Technological advances are reshaping the way we teach and learn, creating new opportunities and challenges. To address these challenges, a concerted effort must be made to ensure that the newest technologies are implemented carefully and responsibly, with a focus on improving 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 about what educators, schools, and institutions need from their educational technology, three themes emerge:
- The need for a reliable, interoperable and flexible educational technology ecosystem.
- The increasing reliance on data and analytics to help build that ecosystem.
- Exploring the role of generative ai in that ecosystem.
Ecosystem evolution
When creating educational technology resources for any learning environment, whether a K-12 school district, higher education institution, or professional development, there is a lot to consider. Before purchasing a new educational technology system, tool, or application, technology leaders should consider privacy and security issues. How will the technology work with other tools? Will it make life easier for already overwhelmed educators, or is it just another item on their to-do list? Is it accessible to all students? Does it align with the curriculum? When the needs of the institution change, will it be easy and affordable to make those changes?
Of course, following interoperability standards can help ensure that the entire system works together and make it faster, cheaper, and easier to make future changes or additions to the ecosystem.
The 1EdTech community's open rubrics can help start the research process data privacy, security, accessibility andai-rubric” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”> Generative aiwhile CASE Network 2 helps align those tools with academic standards.
The ecosystem as a whole is having a great impact. There are initiatives to increase personalized learning and equity across districts and states, technology management solutions to alleviate some of the burdens on both technology departments and educators, and strategies to empower educators to use new technologies. technologies, to name a few.
Data and analysis
technology is 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. By 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 in helping select tools. suitable for each learning environment and demonstrate their effectiveness.
1EdTech members are already using interoperability standards to see how their tools are used, support student success, and evaluate course impact, but there is more to do.
Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI), OneRoster vs Edu-API enable the secure flow of data between various tools and systems, while the Gauge Analysis The standard makes data more accessible and easier to analyze. Members are working to break down silos between institutions and increase knowledge and data analysis to benefit teaching and learning at their institutions.
A coalition of leading institutions is also advocating LTI Advantage Data to provide real-time information covering progress within courses, assessment results and product usage.
Generative ai
Finally, there is no doubt that generative ai is causing excitement, confusion, and anxiety, but it has the potential to improve teaching and learning if done right. Each has a different understanding and ability to begin implementing ai in their ecosystems.
The 1EdTech community has already begun establishing guidance and tools to help with theai-rubric” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”> TrustEd Apps Generative ai Data Rubric and theai-checklist” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”> ai Readiness Checklistand the conversation will continue with members discussing how they are implementing these tools, as well as practice suggestions for educators.
In the end, these three issues boil down to one thing: we need to build an ecosystem that works better for all educators and supports students. That's why it's so important to bring everyone together, including K-12 and higher education educators, educational technology providers, government and nonprofit organizations, to ensure the solutions we create benefit everyone.
These conversations and work will continue at 1EdTech. 2024 Learning Impact Conference, June 3-6 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Educators and educational technology innovators will discuss how they address these problems, what works and what doesn't, and consider where we should go next.
