Category Archives: blogs

A New Google Forms Feature Teachers Have Requested for Years!

This week Google finally added a feature to Google Forms that teachers and students have requested for years. You can now save your work in progress when answering questions in Google Forms!

Google Forms will now save students’ work in progress when they are completing a quiz or any other Google Form that you give to them through Google Classroom. The only thing that students have to do to have their work saved in progress is make sure that they are signed into their Google accounts. Students’ work will be saved in progress for 30 days from the time that they first open the form.

 

The benefits of a bilingual brain

It’s obvious that knowing more than one language can make certain things easier — like traveling or watching movies without subtitles. But are there other advantages to having a bilingual (or multilingual) brain? Mia Nacamulli details the three types of bilingual brains and shows how knowing more than one language keeps your brain healthy, complex and actively engaged.

Let’s watch the video!

13 of the Latest Trends in Educational Technology

Society functions much differently than it did prior to the advent of the digital revolution. New tools, ranging from social media to digital transaction management, have re-contoured the ways in which people interact and do business. The digital age also notably influences how we learn. In fact, the classroom has become one of the most rapidly growing markets for new technology.

Here are 13 of the Latest Trends in Educational Technology.

1. Greater access to STEM materials

As technology has become increasingly central to all aspects of modern life, schools have put more focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects. To take advantage of this shift, companies can develop engaging curriculum for robotics, coding, and programming.

2. Privacy for students

Cyber-security and digital privacy rank among the top concerns of all consumers, including consumers of education. As a result, there is a large market for improving the efficacy of existing products and creating new ones that will help manage student data and protect the privacy of these young individuals.

3. “Flipped learning”

A new approach to education is called “flipped learning,” and as the name suggests, it involves turning traditional teaching methods upside down. In a “flipped” classroom, students take advantage of new technologies to absorb content at home through videos and other digital content and then complete their “homework” at school in small groups under the teacher’s supervision.

4. Virtual education

 

5. Digital and media literacy courses

As students spend more and more time online, there is a growing need for a curriculum that teaches digital literacy — systems to help students harness the technological tools at their disposal. This includes developing guidelines for how to interact with others (for more than social and entertainment purposes) and how to process information they encounter online.

6. New utility for wearable technology

7. Game-based curricula

8. Improved parent-teacher connections

As schools continue to incorporate Ed Tech into the classroom, communication between teachers and parents will flourish. Teachers will take advantage of programs that track assignments and report student progress to all involved parties. Therefore, businesses will do well to supply new and better communication channels.

9. Better open resources for educators

10. AI and VR

Virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) is a popular gaming technology that entrepreneurs can use to enhance student learning. At some schools, students are already taking “virtual” field trips with a VR headset. Estimates project instructional AI and VR expanding into a multibillion-dollar industry in the near future.

11. Paperless textbooks

School districts today must decide whether print textbooks or tablets for every student are more expensive. Over time, the latter usually proves a better financial investment because schools can easily upload new and better classroom materials to the same devices, but they must spend thousands to replace outdated traditional textbooks.

12. Big data analysis

13. Social media

Modern Learning Strategies: 6 Channels Of 21st Century Learning

Teachers often wrestle with two big questions: How do people learn, and how can they do it better in a constantly evolving context? Therefore, what are 6 channels of 21st Century learning?

1. Dialogic Response

Learning is a conversation–whether personal, local, and direct, or more general, global, and digitally-based.

2. Community Interaction

Communities–including local physical communities, and digital, niche communities–nurture relationships and frame content.

3. Abstraction & Creativity

Creativity isn’t just art and whimsy, but the overlap between the macro thinking and micro details to solve the challenges of daily living.

4. Media Literacy

Digital media evolves constantly in both form and function, from text, images, hyperlinked documents, and interactive video (the ‘form’ part) to communicating, curating, duplicating, citing, attributing, grouping, and sharing (the ‘function’ part). Understanding the nuance of individual platforms–and how they work together to serve human-focused needs and opportunity–is ‘media literacy.’

5. Play

This is the opposite of compliant response to teacher-centered environments. In play, learners freely experiment, show ambition, follow curiosity, and take risks to create, design, evolve, and connect in ways that are otherwise impossible under compulsion.

6. Self-Directed Learning

Play is a big part of self-directed learning, but more broadly can include academic response, project-based learning, game-based learning, and other ‘school-like’ learning forms while students hold themselves and one another accountable to their own criteria of quality.