Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Are you ready to look ahead?

Schools will soon be reflecting on what’s been working this year and what’s not. They’ll also begin thinking about their budgets for next year. It’s not too soon to look at what 2020 will bring in edtech trends.

Instruction must take into consideration several factors. All students should have equitable access to the curriculum and materials. We must find ways to engage students at deep levels of learning. And finally, we must prepare them to become their personal best.

You can expect that digital learning will continue to be a mainstay in K-12 classrooms, especially in four areas: assistive technology, adaptive technology, simulated learning, and growth coaching.

Nearly half of the students enrolled in higher education are considered nontraditional. For a quarter of them, this nontraditional aspect is that they are over the age of 30, NPR reports.

In spite of the large amount of older students who are enrolled, an article on Forbes reports that no matter what kind of degree they are seeking, older students are completing them at lower rates than their peers.

If you’ve ever created or assigned a PowerPoint presentation at some point during your educational career, take heed: the program’s founders never intended it to be used for educational purposes. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, founder Robert Gaskins said that far more people have access to the program than the relatively small... Read More

An Adaptive Learning Program (ALP) is a computer-based educational system that allows teachers to modify the way they present materials based on the performance of individual students.

The history of ALPs is rooted in 1950s cognitive psychology and the 1970s artificial intelligence movement. A proven teaching method, ALPs are now used in varied environments to train and teach more effectively. For example, NASA uses ALPs for safety models and simulation training. They’ve also been used by the U.S. military, including the 2015 Army Learning Concept that educated and trained soldiers for asymmetric engagement. But ALP’s most significant potential to help the most people is likely in the educational field.

In April of this year, SRI published a report evaluating the efficacy of adaptive learning technologies. This report represents the culmination of a program, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in which 14 higher education institutions set out to test nine different adaptive learning tools across 23 courses, involving more than 280 unique…