The next-generation campus looks decidedly different from universities and colleges of the past and in many cases, the present. Using technologies that enable frictionless, touchless, and intuitive experiences—driven by a digitally connected community—these smart campuses seize true transformation to provide the level of service their digitally native student body and faculty have come to expect.

To stay competitive, institutions of higher learning must keep pace. Imagine if...answers to a late-night math question were addressed courtesy of a friendly chatbot... Entrance admissions applications were processed in hours, not weeks... Parking systems alerted motorists to nearest open spaces... Connected blackboards allowed professors to quickly share grading assignments with teaching assistants (TAs)... Courses were shared seamlessly from classrooms across the country. These are just a few advancements enabled by a smart campus.

As an instructional designer, you may be asked to create a course on a variety of topics including neurophysics, business law, financial operations, marketing processes, corporate procedures, and more. In most cases, the instructional designer is not the domain expert of the content. Just because you know something does not mean that you can effectively teach something!

The instructional designer is the architect and curator of the course not necessarily the knowledge expert. As a result, you will need to rely heavily on SME's and their knowledge to create effective courses.

Throughout the unusual and challenging year that was 2020, it was sometimes a struggle to look beyond the next few weeks—or even days—into the future. Contemplating the future is difficult when the present feels so unsettling, especially in the classroom.

While the abrupt shift to a remote environment forced educators into unfamiliar territory, it also provided us with an opportunity to innovate and potentially change the course of education forever. Throughout a year full of headaches and heartaches, we continued to show up for our students in new and unprecedented ways. We might not have covered all the math equations or history content as flawlessly and thoroughly as we would in a normal year, but we learned a great deal along the way.

Learning is the ultimate foundation of life and its evolution. This is the reason why the government has made education a mandatory fundamental right and free for all till the age of 14 (under the purview of the right to education). But, don't you think our learning and teaching methodologies need to learn too? eLearning is the new, smarter paradigm of learning, wherein concepts and knowledge are provided to the pupil in the form of online content, including images, texts, videos, 3D objects, amongst others; they tend to make learning not only better but also interesting.

Educational technology, or EdTech, has been a promising avenue to address some of the most challenging policy questions within educational systems in low- and middle-income countries. However, after decades of promises to disrupt and revolutionize education, the impact of EdTech on learning outcomes has been mixed. The drive to provide tech-based support to improve teachers’ instruction and facilitate student learning has become urgent, given school closings and re-openings due to the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the few silver linings of the pandemic, is that it has transformed the field, shifting the focus from disruption to mitigation and inclusion, with the potential to reduce inequity.

Turnaround for Children’s Building Blocks for Learning is a framework for the development of skills children need for success in school and beyond. Each element represents a set of evidence-based skills and mindsets that have been proven by research to strongly correlate to, and even predict, academic achievement. The framework draws from research in multiple fields to suggest movement from lower-order to higher-order skills. Overall, it provides a rigorous perspective on what it means to intentionally teach the whole child – to develop the social, emotional, motivational and cognitive skills in every learner. Turnaround offers the building blocks framework as a contribution to a vital collaborative endeavor to deepen and transform K-12 education.

Imagine school as a series of community-connected projects and skill sprints that develop leadership, collaboration and problem solving skills. Imagine a web of supports that help you make the kind of contribution you’re capable of making.

Visit an innovative new school like Purdue Polytechnic High School in Indianapolis, and you’ll see evidence of mega trends reshaping secondary and postsecondary education⁠—new goals, active learning, competency, integrated services, and edtech tools.

Just as many college students have struggled to adapt to the online learning systems necessitated by the pandemic, so too have many professors and instructors. These instructors were asked to quickly adapt long-established teaching methods to technologies many had never used before, trying to maintain consistent contact with students facing a mix of uncertainties — from housing to internet access.

With the rapid spread of the pandemic, thousands of schools and millions of teachers globally had to switch to remote classes almost overnight.

Along with proving to be a dark horse for investors in 2020 with a whopping 223.2% rise in funding than in the previous year (Source: Inc42+), EdTech has also made things easier.

Some key shifts that happened in 2020 that prepared the ground for a quantum leap for EdTech in 2021 include:

• EdTech startups attracted over $2.2 billion in investments
• The new National Education Policy opens doors for technology to play a key role in creating more inclusiveness of education.
• Birth of new EdTech players whereby the number of startups shot above 4500
• New niche segments identified by players to cater to specific needs
• The growth that would have come in a few years got condensed to less than a year thereby boosting acceptance rather quickly
• Hiring in the EdTech sector far outpaced that in most sectors

El buen profesor no deja nunca de aprender. Una de las mejores cosas que podemos hacer por nuestros alumnos es contagiarles nuestras propias inquietudes intelectuales y nuestro afán investigador y de mejora social. Un profesor que se “estanca” es un contrasentido. Lo que nos debería llamar la atención es el inmovilismo. La Escuela, la Universidad no debería ir a remolque de la sociedad, limitándose a transmitir conocimientos más o menos desfasados.

Structured, repeatable methodology is highly effective in online training. ADDIE and SAM are among the most popular eLearning development methodologies. Is there an objective way to find out which one is ideal for your organization when it comes to SAM vs ADDIE?

Pandemic education made clear the need for learning platforms that reliably support rich in-person and remote learning experiences. It accelerated the shift from teacher as an individual practitioner to learning facilitator as a member of a school as a service team.

The addition of video conferencing to the EdTech stack was a mostly great additional capability in 2020. But it encouraged many schools to attempt a bad video version of traditional school at a distance (often a well-intentioned effort to comply with outdated policies).

La brecha educativa tiene que ver no solo con el nivel de conocimientos y el acceso a la tecnología, sino también con el estrato social y económico, e incluso con la región donde se vive dentro de un mismo país. Todo ello ha quedado patente con la llegada de la pandemia y la puesta en marcha a toda prisa de una escuela digital.

Alfredo Hernando, fundador de Escuela 21, comentaba durante el evento Enlighted 2020, en la mesa redonda “Romper la brecha educativa: la escuela digital contra la desigualdad”, que con el estallido de la pandemia 190 sistemas educativos de todo el mundo pararon a la vez y se posicionaron en un nuevo punto de partida por una escuela digital.

“Era una prueba no ensayada, un espacio que nunca habíamos podido imaginar, y que nos sumergió de lleno en la era del aprendizaje, en la era dorada de los datos y la personalización”.

La tecnología educativa (EdTech), ha ofrecido una prometedora oportunidad para atender algunas de las preguntas más desafiantes de las políticas en los sistemas educativos de países de ingresos bajos y medios. Sin embargo, tras décadas de promesas sobre su poder disruptivo y revolucionario en la educación, el impacto de EdTech en los resultados del aprendizaje ha sido desigual. Brindar apoyo basado en la tecnología para mejorar la instrucción de los maestros y facilitar el aprendizaje de los estudiantes se ha vuelto urgente, si consideramos el cierre y la reapertura de escuelas debido a la pandemia de COVID-19. Uno de los pocos aspectos positivos de la pandemia, es que ha transformado el campo, cambiando el enfoque desde la promesa disruptiva a un mayor énfasis en la mitigación e inclusión con un potencial reductor de desigualdad.

We live in a changing world with changing priorities. Employees in corporate organizations are no longer interested in spending hours in training. They want to learn as they work, get to know the solution to the problem without beating about the bush. Fortunately, microlearning for corporate training solves that problem for you.

Of the many benefits microlearning offers, its ability to deliver effective training in tiny modules, focusing only on the need-to-know content, is by far the most important. But how is it that microlearning with such small training resources is so effective in training employees?

Discussions are taking place about what the new normal will look like post COVID-19, with many wondering about the future of work and education.

Some are in favour of an at-home learning environment for the future as it means no more commuting to campus — especially during the cold winters — as well as saving money on paid parking, buses, subways, and time in general.

While many feared this transition during the pandemic’s first wave, working and studying from home has been proven to be feasible.

The focus of this essay/thinking exercise, Chapter 5 in Hannah Arendt’s book, Between Past and Future, is the crisis of education in America. This she says has become an important factor in politics (incomparably more important than in other countries), because of the difficulty of ‘melting together’ diverse ethnic groups, which can only be accomplished through schooling, so that English, and what it means to be an American, can be learned by all groups. In America education is seen as a political activity to make a better world, but Arendt thinks this is dangerous and that education should be kept separate from politics.

The U.S. Department of Education is excited to announce the release of two new resources that help teachers and school leaders meet the needs of their students by using thoughtful and creative digital learning experiences. The Teacher Digital Learning Guide (Teacher Guide) and the School Leader Digital Learning Guide (Leader Guide) are designed to provide educators and leaders resources as they use digital tools to better help students learn.

After tutoring kids in a Phoenix library for a few years, Kelly Smith and seven neighborhood kids started the first Prenda microschool. Two years later there were 200 tiny Prenda schools meeting in living rooms and community spaces.

Given the choice of sending children back to school or enrolling them in a questionable online program, many parents are considering alternatives including starting or joining a microschool.

Prenda was among the first grantees of the VELA Education Fund, a new nonprofit fund that supports pioneering entrepreneurs building and leading innovative, out-of-system education models. VELA launched with seed funding from the Walton Family Foundation and the Charles Koch Institute and is expected to grow to include additional donors over time.

This week I led a reading group session at my school on the article, “Have Technology and Multitasking Rewired How Students Learn?” by Daniel Willingham (here). Having led a lot of these, I’m convinced that reading groups are a more effective and enjoyable form of professional learning than ones that do not focus on a text. One reason why this is may be related to the concept of “Three Point Communication,” as shown in the infographic below. As teaching is so closely tied to identity, it can feel confrontational to talk directly about one’s teaching. Using an aid (like a research article) changes the dynamic:

We’ve reached an inflection point. As the global response to COVID-19 evolves, communities around the world have moved from an era of “remote everything” into a more hybrid model of work, learning, and life. And as we all scramble to keep up, the future of work and education is being shaped before our eyes. At Microsoft, we’ve spent the last few months learning from our customers and studying how they use our tools. We’ve also worked with experts across virtual reality, AI, and productivity research to help understand the future of work. These findings, which are published here, guide us as we design technology to help our customers today and in the future.

Today we’re announcing a set of new features in Microsoft Teams that make virtual interactions more natural, more engaging, and ultimately, more human. These features offer three key benefits for people at work and in education. First, they help you feel more connected with your team and reduce meeting fatigue. Second, they make meetings more inclusive and engaging. And third, they help streamline your work and save time. It’s all about enabling people everywhere to collaborate, to stay connected, and to discover new ways to be productive from anywhere. Let’s dig into the details.

La educación debería ser un proceso a través del cual las personas encuentran sus fortalezas y pasiones, además de ayudar a los estudiantes a desarrollar valores individuales y colectivos.

El Aprendizaje Basado en Proyectos (ABProyectos), El Aprendizaje Basado en Problemas (ABProblemas) y el Aprendizaje Basado en Retos (ABR) son tres métodos o enfoques pedagógicos relacionados entre sí. No podemos diferenciarlos completamente ya que tienen un mismo origen y comparten características esenciales.

Aunque ambos ABP y ABR suenan hoy en día como metodologías innovadoras, lo cierto es que no son tan actuales y sus orígenes son anteriores al s.XXI. Conviene diferenciar estos tres métodos, ya que, aunque sus siglas o sus elementos en común puedan llevar a confundirlos, cuentan con elementos diferenciadores.

Analizaremos en primer lugar aquellas características que comparten los tres enfoques, para luego detenernos en sus diferencias.

Según Molina (2014) podemos sintetizar los aspectos comunes de estos tres conceptos de la siguiente manera:

The online learning industry, or eLearning as many call it, has been growing for years. The COVID-19 pandemic just pushed it into new territory.

Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, online learning has gone from a good option to a centric part of people’s lives. Not only have schools and universities shut down in many parts of the country, but so have businesses and organizations. Formal education, continuing education, elective courses… they’ve all gone online. And one has to wonder how much of the industry will stay online even after the virus is contained.