Does your school district or institution of higher education use a learning management system (LMS), digital curriculum resources, learning tools, assessment apps, a credentialing platform, a single sign-on app launcher, or a system? of student information? So your institution has benefited from a quiet but powerful 20-year revolution of connecting edtech ecosystems.
Previously, it took months and tens of thousands of dollars to connect these common edtech components, ensure they were registered with the correct user groups, and correctly display student progress and assessment information. Now, this integration can take just a few minutes. That results in massive time and cost savings. More importantly, the user experience and instruction time are now the main focus instead of how to connect the products.
How did this breakthrough happen? Several hundred districts, institutions of higher education, state agencies, and provider and end-user organizations came together through a nonprofit collaboration known today as the 1EdTech Consortium. In 2006, the consortium had 50 member organizations. Today, almost 900 organizations participate from 28 countries.
Shaping EdTech Strategy and Connectivity
Today, there is more 8000 educational technology products certified by the 1EdTech community as meeting 1EdTech’s standards of quality and trust. 1EdTech technical interoperability standards such as Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI), Common Cartridge, OneRoster, Question and Test Interoperability (QTI), Caliper Analytics, Competency and Academic Standards Exchange (CASE), Open Badges, and Comprehensive Registry of the student, have become almost ubiquitous. in edtech.
The best way to participate in this revolution is to be part of the 1EdTech movement called trusted applications. School districts and higher education institutions that are leading the future in making their technology ecosystem work for the needs of teachers and students see 1EdTech collaboration as a central part of their transformation strategy. Active participation operationalizes the establishment of an open, trusted and innovative ecosystem while fostering better educational technology for all.
Members make the difference
1EdTech is a leading global organization, roughly equivalent in size to the well-known World Wide Web Consortium, and its growth is accelerating. But how 1EdTech got to this size may surprise you. Yes, 1EdTech is known for its world-class technical work, but the secret sauce has been in leadership, partnership, and collaboration among members. While members of each type have their own workspaces to discuss priorities, members of all types come together to share and build trust through common goals that improve the lives of teachers and students. It is from this leadership that such growth and achievements have been achieved. The 1EdTech community works daily to develop harnessing connectivity that will make a difference for decades to come.
Today, the 1EdTech community focuses on enabling four key strategies that will have a huge impact now and in the future.
- Ensure that every institution, regardless of size and resources, has a trusted and responsive digital ecosystem by leveraging the latest advances in standards-based student data privacy and connectivity.
- Ensure that a wide range of strategies for student-centred and personalized learning and pathways can be achieved by enabling a choice of digital learning products that can be configured to the needs of each student.
- Creating a step change in the way institutions recognize achievement that allows students to do a much better job of “telling the story of their learning journey” and connecting them to better opportunities.
- Dramatically reduce the cost associated with enabling a “data-rich” edtech ecosystem, and thereby help students, faculty, and administrators gain access to data and analytics in time to improve curriculum success student.
Join academic and technology leaders
Our community thrives on coming together, and we hold about 500 breakout meetings a year. But the best place to collaborate is (thankfully now, post-COVID) in person at our Impact on learning annual event held June 5-8 in Anaheim, California. You do not need to be a member to attend. This year we’ll get to the bottom of the impact of AI in education, the state of personalized learning, best practices in digital microcredential adoption, where we really are in terms of getting data to the right person at the right time, and more. .
