In today’s classroom, students can go up to an interactive whiteboard and actively explore and engage with a model of the human body or the solar system. They can design the digital games they once used to play. And they can even use computers and 3D printers to design and build things such as sustainable, alternative fuel cars.
Technology is amazing. And when it is used well in our schools, it can be transformative for our students.
Entrepreneurs and investors have raced for the past decade to fuel a field flush with an ever-increasing mix of digital tools ready for the market—a now $10 billion industry that offers the promise of transformative technology.
However, when we look behind the curtain to see if there is evidence to back up these products’ claims of effectiveness, the facts don’t match the promises. When we look, we find that the vast majority of ed-tech products brought to market are not rigorously tested or do not improve student learning across different types of classrooms. Efficacy must play a role in the development and implementation of technological tools.
In other words, we need to pair the power of technology with what researchers know and can do to ensure that promise becomes reality in the form of student learning.
Consider that entrepreneurs and investors typically do not communicate with academic researchers for purposes of exploring efficacy of their products. Meanwhile, teachers use these tools in the classroom every day and best understand how they influence students—but do not often have a say when their principals and administrators purchase tech. According to a 2016 nationwide survey, just 36 percent of over 8,000 surveyed educators have input in the process to purchase the technology that they use in the classroom.
Although all of these stakeholders are motivated by the belief that technology has massive potential, they rarely come together to translate that vision into reality.
Collaboration can ensure efficacy factors into the development and implementation of the newest wave of tech tools—and results in innovations that work to scale and make an impact in our classrooms.
Therefore, we need a bridge between academics, professors, and practitioners that bring their research expertise—and entrepreneurs and investors that bring their business acumen. Under a common vision and frame, these groups collectively can shape a new wave of technological tools that actually address the academic and social-emotional outcomes they aim to achieve.
The Curry School of Education, along with Digital Promise and the Jefferson Education Accelerator, are building such a bridge, uniting to host a symposium next month in Washington, D.C. This serves as the culmination of a year-long collaboration across nine different, cross-sector working groups that assessed the influence of efficacy in the field of ed tech. In the process, we formed linkages among key stakeholders—CEO’s, investors, district leaders, educators, and four former directors of the US Department of Educational Technology—to chart out this future. They determined how to fund and measure efficacy, who to engage in the process, and the role it should have in K-12 and higher-education decision-making.
As a part of the future of ed-tech, we can encourage teachers to team up with entrepreneurs and education companies, identifying the needs of the classroom, highlighting current products’ impact in the classroom, and shaping tools that not only directly address those needs but also support great teaching and learning. Investors can work with researchers to understand the evidence behind particular products—and support those that actually work. And schools of education can work with all of these stakeholders to equip the next generation of teachers with the skills to not only effectively use technology in the classroom—but also assess the proof behind it. In other words, they will be able to distinguish marketing from merit.
Then, we can see “today’s classroom” in communities across the nation, where educators can use the power of technology, developed and informed by research, to generate meaningful improvements for our students.
This vision, which we hope to see come to fruition at next month’s symposium, can help us pave the way to the kinds of innovations that truly transform the learning experience for our nation’s children.