access to education at risk. While all the institution types we surveyed use learning technologies in the classroom, they do so to varying degrees. For example, 55 percent of respondents from historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges and universities use classroom interaction tools. This is lower than public institutions’ overall utilization rate of 64 percent and private institutions’ utilization rate of 84 percent. Similarly, 15 percent of respondents from historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges and universities use tools for monitoring student progress, while the overall utilization rate for both public and private institutions is 25 percent.
• High-quality support eases adoption for students and faculty. Institutions that have successfully deployed new learning technologies provided technical support and training for students and guidance for faculty on how to adapt their course content and delivery. For example, institutions could include self-service resources, standardize tools for adoption, or provide stipend opportunities for faculty who attend technical training courses. One chief academic officer told us, “The adoption of platforms at the individual faculty level can be very difficult. Ease of use is still very dependent upon your IT support representative and how they will go to bat to support you.”
• Agree on impact metrics and start measuring in advance of deployment. Higher-education institutions often don’t have the means to measure the impact of their investment in learning technologies, yet it’s essential for maximizing returns. Attributing student outcomes to a specific technology can be complex due to the number of variables involved in academic performance. However, prior to investing in learning technologies, the institution and its faculty members can align on a core set of metrics to quantify and measure their impact. One approach is to measure a broad set of success indicators, such as tool usage, user satisfaction, letter grades, and DFW rates (the percentage of students who receive a D, F, or Withdraw) each term. The success indicators can then be correlated by modality—online versus hybrid versus in-class—to determine the impact of specific tools. Some universities have offered faculty grants of up to $20,000 for running pilot programs that assess whether tools are achieving high-priority objectives. “If implemented properly, at the right place, and with the right buy-in, education technology solutions are absolutely valuable and have a clear ROI,” a senior vice president of academic affairs and chief technology officer told us.

In an earlier article , we looked at the broader changes in higher education that have been prompted by the pandemic. But perhaps none has advanced as quickly as the adoption of digital learning tools. Faculty and students see substantial benefits, and adoption rates are a long way from saturation, so we can expect uptake to continue. Institutions that want to know how they stand in learning tech adoption can measure their rates and benchmark them against the averages in this article and use those comparisons to help them decide where they want to catch up or get ahead.

Claudio Brasca is a partner in McKinsey’s Bay Area office, where Varun Marya is a senior partner; Charag Krishnan is a partner in the New Jersey office; Katie Owen is an associate partner in the St. Louis office, where Joshua Sirois is a consultant; and Shyla Ziade is a consultant in the Denver office.

The authors wish to thank Paul Kim, chief technology officer and associate dean at Stanford School of Education, and Ryan Golden for their contributions to this article.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

Setting a new bar for online higher education

How to transform higher-education institutions for the long term

Scaling online education: Five lessons for colleges

6 Ed Tech Tools to Try in 2022

January 18, 2022

Can't find what you are looking for? Contact Us

Listen to this post as a podcast:

Sponsored by Fearless Schools and Google’s Applied Digital Skills

In 2015, I published my very first Teacher’s Guide to Tech. I did it because teachers kept telling me that they wanted to use technology more effectively, but they were overwhelmed by the number of tools out there and the lack of time they had to research them and try them out. So they just kept using the same small handful of software applications, feeling more out of touch every year, watching their more tech-savvy peers lap them over and over. 

I decided to try and make it easy on them. At first I thought I would just write a long blog post that put all the major educational tech tools into categories, explained what each one was, and linked to their sites. That quickly turned into a PDF that I called the Teacher’s Guide to Tech. 

Now I’m releasing the 8th edition of that guide, the 2022 version, and what started as a catalog of just over a hundred tools has grown into an encyclopedia of over 500, with more than 50 different categories covering all subjects including art, physical education, and special ed, along with tools for classroom management, assessment, and feedback. There’s an extensive collection of resources for social justice and anti-racism, a huge section on makerspaces that includes coding, electronics, and robotics, tools for video editing, podcasting, media and news literacy, and social and emotional learning, and for every entry, just like in the first edition, there’s a picture of the tool in use and a link to a video that shows you how it works.

If this is the first time you’re hearing about the guide, here’s a quick video I made a few years ago to give you an idea of what it is and how it works:

Every year it takes a massive amount of time to update the guide—about three full months—because not only do I add new tools, but I also update all the stuff that changes: tools and websites change their names, they get absorbed by other companies, they shift their focus to something different, and sometimes they completely disappear. I look for the most updated videos, check that the photos are still accurate, and generally make sure everything is as up-to-date as possible, even though things will continue to change the day after the new guide is published!

This year, for the very first time, I hired a team of ed tech experts to help me with the update. The task was becoming overwhelming and I knew if I was going to keep it up, I had to have some help. Here they are below: Marnie Diem, Brandie Wright, Lucia Hassell, and Kim Darche.

In keeping with our yearly tradition, we’ll be sharing six tools we think are worth trying this year. Most are not brand-new, and some are not even new to the guide, but each one has something special about it that deserves a little extra attention. This year I have only chosen two of the six; the other four were chosen by my new team members. Here we go!

The past two years have given us all more experience with video conferencing than we could have anticipated. While platforms like Zoom and Google Meet do a good enough job of letting us talk to each other, and even give us options for breaking larger meetings into smaller, more intimate groups, the experience is still kind of “flat.”

An emerging group of tools is trying to bridge that gap, using VR technology to create online spaces that feel more three-dimensional, allowing participants to move through virtual spaces as if they are physically in a room together. We feature five of these platforms in this year’s guide, and one of them is Frame. In the world of Frame, a host can create an environment like an office, a lounge, or even an island, and populate that environment with artwork, documents, videos, or any other kind of materials needed for a lesson or other experience. Participants move around the space as avatars and can use voice or text chat to interact.

There is definitely a learning curve with a platform like this, but it seems worth a try. The video below is more of an overview, but two videos from Greg Kulowiec—first this one , then this follow-up —provide a more in-depth look at how the platform works.

2. Google Arts & Culture Experiments

experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/arts-culture

This collection is a subset of Google’s larger Experiments platform, which is the result of Google allowing any coder with a creative idea to submit projects that use artificial intelligence, augmented reality, or any kind of code to stretch the limits of what technology can do. The Arts & Culture collection works with Google’s huge database of information about works of art, photography, and music.

This is a site worth visiting just for pure entertainment and curiosity, but it might end up lending itself to one of your lessons or inspiring students to try creating experiments of their own. If nothing else, it would be an excellent place to send students when they finish work early.

To experience them for yourself, try Puzzle Party , which takes fine art and breaks it into an interactive jigsaw puzzle you can do with friends, and Art Coloring Book , where you “color” famous works of art.

3. #1000BlackGirlBooks

marleydias.com/1000blackgirlbooks

This project started in November 2015, when elementary student Marley Dias decided to solve a problem. After noticing that very few of the books available to her and her peers featured Black female protagonists, she launched a campaign to change that. Since its inception, her goal to collect 1,000 books with Black girls as the main characters has surpassed itself. The collection now contains over 13,000 books.

To help users find books more easily, GrassROOTS Community Foundation has put the collection into a database where you can search by author and title or filter results by reading level.

This resource offers incredible value to all educators. English language arts teachers, school librarians, or anyone who maintains a classroom library can use the list to improve representation in their own materials. And any teacher or school leader committed to anti-racism can access the collection to find more books to read, books that celebrate and broaden readers’ understanding of the lives of Black girls and women.

playosmo.com

This device is so unique and flexible, we gave it its own full-page spread in the Games section of the guide.

Unlike traditional tablet apps and games, the Osmo Learning System is a unique combination of computer vision and manipulatives that bridge the digital and physical worlds. Once the tablet is placed in the Osmo base and the reflector is placed on the camera, the entire work surface becomes interactive. With multiple starter kits for kids from ages 3-12, students physically manipulate a variety of tools while engaging with practice in reading, math, coding, and more.

Having a system like this in your classroom would allow students to be more active and collaborative with their learning, rather than only interacting with a screen. The video below gives you an idea of how it works. To see it in action in other ways, watch more options like Math Wizard , Pizza Co , and Osmo’s coding games .

everfi.com/k-12

Originally a site that offered free financial literacy courses to students, EVERFI has expanded its course offerings to include career exploration (including one specific to STEM careers), social and emotional learning, diversity and inclusion, and health and wellness. Their newest additions are courses in healthcare literacy, data science and banking fraud, and compassion and empathy.

The lessons are gamified, putting students into simulated situations where they need to make decisions based on the concepts they are learning, and this keeps students engaged. Teachers are given analytics on student engagement and performance, so this is an ideal tool for use in remote and hybrid learning.

What’s great about the courses at EVERFI is that they hit on topics we often say should be taught in schools, but don’t often actually find in our curriculum. These lessons could be used in advisory periods, life skills classes, or as enrichment or independent study. Keep an eye on this site—they seem to be adding new materials all the time!

6. Skew the Script

skewthescript.org

The creators of this site are a group of math teachers who were tired of seeing their students drag themselves through contrived, irrelevant math problems. They wanted to write math problems that students actually cared about. With that in mind, Skew the Script was born, a site offering completely free, socially relevant math lessons for Algebra 1, Algebra 2 and AP Statistics.

There are lessons on lighter topics like sports, fast food, and pop culture, along with others on more serious issues like climate change, equity issues, gun control, and vaccinations. Lessons include videos, teacher slide decks, student handouts, and other resources to support teachers in face-to-face or online teaching.

Although they don’t currently have an explainer video to showcase their platform, the video below is one example of a statistics lesson. You can browse more videos on their YouTube channel .

The Teacher’s Guide to Tech

The 8th iteration of the Teacher’s Guide to Tech is loaded with tools that can enrich your teaching. With over 550 tools in over 50 different categories, this is the resource you need to quickly make smart decisions about the technology you choose for your classroom.

This year’s guide has over 115 new tools and three brand-new categories: Digital Literacy, Social & Emotional Learning, and Video Conferencing. Along with that, we’ve made sure that every single tool listed has up-to-date information, videos, and links to their sites, so you can find what you need and get back to teaching.

Where to Get Your Copy

Single-User Licenses:  If you just want a copy for yourself, you can get it at Teachers Pay Teachers or on Teachable.

Multi-User Licenses:  To get the guide for your team, school, or even district, you can save a lot by getting multi-user licenses. I offer the deepest discounts for these on Teachable.

Purchase on Teachable

Purchase on TpT

Categories: Podcast , Technology

Tags: teaching with tech , tech tools

13 Comments

I am really looking forward to trying a few of these in my English classroom (particularly Frame and the Google Experiments). There are a number of tools on here that don’t apply, but I’ll be sure to share with my colleagues who could use them.

Tim, thanks for sharing with your colleagues, and we hope you find something useful for yourself as well!

I enjoyed the edition from last year and learned so much, I can’t wait to unpack this year’s guide. I will be sharing Everfi with my colleagues to determine how and when we can help districts implement Everfi into their supplemental practices and I will also be browsing it as a parent for use with my son!

That’s great to hear, Shalika! Jenn will be so pleased to know that you are finding so much value in the guide, both as a professional and as a parent!

Thank you for this list. Gladto see EverFi featured! Have you featured Lumio from SmartTech in the past? I’ll have to do some searching to find out… but I really like Lumio!

Superb podcast. Found it very helpful.

Thank you for this amazing list of resources! I must say that I have never heard of any of these besides Osmo, and I am really looking forward to exploring them with our teachers, particularly Everfi. As a Tech teacher who also made the transition from the technical side of schools (I was an IT manager for The American School of São Paulo for 17 years, now living and teaching in Shanghai) to the classroom, I really appreciate your work bringing to light so many great resources to educators everywhere in the world.

Thank you for these resources! I can see utilizing the Google Experiments (Learning and Digital Wellbeing ones for sure) in my science classes to increase engagement and offer new technology/ perspectives. I can not wait to share these with my fellow teachers. The Everfi lessons will be great for my colleagues who teach remote learning classes!

A few minutes ago, I posted links (on my Canvas modules page) to the puzzles and the frames, and all I can hear is crickets in my normally talkative gifted class of eighth graders. My most reluctant student just said, “Actually, this is kinda cool,” about the framevr.io site. Thank you so much for putting this podcast together. I’m going over to Teachable to get your guidebook now.

So glad to hear you found this useful!

Thank you for sharing so many new resources for educators. I am looking forward to using the 1000BLACKGIRLBOOKS resources to include in my curriculum.

Thanks so much for the resources! I’ve never heard of any of these, and I can’t wait to try some and share with my team. I can think of a few students who would LOVE the Google Arts and puzzles!

We’re so pleased to hear you find it useful!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

MIT Technology Review

• Newsletters

10 Breakthrough Technologies

The end of passwords

For decades, we’ve needed passwords to do things online. New forms of authentication will finally let us get rid of them for good. Instead, we’ll use a link sent via email, a push notification, or a biometric scan. Not only are these methods easier—you don’t have to remember your face—but they tend to be more secure.

Covid variant tracking

The pandemic brought unprecedented investment in genomic sequencing and dramatically expanded the capacity for this type of monitoring around the world. Better surveillance has allowed scientists to track the spread of the covid virus and to quickly spot and warn about new variants.

A long-lasting grid battery

We’re using more renewable power than ever. But what happens when the sun sets or the wind stops? Grid operators need a way to store electricity for later. New iron-based batteries may be up to the task. They’re made using abundant materials and could be cheaper and more practical than other types of grid storage.

Break down the breakthroughs

Explore the promising, the elusive, and the unexpected with MIT Technology Review.

AI for protein folding

Nearly everything your body does, it does with proteins. And the way a protein folds determines its activity. But figuring out proteins’ structure can take months. Now an AI called AlphaFold2 has solved this longstanding biological puzzle, which could make it possible to quickly design drugs for a wide range of diseases.

Malaria Vaccine

Malaria kills more than 600,000 people a year, most of them children younger than five. A new malaria vaccine approved by the World Health Organization could help save hundreds of thousands of lives every year. It’s also the world’s first vaccine for a parasitic infection.

Never miss a breakthrough

Sign up for our daily newsletter, the Download .

By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy .

Thank you for submitting your email!

Something went wrong, try again., proof of stake.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin use huge amounts of electricity. This is due to the way transactions are verified, which now requires significant computing power. Proof of stake offers a way to verify transactions without using so much energy. Ethereum plans to transition to the system this year, cutting energy use by 99.95%.

A pill for covid

A new drug from Pfizer provides effective and broad protection against the covid-19 virus, including the newest variants. Now other companies are developing similar medicines. Combined with vaccines, these pills could provide a way for the world to finally exit the pandemic.

Practical fusion reactors

The promise of limitless, carbon-free electricity has for decades inspired researchers to try to make fusion power work. Now one startup plans to deliver it to the grid by the early 2030s. Its design relies on a powerful new magnet that shattered records and should allow the company to build smaller, less expensive reactors.

Synthetic data for AI

Training AI requires vast amounts of data. Oftentimes, though, that data is messy or reflects real-world biases, or there are privacy concerns around the information included. Some companies are starting to create and sell synthetic data to avoid these problems. It’s not perfect, but it could be a better way to train AI.

A carbon removal factory

Reducing emissions is a key step to mitigating climate change. But it’s not enough, according to the UN. To avoid catastrophic future warming, we must also remove carbon dioxide from the air. The world’s biggest carbon removal factory recently opened in Iceland to do just that.

you Voted for the 11th breakthrough

Presenting the winner of the 11th breakthrough poll:

Back to top

Learn about the winner

Aging clocks.

DNA markers are making it possible to track the aging process in real time, and helping scientists understand why people age at different rates.

About the list

10 breakthrough technologies 2022.

Our annual list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies highlights the technological advances that we think will have the biggest impact on the world in the years to come. Every year, our reporters and editors survey a wide range of topics, from medicine to energy to digital technologies, to select advances that will affect our lives in meaningful ways. Some have already started to change the way we live and work, while others are poised to do so soon. This is the 21st year we’ve published this list. We hope you enjoy this glimpse into the future.

Editing: Rachel Courtland, Mat Honan, Amy Nordrum, Michael Reilly, and David Rotman Copy editing: Linda Lowenthal Design: Rachel Stein, Solomon Henry Roh Art direction: Eric Mongeon, Rachel Stein Illustration: Andrea D’Aquino Additional images: protein model courtesy of Deepmind, practical fusion reactors photography by Tony Luong, carbon removal factory photography by Kristján Maack Engineering: Jack Burns, Andre Vitorio Analytics: Danielle Golds Engagement: Abby Ivory-Ganja Product: Mariya Sitnova

More From Forbes

Navigating the future: edtech investment and the new learning paradigm.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

Denys Vorobyov, CEO at EltexSoft : Custom software solutions for accelerated business success.

The educational technology (edtech) sector has seen unprecedented growth in recent years, particularly accelerated by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on learning modalities. In fact, according to HolonIQ, global edtech funding reached record levels in 2021, illustrating the growing investor confidence in the sector.

The last several years have been quite dynamic, with increased investments in digital infrastructure and a shift toward remote learning during the pandemic. This transition has necessitated reevaluating traditional educational models and spurred innovation.

The pandemic highlighted the necessity of digital solutions in education, leading to a "new normal" where hybrid learning environments have become more common. This significant shift suggests that technology integration in education is now a long-term trend rather than a temporary solution.

How The Pandemic Impacted EdTech

The pandemic accelerated educators' familiarity with edtech tools and curriculum, and the new wave of AI has enabled teachers and students to innovate and be more effective.

New FBI Warning As Hackers Strike Email Senders Must Do This 1 Thing

2 obvious signs of ‘workplace gaslighting,’ from a psychologist, wells fargo championship 2024 golf betting preview odds and pga picks.

This trend invigorated the edtech space. During the pandemic, Managing Director Ian Chiu of Owl Ventures, a venture capitalist firm that specializes in education, noted that the pandemic brought more talent into the education technology space and more companies working "at the intersection of education and other major sectors."

Increasing talent and resources helps to ensure quality innovation. Long-term success and acceptance of edtech solutions, though, depend on the balance between innovation and educational integrity.

Current Investment Strategies And Challenges

While there has been a general decline in funding across sectors since the pandemic, edtech presents a unique landscape. Despite the changes in the capital markets, the industry still has significant opportunities for growth and innovation.

However, securing funding has become more complex , with investors looking closely at companies' abilities to balance innovation with tangible educational outcomes. To secure and sustain investment, edtech-focused investors want to see startups that can significantly improve educational outcomes and experiences.

Likewise, artificial intelligence (AI) stands out as a transformative force in the future of edtech. AI solutions, from adaptive learning platforms to AI-driven tutoring systems, offer a lot of potential to revolutionize education.

However, the integration of AI into educational settings is challenging. There is a need for careful implementation to ensure that AI tools are accessible, ethical and effectively augment the learning experience without replacing the human elements of education.

Building Transformative Businesses

Based on these trends, venture capitalists and edtech leaders are increasingly focused on balancing short-term innovation with long-term educational outcomes. Many are investing in platforms that innovate through technology and deeply integrate educational research to ensure that learning improvements are sustainable and impactful.

For instance, VCs prioritize companies that develop adaptive learning technologies that personalize education at scale. For example, Discovery Education recently acquired Dreambox Learning, an intelligent adaptive learning platform that dynamically adjusts to the learner's interactions and proficiency in math.

Investors in these types of products often collaborate with educational experts and institutions to validate and refine edtech products, ensuring they align with pedagogical goals and show real-world efficacy. This approach helps create innovative educational tools capable of delivering long-term value to students and educators.

Strategies For EdTech: Balancing Innovation With Educational Integrity

For edtech companies navigating the current landscape, balancing innovation with educational integrity is essential. Here are a few strategic steps to doing so:

1. Focus on user-centric design. Develop products that address real educational needs, ensuring that the technology enhances learning outcomes rather than merely adding complexity. This involves continuous feedback loops with users—students, teachers and administrators—to tailor solutions that resonate with and support the educational community.

2. Invest in scalable solutions. With the rapid adoption of edtech tools, scalability becomes crucial. Invest in robust back-end infrastructures that handle increased demand without compromising user experience. This ensures that your innovations can effectively reach a broader audience.

3. Emphasize data security and privacy. As edtech solutions handle sensitive data, prioritizing security and privacy is crucial. This protects users, builds stakeholder trust and helps to comply with educational regulations and standards.

3. Collaborate with educational institutions. To ensure educational integrity, collaborate closely with schools, colleges and academic authorities. These partnerships help align your technological innovations with educational curriculums and pedagogies, ensuring they add value to the educational process.

4. Commit to continuous learning and improvement. The edtech landscape is perpetually evolving. Stay ahead by committing to ongoing research and development. This includes keeping up with technological advances and incorporating pedagogical innovations into your offerings.

5. Measure impact and iterate. Regularly assess your products' educational impact. This involves not just user satisfaction but also tangible learning outcomes. Use this data to refine and improve your offerings, ensuring they contribute positively to education in the long term.

By following these guidelines, edtech leaders can effectively balance the drive for innovation with the responsibility to provide educational value, ensuring their solutions are both cutting-edge and deeply rooted in enhancing learning experiences.

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

• Share full article

Advertisement

Subscriber-only Newsletter

Jessica Grose

Every tech tool in the classroom should be ruthlessly evaluated.

By Jessica Grose

Opinion Writer

Educational technology in schools is sometimes described as a wicked problem — a term coined by a design and planning professor, Horst Rittel, in the 1960s , meaning a problem for which even defining the scope of the dilemma is a struggle, because it has so many interconnected parts that never stop moving.

When you have a wicked problem, solutions have to be holistic, flexible and developmentally appropriate. Which is to say that appropriate tech use for elementary schoolers in rural Oklahoma isn’t going to be the same as appropriate tech use in a Chicago high school.

I spent the past few weeks speaking with parents, teachers, public school administrators and academics who study educational technology. And while there are certainly benefits to using tech as a classroom tool, I’m convinced that when it comes to the proliferation of tech in K-12 education, we need “ a hard reset ,” as Julia Freeland Fisher of the Christensen Institute put it, concurring with Jonathan Haidt in his call for rolling back the “phone-based childhood.” When we recently spoke, Fisher stressed that when we weigh the benefits of ed tech, we’re often not asking, “What’s happening when it comes to connectedness and well-being?”

Well said. We need a complete rethink of the ways that we’re evaluating and using tech in classrooms; the overall change that I want to see is that tech use in schools — devices and apps — should be driven by educators, not tech companies.

In recent years, tech companies have provided their products to schools either free or cheap , and then schools have tried to figure out how to use those products. Wherever that dynamic exists, it should be reversed: Districts and individual schools should first figure out what tech would be most useful to their students, and their bar for “useful” should be set by available data and teacher experience. Only then should they acquire laptops, tablets and educational software.

As Mesut Duran — a professor of educational technology at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, and the author of “Learning Technologies: Research, Trends and Issues in the U.S. Education System” — told me, a lot of the technology that’s used in classrooms wasn’t developed with students in mind. “Most of the technologies are initially created for commercial purposes,” he said, “and then we decide how to use them in schools.”

In many cases, there’s little or no evidence that the products actually work, and “work” can have various meanings here: It’s not conclusive that tech, as opposed to hard-copy materials, improves educational outcomes. And sometimes devices or programs simply don’t function the way they’re supposed to. For example, artificial intelligence in education is all the rage, but then we get headlines like this one, in February, from The Wall Street Journal: “ We Tested an A.I. Tutor for Kids. It Struggled With Basic Math. ”

Alex Molnar, one of the directors of the National Educational Policy Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said that every school should be asking if the tech it’s using is both necessary and good. “The tech industry’s ethos is: If it’s doable, it is necessary. But for educators, that has to be an actual question: Is this necessary?” Even after you’ve cleared the bar of necessary, he said, educators should be asking, “Is doing it this way good, or could we do it another way that would be better? Better in the ethical sense and the pedagogical sense.”

With that necessary and good standard in mind, here are some specific recommendations that I’ve taken away from several discussions and a lot of reading. It’s unrealistic — and considering that we’re in a tech-saturated world, not ideal — to get rid of every last bit of educational technology. But we’re currently failing too many children by letting it run rampant.

At the State and Federal Levels: Privacy Protections and Better Evaluation

A complaint I heard from many public school parents who responded to my March 27 questionnaire and wanted a lower-tech environment for their kids is that they’re concerned about their children’s privacy. They couldn’t opt out of things like Google Classroom, they said, because in many cases, all of their children’s homework assignments were posted there. Molnar has a radical but elegant solution for this problem: “All data gathered must be destroyed after its intended purpose has been accomplished.” So if the intended purpose of a platform or application is grading, for example, the data would be destroyed at the end of the school year; it couldn’t be sold to a third party or used to further enhance the product or as a training ground for artificial intelligence.

Another recommendation — from a recent paper by the University of Edinburgh’s Ben Williamson, Molnar and the University of Colorado, Boulder’s Faith Boninger outlining the risks of A.I. in the classroom — is for the creation of an “independent government entity charged with ensuring the quality of digital educational products used in schools” that would evaluate tech before it is put into schools and “periodically thereafter.” Because the technology is always evolving, our oversight of it needs to be, as well.

At the District Level: Centralize the Tech-Vetting Process

Stephanie Sheron is the chief of strategic initiatives for the Montgomery County Public Schools, the largest district in Maryland, and all the district’s technology departments report to her. She likened the tech landscape, coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic remote school period, to the “Wild West.” School districts were flooded with different kinds of ed tech in an emergency situation in which teachers were desperately trying to engage their students, and a lot of relief money was pouring in from the federal government. When the dust settled, she said, the question was, “Now what do we do? How do we control this? How do we make sure that we’re in alignment with FERPA and COPPA and all of those other student data privacy components?”

To address this, Sheron said, her district has secured grant funding to hire a director of information security, who will function as the hub for all the educational technology vending and evaluate new tech. Part of the standardization that the district has been undergoing is a requirement that to be considered, curriculum vendors must offer both digital and hard-copy resources. She said her district tried to look at tech as a tool, adding: “A pencil is a tool for learning, but it’s not the only modality. Same thing with technology. We look at it as a tool, not as the main driver of the educational experience.”

At the Classroom Level: Ruthlessly Evaluate Every Tool

In my conversations with teachers, I’ve been struck by their descriptions of the cascade of tech use — that more tech is often offered as a solution to problems created by tech. For example, paid software like GoGuardian, which allows teachers to monitor every child’s screen, has been introduced to solve the problem of students goofing off on their laptops. But there’s a simple, free, low-tech solution to this problem that Doug Showley, a high school English teacher in Indiana I spoke to, employs: He makes all his students face their computer screens in his direction.

Every teacher who is concerned about tech use in his or her classroom should do a tech audit. There are several frameworks ; I like the worksheet created by Beth Pandolpho and Katie Cubano, the authors of “Choose Your Own Master Class: Urgent Ideas to Invigorate Your Professional Learning.” In the chapter “Balancing Technology Use in the Classroom,” they suggest that teachers list every tech tool they are using and evaluate its specific functions, asking, “Are these novel or duplicative?” They also encourage teachers to write out a defense of the tool and the frequency of use.

I like these questions because they make clear that the solutions are not going to be one size fits all.

Students Deserve Authentic Connection

As I close out this series, I want to return to what Fisher said about the importance of student connection and well-being. Of course academic outcomes matter. I want our kids to learn as much about as many different topics as they can. I care about falling test scores and think they’re an important piece of data.

But test scores are only one kind of information. A key lesson we should have learned from 2020 and ’21 is that school is about so much more than just academics. It’s about socialization, critical thinking, community and learning how to coexist with people who are different from you. I don’t know that all of these are things that can be tracked in a scientific way, which brings me back to the idea of tech in schools as a wicked problem: These aren’t easily measurable outcomes.

Jeff Frank, a professor of education at St. Lawrence University, expresses a sense that I’ve had very well in a paper , “Sounding the Call to Teach in a Social Media Age: Renewing the Importance of Philosophy in Teacher Education.” He says students are “hungry for experiences that make them feel alive and authentically connected to other people and to deeper sources of value. Though filtering and managing life through technologies offers safety, predictability and a sense of control, it also leads to life that can feel extremely small, constraining and lonely. Teaching can offer a powerful way to pierce this bubble.”

Ultimately, I believe the only way kids will be able to find that deeper meaning is through human relationships with their peers and teachers, no matter how shiny an A.I. tutor appears to be at first blush.

Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The Times, covering family, religion, education, culture and the way we live now.

Critical Themes in Education Technology in 2024

Giving compass' take:.

• Three main themes arise in discussions between edtech suppliers and educators: ecosystem evolution, data and analytics,  and generative AI.
• What are the accessibility issues with education technology? How can donor investment help?
• Learn about the role of philanthropy in evaluating edtech.  

What is Giving Compass?

We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us .

The advancements in technology are reshaping how we teach and learn, bringing new opportunities and challenges. To address such challenges, a concerted effort must be made to ensure that newer technologies are implemented thoughtfully and responsibly, with a focus on enhancing the educational experience for all students. Collaboration and open dialogue are key as we navigate this terrain, ensuring innovation meets the needs of today's educational institutions.

In almost every collaboration or discussion around what educators, schools and institutions need from their educational technology, three themes rise to the surface:

• Ecosystem Evolution When building up edtech resources for any learning environment, whether it be a K-12 school district, institution of higher education or professional development, there is a lot to consider. Before acquiring a new edtech system, tool or app, technology leaders need to consider privacy and security concerns. How will the technology work with other tools? Will it make life easier for already overwhelmed educators, or is it just one more item on their to-do list? Is it accessible to all learners? Does it align with the curriculum? When the needs of the institution change, will it be easy and affordable to make those changes?
• Data and Analytics  Technology is becoming increasingly important in education, but budgets remain limited. While only a little more than half of higher education institutions expect IT budgets to increase, the increase is only about two percent. In comparison, 48 percent of higher education institutions expect budgets to stay the same or decrease, according to Gartner’s higher education predictions for 2024. That means data and analytics will be crucial to helping select the right tools for each learning environment and proving their effectiveness.
• Generative AI Finally, there is no question that generative AI is causing excitement, confusion and anxiety, but it does have the potential to improve teaching and learning if done right. Everyone has a different understanding and ability to start implementing AI in their ecosystems.

Read the full article about edtech by Sandra DeCastro at EdSurge. Read the full article

More Articles

Social media is accelerating the spread of child sexual abuse material, fast company, may 3, 2024, rural students will soon have limited access to high-speed internet, apr 28, 2024.

Become a newsletter subscriber to stay up-to-date on the latest Giving Compass news.

Giving Compass Network

Partnerships & services.

We are a nonprofit too. Donate to Giving Compass to help us guide donors toward practices that advance equity.

Trending Issues

Copyright © 2024, Giving Compass Network

A 501(c)(3) organization. EIN: 85-1311683

• International
• Today’s Paper
• Premium Stories
• Express Shorts
• Health & Wellness
• Brand Solutions

IIT Madras raises record-breaking funding from alumni, industry, others

In 2020-21, iit-madras managed to raise rs 101.2 crore, in 2021-22, it rose to rs 131 crore and in 2022-23, the institute received rs 231 crore..

The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) has raised a record-breaking amount of Rs 513 crore as funding from its alumni, industry and individual donors during the financial year 2023-24.

The Institute also attracted total new pledges of Rs 717 crore from the alumni and corporate partners during the FY 2023-24.

Kaviraj Nair, CEO, Office of Institutional Advancement, IIT Madras, said, “The funds raised through alumni community and corporate donors are used to support cutting-edge research, provide scholarships to students in need, and to help develop campus.”

Nair added, “By investing in these critical areas, IIT Madras aims to not only elevate the academic experience but also cultivate a nurturing environment for innovation and societal transformation. The ripple effect of this philanthropic support extends far beyond our campus borders, reaching into communities and touching countless lives. Together with our donors, alumni, and stakeholders, we will continue to push the boundaries of knowledge and make a tangible difference in the world.”

In 2020-21, IIT-Madras managed to raise Rs 101.2 crore, in 2021-22, it rose to Rs 131 crore and in 2022-23, the institute received Rs 231 crore.  This historic high of Rs 513 crore is a 135 per cent increase from the amount raised in the previous financial year of 2022-23.

According to information, around 48 (16 alumni and 32 corporate partners) donors have donated over Rs 1 crore each.

Key projects of IIT Madras

– Wadhwani School of Data Science and AI

– Sports Excellence Admission programme

– Jaisri and Venkat Wind Energy Center

– Shankar Centre of Excellence for Diabetes research

– Walmart Centre for Tech Excellence

– Fedex Centre for Sustainable Supply Chains

– UG Anatomy lab in the Department of Medical Sciences and Technology

The IIT Madras has set up an Office of Alumni and Corporate Relations, a dedicated team of professionals, to look after the fundraising initiatives and to promote and facilitate connections amongst the diverse network of IIT Madras alumni, corporate firms and philanthropists.

Sponsored | Sharpen Your CTO Edge: Master Strategy, Leadership, and Innovation at ISB Executive Education's CTO Programme

• fundraising

Ranveer Singh has cleared his Instagram profile, removing all old photos including his wedding pictures with Deepika Padukone. The couple, expecting their first child in September, are on vacation. This is likely to be a social media strategy, as previously also done by Deepika. They are currently on a vacation.

UPSC Magazine

Read UPSC Magazine

• Karnataka SSLC Result 2024 Live Updates: KSEAB to declare SSLC results tomorrow at 10:30 am 10 mins ago
• SRH vs LSG Live Score, IPL 2024: Sunrisers Hyderabad's clash against Lucknow Super Giants faces rain threat 12 mins ago
• WBCHSE West Bengal HS Result 2024 (OUT) Live Updates: WB HS result link available at wbchse.wb.gov.in 36 mins ago
• Kerala SSLC 10th Result 2024 Live Updates: Result link available at pareekshabhavan.kerala.gov.in, prd.kerala.gov.in, sslcexam.kerala.gov.in, results.kite.kerala.gov.in 37 mins ago

Best of Express

Buzzing Now

May 08: Latest News

• 01 Israeli tanks have rolled into Rafah. What does this mean for the Palestinians sheltering there?
• 02 IPL 2024: Watch Sanju Samson’s dismissal by TV umpire sparks controversy in DC vs RR match
• 03 Punjab government refuses VRS to IAS officer who is BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate in Bathinda
• 04 Bombay HC seeks state govt reply to PIL alleging illegalities in ‘Dial 108’ ambulance project contract
• 05 Total 116 candidates from six seats in fray in Mumbai
• Elections 2024
• Political Pulse
• Entertainment
• Movie Review
• Newsletters
• Web Stories