Apart from the argument that technology has negatively affected students' learning schedules, edTech has been proved to be a helpful tool. Nowadays, the time that students invest in learning can be utilized in the best way possible since their growth is under their control thoroughly: either they can make efforts to stand out or let the opportunities go vain. Here are some ways in which technology has made the academic industry better. In traditional learning it is sometimes difficult for students to get a concept.
Digital simulations and models can help students not only better understand various disciplines, but also get acquainted with the wonders of the modern world. Plus, technology has also proved to be a helping hand for teachers who sometimes find it hard to explain certain things within the boundaries of a physical classroom. Tech-savvy teachers are able to prepare their lessons in a more strategical manner by including different types of text, activity models, and interactive controls for students.
Communication is an essential part of any activity. And when it comes to education, ineffective communication is just not acceptable. Since technology has emerged, communication gaps have been bridged up and the flow of knowledge has been smoothened.
Whether in a traditional or a virtual classroom , with online collaboration tools everyone can just form a community where teachers assign projects to their students in real-time and students may ask for clarifications, if any. Cloud storage has made research a lot easier for the students these days.
Gone are the days when they had to go through piles of books to find a specific reference to improve their assignments and projects. With technology, research has been quite an effective tool. Since a lot of time is saved during research, students are able to incorporate a lot of information and knowledge in their projects.
Also, the acquisition of different solutions and results all over the world is now possible, which is likely the most obvious benefit a student gets in his life. Open educational resources: Open educational resources are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain and are freely available to anyone over the Web.
They are an important element of an infrastructure for learning and range from podcasts to digital libraries to textbooks and games. It is critical to ensure that open educational resources meet standards of quality, integrity, and accuracy—as with any other educational resource—and that they are accessible to students with disabilities.
Use digital resources well: Schools can use digital resources in a variety of ways to support teaching and learning. Electronic grade books, digital portfolios, learning games, and real-time feedback on teacher and student performance, are a few ways that technology can be utilized to power learning. Toggle navigation U. Department of Education. Student Loans Grants Laws Data. Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning. State operated The Florida Virtual School — An online school that provides full-time learning opportunities to students in grades K Districts can also work with Florida Virtual School to provide blended learning opportunities to students by enabling them to access online courses from school sites.
Additional link here. Utah Electronic High School — An year-old online high school providing a range of courses to students year round. The school can award diplomas to students who are home-schooled, have dropped out, or are ineligible to graduate from a traditional high school for specific reasons. North Carolina Virtual Public School — An online high school offering courses to students both during and after the school day.
The courses offered include Advanced Placement and honors courses, world languages, electives, credit recovery, and online college courses. The school also provides test preparation and career planning services to students. District operated Karval Online Education — A public K online school for Colorado residents that provides a free computer for the family to use while the student is enrolled and provides reimbursement opportunities to offset Internet and other educational expenses.
Technology also seems well positioned to disseminate educational materials. Specifically, hardware e. In theory, these materials could not only undergo a quality assurance review e. In practice, however, most initiatives that have provided learners with free computers, laptops, and netbooks do not leverage any of the opportunities mentioned above.
Instead, they install a standard set of educational materials and hope that learners find them helpful enough to take them up on their own. Students rarely do so, and instead use the laptops for recreational purposes—often, to the detriment of their learning see, e.
In fact, free netbook initiatives have not only consistently failed to improve academic achievement in math or language e. Some of these initiatives have had small impacts on cognitive skills, but the mechanisms through which those effects occurred remains unclear. To our knowledge, the only successful deployment of a free laptop initiative was one in which a team of researchers equipped the computers with remedial software.
Mo et al. After nine months, the program improved math achievement by 0. If a school system decides to invest in free laptops, this study suggests that the quality of the software on the laptops is crucial. To date, however, the evidence suggests that children do not learn more from interacting with laptops than they do from textbooks. For example, Bando, Gallego, Gertler, and Romero compared the effect of free laptop and textbook provision in elementary schools in disadvantaged areas of Honduras.
After seven months, students in grades 3 and 6 who had received the laptops performed on par with those who had received the textbooks in math and language. Further, even if textbooks essentially become obsolete at the end of each school year, whereas laptops can be reloaded with new materials for each year, the costs of laptop provision not just the hardware, but also the technical assistance, Internet, and training associated with it are not yet low enough to make them a more cost-effective way of delivering content to learners.
Evidence on the provision of tablets equipped with software is encouraging but limited. For example, de Hoop et al. After 14 months, the intervention had improved student early-grade reading by 0. The multifaceted nature of the program, however, makes it challenging to identify the components that are driving the positive effects.
The evaluation found positive impacts in math achievement, but the main study limitation is that it was conducted in a single school.
Another way in which technology may improve educational outcomes is by facilitating the delivery of differentiated or individualized instruction.
Most developing countries massively expanded access to schooling in recent decades by building new schools and making education more affordable, both by defraying direct costs, as well as compensating for opportunity costs Duflo, ; World Bank, Consequently, a large number of learners perform well below grade-based curricular expectations see, e. In this respect, technology is uniquely positioned to complement traditional teaching.
This use of technology could help learners master basic skills and help them get more out of schooling. Although many software products evaluated in recent years have been categorized as CAL, many rely on a relatively coarse level of differentiation at an initial stage e. CAL initiatives complement an initial diagnostic with dynamic adaptation i. Existing evidence on this specific type of programs is highly promising.
Most famously, Banerjee et al. This program improved math achievement by 0. Consistent with the promise of personalized learning, the software improved achievement for all students. In fact, one year after the end of the program, students assigned to the program still performed 0. More recently, Muralidharan, et al. After only 4. While all learners benefited from the program in absolute terms, the lowest performing learners benefited the most in relative terms, since they were learning very little in school.
We see two important limitations from this body of research. First, to our knowledge, none of these initiatives has been evaluated when implemented during the school day. Therefore, it is not possible to distinguish the effect of the adaptive software from that of additional instructional time.
Second, given that most of these programs were facilitated by local instructors, attempts to distinguish the effect of the software from that of the instructors has been mostly based on noncausal evidence. A frontier challenge in this body of research is to understand whether CAL software can increase the effectiveness of school-based instruction by substituting part of the regularly scheduled time for math and language instruction.
Recent improvements in the speed and quality of videoconferencing, as well as in the connectivity of remote areas, have enabled yet another way in which technology can help personalization: live i.
While the evidence on in-person tutoring is scarce in developing countries, existing studies suggest that this approach works best when it is used to personalize instruction see, e. There are almost no studies on the impact of online tutoring—possibly, due to the lack of hardware and Internet connectivity in low- and middle-income countries. After 10 months, program beneficiaries performed 0. To our knowledge, similar initiatives within a country have not yet been rigorously evaluated.
A third way in which technology may improve the quality of education is by providing learners with additional opportunities for practice. In many developing countries, lesson time is primarily devoted to lectures, in which the educator explains the topic and the learners passively copy explanations from the blackboard. This setup leaves little time for in-class practice.
Consequently, learners who did not understand the explanation of the material during lecture struggle when they have to solve homework assignments on their own. Technology could potentially address this problem by allowing learners to review topics at their own pace. Technology can help learners get more out of traditional instruction by providing them with opportunities to implement what they learn in class.
This approach could, in theory, allow some learners to anchor their understanding of the material through trial and error i. Existing evidence on practice exercises reflects both the promise and the limitations of this use of technology in developing countries. For example, Lai et al. After four months, the intervention improved math achievement by 0. Many other evaluations of comparable interventions have found similar small-to-moderate results see, e.
We hypothesize that these programs do little for learners who perform several grade levels behind curricular expectations, and who would benefit more from a review of foundational concepts from earlier grades. We see two important limitations from this research. First, most initiatives that have been evaluated thus far combine instructional videos with practice exercises, so it is hard to know whether their effects are driven by the former or the latter.
Sometimes it's helpful to provide visual aids to complement teaching, stimulate discussion, or allow out-of-class teaching. Tools designed for this purpose, such as PowerPoint, can be used well or used badly. Click here for resources that provide advice for thoughtful use of PowerPoint, as well as a few additional presentation tools. One way to encourage student engagement is by using electronic devices that allow students to record their answers to multiple choice questions and allow you to instantly display the results.
The anonymity encourages participation, and their answers help the teacher know when further discussion is needed. Use of clickers can also serve as a catalyst for discussion. Click here to learn more about using response systems effectively.
Technology can support student collaboration on creating new knowledge, reflecting on what they are learning, or working together to achieve a deeper understanding of course material.
These articles provide ideas about their use and misuse. Technology can also clarify and stimulate thought through transforming words into pictures. Here are some tools to help lead your students to think more critically by encouraging them to visually structure information.
How can we make the best use of the classroom time we have with our students?
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