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.
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
Closely related to the concept of flipped learning is the idea of remote, or “virtual,” education, which takes place outside of a physical school building. With this method, students complete courses at home using online content, including videos of instructors in front of an actual class. Another benefit of virtual education is that teachers can utilize video conferencing and social media technologies, as well as a variety of subject-matter experts to convey information and check for understanding.
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
Wearable technology can help keep kids safe. Not only can these devices track the locations of students at school, but they can also monitor the whereabouts of campus visitors. These items can even facilitate paperless transactions in the cafeteria, thus reducing waste, and quite possibly, bullying and theft.
7. Game-based curricula
Schools are more frequently adopting game-based curricula as a means for creatively engaging students in their lessons. Many kids appreciate the challenge-reward concept of video games, and these digital platforms can incorporate a wealth of problem-solving and social skills.
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
A vast array of educational resources exists for teachers looking to incorporate digital content into their lessons. However, many of these are of low quality. Tech developers, therefore, can profit from developing intelligent, polished, and well-researched digital materials.
10. AI and VR
Artificial intelligence (AI) has gained a lot of traction in the market recently. Tech companies can use this technology to provide educational facilities with virtual mentors and teaching assistants, as well as improved automated grading systems.
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
Just as big data helps businesses obtain a better grasp of their consumer base, it can help teachers learn more about their students. Technology-assisted learning can yield valuable information about how children learn and in which specific areas they are struggling. For example, a student might fully understand the material but get confused by the format of a test.
13. Social media
Educators have recently embraced the utility of social media for organizing group projects. Moreover, online conversations and homework-related hash tags can help students build their own peer community. It can also encourage new ways of 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.
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2. Cut Way Back on Your Text
Slides are meant to supplement and enhance your presentation, to provide visual interest and add new dimensions to your message. The slides themselves shouldn’t BE the presentation.
Shorten your bullet points. Instead of writing long sentences or phrases on your slides, try sticking to just short phrases.
Make more slides. Take one slide that has a lot of information and spread that text over several slides, rather than cramming it all together on one.
Create a handout. Many presenters and instructors want to put lots of information on their slides so they can provide those slides to students or audience members after the presentation, for reference.
3. Update Your Assets
One of the simplest ways to improve your slideshows is to update outdated artwork and fonts.
4. Create Previews & Signposts
It’s difficult to sit through a presentation when you really have no idea how long it’s going to be or how many major points are going to be covered. If you let your audience know they are in the capable hands of a presenter who has put together a well-organized presentation, they’ll be able to relax and concentrate on your message.
5. Go Light on the Animations
Ideally, the focus is on your words/content, not on the way those words bounce onto the screen. So when it comes to animations, less is definitely more.
6. Keep Things Consistent
Within each slide and from slide to slide, do whatever you can to keep your elements consistent. Doing so will make your presentation look much more professional, which will give you more confidence as a speaker and will give your audience a lot more confidence in you.
