Many educators around the world have struggled to adopt technology tools during the pandemic to deliver distance learning. Teachers report that their ability to use technology effectively has improved significantly.
Whether this will lead to greater use of technology to help create more active, customized learning experiences that engage students remains an open question.
To facilitate this, technology companies with educational tools will need to do a much better job of creating tools that not only enhance these kinds of experiences, but fit into the busy lives and priorities of educators.
As Larry Berger, CEO of Amplify, reminded us, there are at least three key elements that educational technologies should offer teachers.
These are:
- The time savings.
- The students' understanding of the lessons.
- Do not lose communication between students and teachers, as well as between students.
This list implies that educational technology should assist teachers with something they do on a regular basis. It cannot be an add-on to a teacher's already busy workday.
When Berger talks about expanding the reach of teachers, he explains that technology should extend their reach in ways that make them productive.
And finally, technology should help teachers learn and get to know their students so they can serve them more effectively.
Berger and his team did this with the first offering they created when their company was called Wireless Generation. Wireless Generation offered a portable educational assessment solution to help teachers understand reading , which they were already doing. And it allowed them to do it more easily, so it improved and simplified teachers’ lives, rather than made them more complicated.
Berger said there are five key things that educational technology can offer to improve student learning.
First, ask your students to give you feedback so you can get better.
Secondly, technology cannot help in carrying out all the lessons that are done in a traditional environment. For example, you cannot suddenly do an experiment if you are a physics teacher.
Third, technology can gather data that will help other parts of the system understand where students are “stuck.
Fourth, when technology is used well, Berger said it can increase productivity. That is, it can automate some manual and laborious processes.
And fifth, Berger said technology can allow for more personalization and self-direction by responding to what a student needs to learn next.
It will be interesting to see how teachers and schools use digital learning tools in the coming school year. Will they use them to replicate what happened in the traditional classroom, or will they use them to enhance lessons beyond what was traditionally happening? And will tech companies what will motivate teachers to actually use their tools and build them accordingly?
Berger's advice is important. Educators have benefited from using technology in recent months, but that doesn't mean "everything will change" for the better.
