5 BIG WAYS EDUCATION WILL CHANGE BY 2020

We asked the world’s most innovative companies in education to school us on the future of the classroom, with predictions for the next five years.

Here's what we found out:

STUDENTS WILL INTERACT WITH OTHERS REMOTELY

Why do classrooms today look nearly identical to those 30 years ago—minus a few upgrades to the modern chalkboard, and sneaking texts in class instead of notes?

"With some exciting exceptions, public schools are one of the few institutions in modern life that have not seen radical changes spurred by technology," says Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform. "I’m not talking about having computers in classrooms, but rather a lack of any seismic shift in the way things are done because technology is making the work easier or more efficient."

Williams predicts that education tech will continue the push towards individualized instruction for students. Hadley Ferguson, executive director of the Edcamp Foundation, agrees: Kids can "reach out beyond the walls of their classrooms to interact with other students, other teachers, and renowned authors, scientists, and experts to enhance their learning," she says. Some of those digital-native kids will grow up to become teachers, who will continue to build and use their own communities of learning online.

THE SUCCESS OF TECH WILL STILL RELY ON SKILLED TEACHERS

We might be sending kids to school in self-driving cars by 2020, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be taught by teacher-avatars and given tests via drone.

"Education needs will drive technology use, rather than the ‘coolness’ of technology trumping education," predicts Shannon May, cofounder of Bridge International Academies. Instead of simply finding ways to put more tablets in kids’ hands, education technology will find new ways to supplement the best learning possible—regardless of the "coolness" of new tech.

Jake Schwartz, CEO and cofounder of General Assembly, predicts that as technology advances, its limits will become clear. "‘Online’ is not a cure-all for education issues in this country, but it can help provide greater access to new skills training," he says. "This is powerful when combined with curricula and programming created and led by practitioner educators. The human factor is always important."

WE’LL THINK DIFFERENTLY ABOUT THE DIPLOMA

The growing amount of the population living with crippling student debt combined with the pressure to keep tuition costs down threaten the sustainability of tuition-dependent institutions, says Schwartz.

"This will help to force an innovation drive with an unbundling of degree offerings," he says. "The sector will see a shift towards more relevant competency-based programs and aggressive competition for students." The education-employment gap will force higher educators to think creatively about how to offer the training students need for a workforce that desperately needs them.

TRADITIONAL EDUCATION IS VERY TOP-DOWN, HEAVY-HANDED—SIT DOWN AND READ, BE QUIET, DON’T ASK QUESTIONS—THERE’S STILL A LOT OF ROOM FOR INNOVATION.

May agrees: "Today, diplomas granted by years in school are the dominant certification of ‘learning.’ Yet, in almost all cases, these diplomas certify nothing other than the fact that the person in question spent x years in school. Competency-based certifications testing specific skills, and bundling individual skills into professional groupings will become a global currency for both employers and job seekers."

The possibilities offered in technology feed into this shift as well. "A new curriculum is going to be created that builds on these possibilities," says Ferguson, "allowing students to move away from rote learning and tackle real-world challenges and develop solutions for them."

STUDENTS WILL HAVE A VOICE

Kirsten Saenz Tobey, cofounder of Revolution Foods, sat down in a school cafeteria to do a little research. When she asked the kids how they felt about their meal options, one turned to her and said, "Does this look like it was prepared by someone who respects me?"

Students are ultimately their customers, Tobey says; if they don’t feel respected or listened to, they’ll never buy in to the healthier options her company is dishing out. But it’s not all chocolate cake and gummy worms: They’re launching a mobile app to give kids nutrition info, see the day’s menu, and give feedback on what they’re served.

Engaging and respecting students and families as wellness partners will become a new focus in ways we haven’t seen before, she says. "Traditional education is very top-down, heavy-handed—sit down and read, be quiet, don’t ask questions—there’s still a lot of room for innovation."

EDUCATORS AND INSTITUTIONS WILL BE FORCED TO ADAPT

As the above four factors change—a wider global reach, students who need to feel respected, and a workforce demanding skilled scholars—the roots of education will need to find ways to adapt.

To May, that means paying attention to our condensing, shifting world. By 2100, more than half the world’s population will live in India, China, or Africa. "Global policy leadership and sales of education goods and services will be shaped less by issues and needs in the U.S., and more by the issues and needs of Africa, South Asia, and China," May says. "Market demand, and pressing policy issues related to urbanization and population growth, will shift the center of gravity of education provision."

Put more simply, Tobey says, "We’re not quite stacking up to where the rest of the world is. [The U.S.] is feeling the pressure to be the world leader we think we are . . . particularly in math and science."

"For schools of all types, content or curriculum will not be the core differentiator, but rather they will be judged on how well they coordinate complex offerings into a useful package for their students and graduates," Schwartz says.

"Most professions can point to dramatic changes in the way they work, thanks to technological innovations, but teaching still looks and feels an awful lot like it did when today’s teachers were themselves students," says Williams. "It is starting to change, but it has been incredibly slow."

3 Components for Developing a Great eLearning Game

As technology has advanced, lots of innovative ideas are being tried in the education domain to make the experience of children pleasurable. Keeping this in mind, this article focuses on crucial components for developing a great e-learning game.

Combining education with entertainment is not a cup of tea for ordinary developer. It requires lot of creativity and patience. The smooth layouts and graphics add to the visuals of the game. But the major purpose of the e-learning game should be to impart knowledge to the students. But it is quite subjective to define a good e-learning game. It is still an unknown entity which has not been answered properly. This article talks about different components which help in developing a great e-learning game. Let us look at these components in detail:

• Perfect combination of learning and entertainment: Always ensure that there is a perfect blend of learning and entertainment while developing an e-learning game. Care should be taken that the learning objectives behind developing the game is fulfilled. For example; for English you can have various word jigjaw puzzles and memory games to strengthen the memory of the student. Always try to integrate all the crucial aspects that are important from the learning perspective to be present in the game.
• Give impetus to the students to play the game: Children are the most difficult target audience to attract because they genuinely like or dislike the game. Hence, it is very important to provide proper impetus to the students to play the games. For example; if there are puzzles in the game each level needs to present different challenge so that children do not get bored with the games and play to learn something from it. Engagement and attraction are two things which make children focus on the game.
• Target the essential elements of learning in the game: Always focus on the learning aspect in the game. Try to eradicate those portions wherein the learning aspect gets diverted. For example; if you are playing a game on grammar which deals with identifying verbs and nouns from a group of sentences. If you are constantly clicking on the ground to walk around, examining surroundings to identify boxes and then picking them up, the verbs that get collected are not of relevance as they are not part of the learning mechanism.

Context is of prime importance in an e-learning game. An experienced e-learning provider would follow the points mentioned above and create extravagant e-learning games for children.

About emPower

emPower  is a leading provider of comprehensive Healthcare Compliance Solutions through Learning Management System (LMS). Its mission is to provide innovative security solutions to enable compliance with applicable laws and regulations and maximize business performance. empower provides range of courses to manage compliance required by regulatory bodies such as OSHA, HIPAA, Joint commission and Red Flag Rule etc. Apart from this emPower also offers custom demos and tutorials for your website, business process management and software implementation.

Its Learning Management system (LMS) allows students to retrieve all the courses 24/7/365 by accessing the portal. emPower e-learning training program is an interactive mode of learning that guides students to progress at their own pace.

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Ipad for e-learning

The Dynabook represented the earliest idea of mobile learning. The geneses of a personal computing device began with an educational vision. Today, with the Apple iPad, that vision is edging towards reality. Across the U.S., the iPad is highly regarded as the device that will truly elevate classroom education into a new era, and particularly, the digital era.

“The iPad appears to be the perfect device for information at your fingertips, which places it in the role to ignite change.” – Greg Smith, CIO at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon

iPad champions is inspired to initiate the change that will soon displace one-to-many teaching pedagogies in favor of one-to-one, always-on learning that will encourage more participative learning among students. In addition, educators feel that tablets will revolutionize education because they dovetail with the purposes and goals of education in the digital age.

Lets check out some interesting features of the iPad that makes it a great learning device

#1 – Its Touch Screen!!

The touch screen feature of the iPad has extended Human Computer Interaction (HCI) in a manner that imitates human gestures. It enables intuitive touch to interact with computers, sidestepping mouse-click and PC learning requirements, and getting straight into the action.

Children who haven’t learned to read or operate a remote are picking up the iPad’s interface with remarkable speed. According to the June 2010 Ad Age article, “How the iPad Became Child’s Play – and Learning Tool,” after using the device, toddlers as young as 18 months attempt to interface with TVs and monitors as though they were touch screens too, indicating how intuitive this technology may be to the this new iPad generation.

#2 – It’s a better E-Reader than the Kindle!

The iPad’s Book Reader is one of its most popular features and is already outpacing its predecessor – the Amazon’s Kindle. According to a survey ressult released by Student Monitor, a firm that researches consumption trends among college student,1,200 students at 100 colleges indicates that of students who reported interest in buying an eReader, 46% said they favored the iPad, versus 38% for Kindle. Given that the iPad provides better screen resolution, and more importantly a colored interface, it makes reading more conducive and appealing as compared to the Kindle

#3 – Convergence and Productivity

The iPad provides every kind of elearning essentials and requirement without any sort of external devices like a mouse or keyboard. Educators today are voicing the need for more contextual and engaging learning. Mobile phones and digital whiteboards does indeed improve interactivity, but falls short in computing power, and a laptop is relatively bulky and inconvenient at times.The iPad fills this void by enabling a host of activities such as referencing, collaborating, and creating content. In addition, the iPad provides personalized choice of content, which is a huge plus for student users.

This article was originally posted at http://adrianseetho300.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/ipad-for-e-learning/

Welcoming Mobile Technology

During a nine-week period last school year, teachers and administrators at Port Clinton High School reported more than 600 discipline issues related to technology and the use of cell phones on campus. “That’s a huge number, considering that our total enrollment is only 590,” said Ralph Moore, principal at the Port Clinton, OH, school. “And that number doesn’t even include the students that we didn’t catch.”

Moore, who in previous administrative positions may have taken measures to ban the devices that were causing many of the issues, took a different stance this time. Working with the school’s tech-savvy assistant principal, he sat down and tried to come up with a solution that would allow technology on campus while also reducing the high number of violations that students were racking up.

Teachers got involved with the problem-solving exercise, said Moore, who turned to the instructors for their input on how to integrate technology without disrupting classroom and learning time. Administrators also gathered input from the student body, which was given the heads up about a new wireless system on campus and the rules and policies that its users would be required to follow.

“We decided to try an open-access agreement, with some limitations,” said Moore. “We told students that we were going to roll it out for the last few weeks of the [2009-2010] school year, and that if it went well we’d write up a new policy and implement it.” The policies were written up over the summer of 2010, revised several times and reviewed by administrators, parents, staff and students before being put in place for the 2010-2011 school year.

Moore said the new wireless system came about after a $43 million building bond was issued in November 2009 to upgrade the school’s facilities, which were built in 1964. “We’re fortunate enough to live in a community where–despite what’s going on with the economy–everyone is very supportive of education,” said Moore. In need of an improved Internet access solution–either wired or wireless–he said, the district’s technology coordinator and superintendent looked at the options and decided to go with the latter.

“They felt that wireless would give us the most flexibility between our existing and new buildings,” Moore explained. The network, security firewalls, and Web browsing filters were already in place, he said, “so it was just a question of basically providing our students and staff members with additional Web access and allowing them to log onto the existing network.”

That’s exactly what students are doing these days at Port Clinton High School, with a few restrictions. For starters, every device must be “approved” for use on the network prior to logging on and marked with a sticker that administrators place on the back of each approved smart phone, iPad, iPod touch, or laptop. Individual teachers develop their own classroom rules regarding the use of technology, with some requiring all phones to be on silent or vibrate while in class and others prohibiting the use of such devices when class is in session.

The WiFi and device registration process takes just a few minutes and is handled by the school’s technology director. At that meeting, students sign a registration form pledging that they will use the WiFi in a positive manner and not in a way that is prohibited by the district. Students are assigned a user name and password for the Internet access, and their devices are adorned with a sticker showing that they completed the registration process.

Moore said the signed agreements are then sent home for parental signatures and then kept on file in case a problem or question arises in the future. “The agreement basically says that the student has read and understands the rules and that he or she will abide by them,” said Moore. “Once the form is submitted and the passwords are handed out, the student is good to go.”

So in an era when schools nationwide are torn between banning personal devices on campus, Port Clinton High School is already seeing positive results from its contrarian approach. Since the start of the current school year, for example, there have been fewer than 20 technology-related violations reported. The open-access approach has also created a sense of responsibility among students, who have come to appreciate the opportunity.

“I’d say 99 percent of the students who registered their devices are doing what we asked them to do,” said Moore, whose IT team is now struggling with issues like how to filter popular sites like Facebook and YouTube. “These can serve as good educational resources,” said Moore, “but there’s also stuff on those sites that you don’t want students to be able to access.”

Even with that challenge on his staff’s agenda, Moore said he doesn’t regret the decision to embrace technology and open up the campus WiFi to students. “Every school district I’ve ever worked with has had extensive rules in place prohibiting the use of cell phones, iPods and other technology on campus,” said Moore. “Instead of taking that stance, my staff and board collectively decided to find ways to enable technology in such a manner that would provide opportunities for our students.”

Source: thejournal.com