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1. ALISON ALISON provides free online courses. Considered by some to be the first 'MOOC' (a characterization that others may strongly contest , most people credit these folks ), it boasts a large number of learners in developing countries. 2. BRCK BRCK began by focusing on designing hardware and software products to help solve connectivity problems specific to many African contexts. Based out of the iHub in Nairobi, which is a regional epicenter for innovative educational technology initiatives in East Africa (a future EduTech blog post will highlight some of the fascinating edtech-related projects happening in Kenya in more detail), it now counts education as area of focused attention. 3. Bridge  While not traditionally thought of as an edtech firm, the private education provider Bridge International Academies uses ICTs in many innovative ways as part of its business model. The company is, to be sure, a lightning rod for attention (a few minutes on Google, or on the related Wikipedia page , can serve as a jumping off point into related discussions that are worth having; my purpose is not to explore them here), but its use of technology is undeniably noteworthy. Much can be learned from this use about what's possible and practical, let alone what's desirable (as well as what isn't), when it comes to edtech in many educational settings in Africa. Disclaimer : Like Andela , Byju's and Coursera (all companies worthy of potential inclusion on this list), Bridge has received investments from the IFC , the private sector financing arm of the World Bank Group. I don't work on these investments (the IFC operates separately from my team at the World Bank), but I know the people who do. 4. EkStep In my mind, the most interesting large scale educational technology effort anywhere in the world right now is being led by EkStep , a philanthropic effort in India that is building open source platforms for use by government to help meet a number of challenges . 5. Eneza Eneza offers low-cost quizzes and related products to help learners in Kenya (and increasingly in other parts of Africa as well), especially when it comes to exam prep. It is a notable example of a 'mobile first' approac h to edtech. 6. Enuma (Kitkit School) Enuma is an XPRIZE finalist for its Kitkit School project. Drawing insights and expertise from working with students with special educational needs and from the world of online gaming, it aims to promote literacy and numeracy among young learners. 7. Foundation for Learning Equality   The Foundation for Learning Equality (FLE) is best known for KAlite , an offline version of the Khan Academy. Building its experience with KAlite, FLE has developed Kolibri , which makes high quality education technology available for off-line use in low-resource communities. 8. Geekie Geekie , a graduate of the education accelerator supported by Brazil's Lemann Foundation , offers 'adaptive learning' solutions that are used by many learners in Brazil. 9. inABLE inABLE , a small Kenyan NGO, explores innovative uses of technologies to support the education of students with visual impairments. 10. Mindspark Mindspark is an adaptive-learning product from Educational Innovations that aims to help children to improve their skills in mathematics. It is the subject of one of the most notable rigorous evaluations of an edtech product, J-PAL's Disrupting Education? Experimental Evidence on Technology-Aided Instruction in India . 11. Nafham Nafham is a free online platform that hosts educational video lessons aligned to Egyptian and Syrian curricula. 12. OLE OLE , the Open Learning Exchange, coordinates an international network of organizations exploring the use of low-cost, locally relevant teaching and learning content in local languages in such places as Nepal and Ghana .   13. onebillion onebillion , an XPRIZE finalist , is exploring innovative approaches to promoting the development of literacy and numeracy skills among young children in Africa . 14. University of the People  University of the People (UoPeople) is a tuition-free online university that offers accredited degrees , with a strong focus on supporting learners in developing countries. 15. Pratham Books' Storyweaver Storyweaver , an initiative of Pratham Books , a not-for-profit children's book publisher in India, is an online platform that connects readers, authors, illustrators, and translators to create free stories for children around the world in their mother tongue . 16. Rumie Rumie provides free learning content to students around the world, with special attention to some of the most challenging educational environments .  17. Siyavula Siyavula provides openly licensed, curriculum-aligned Open Education Resources (OERs) for learners in South Africa (and beyond ). 18. Ubongo Ubongo is a non-profit social enterprise that creates interactive edutainment for kids in Africa. Based in Tanzania, it is perhaps most famous for its Ubongo Kids educational cartoon. 19. WorldReader WorldReader provides free access to digital books through mobile apps and platforms to readers in developing countries. 20. __ #20 is left deliberately blank here, as an acknowledgement that this list just scratches the surface. I could easily have done a second (and third, and fourth) list of 20 (or 19) projects that would be just as varied and intriguing as this one. A few related caveats and explanations :

• I fully acknowledge that there is a decidedly Africa-centric focus here. For the past few years, I have spent more time talking to African entrepreneurs, and those who support (and in some cases impede) them, than I have with similar groups from other places, and I'll admit to a geographical bias as a result. (That said, astute readers will notice, for example, that nothing from Nigeria is highlighted here -- a rather large omission!).
• On a related note : There is also an over-representation of initiatives based in North America that are predominantly focused on working with educators and learners in in low and middle income countries. I am based in Washington, DC, and many of these groups pass through town, so it is easier for me to be in contact with them.
• The country which I consider to offer the most interesting and innovative edtech projects, many of which are largely unknown outside of its borders, is China . No Chinese projects or firms are listed here, as this will be the topic of a follow-on blog post.
• There are a few projects listed from India, but as with China, I could have assembled multiple lists like this focusing only on India, given the related activity and ferment happening there. This will also be the topic of a follow-up blog post.
• Depending on time and requests, I might offer similar lists focusing only on other countries across Asia (there are many innovative efforts in Pakistan and Indonesia, for example, that are not well known internationally which might be of interest to a global audience).
• Projects supported by traditional publishers are absent from this list. This is not meant to imply that there isn't a lot of innovative stuff happening as traditional publishers continuing their 'transition to digital'. Of course there is. That said, such efforts tend to be well-chronicled elsewhere, and these groups have their own well-financed marketing and PR arms, and so I have not mentioned any of them here. (I'll note parenthetically, and for what it's worth, that a good number of the efforts listed here utilize open educational resources , or OER.) The same goes for education efforts of large tech firms, although a number of the projects listed here have been supported in various ways by large tech firms, under their corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives and/or business development efforts.
• To my knowledge, few (if any) of these projects are based in Silicon Valley. That choice is deliberate (and it means that very interesting initiatives like Cell-Ed are omitted).
• A World Bank colleague of mine covers Latin America, and so I've largely omitted projects from there from this list here. (There's only a single project from Brazil ... that country will be the topic of a related follow-on post.)
• I've left off a number of very interesting an innovative projects and groups that have already been the focus of previous EduTech posts (which have, for example, featured Coursera , CyberSmart Africa , PlanetRead , Talking Book , and Ustad Mobile ). All are worthy of inclusion here .
• I've also left off national, government-supported educational technology initiatives, as these are regularly featured on the EduTech blog . For what it's worth, a good number of these will be highlighted in an upcoming series of country-specific posts.

Looking for other examples of innovative edtech projects from around the world? Here are some places to look:

• Buried within a recent (and very good) Brookings report on educational innovations around the world ( Can we leapfrog? The potential of education innovations to rapidly accelerate progress ; it's quite good, you should definitely have a look) is a short list of 'Innovations Spotters'. These groups, which identify, analyze and/or support innovative education projects (many of which utilize ICTs) can be found on p. 84 of the Brookings report. They include: Ashoka Fellows and Changemaker Schools; R4D–CEI Program Database; EdSurge Curriculum Products; WISE–ed.hub, awards, and prizes; OECD Innovative Learning Environments; Graduate XXI/IDB; HundrED Finnish 100; InnoveEdu; USAID and mEducation Alliance ; UNICEF–Innovation Fund and Mapping; Harvard Global Education Innovations Initiative; Teach for All–Alumni Incubator; Development Innovation Ventures; Humanitarian Education Accelerator; and the Global Innovation Fund. Very helpfully, Brookings has made available a spreadsheet for download  (note that this is an Excel file) that contains its master list of over 2850 (!) projects.
• The Global Learning XPRIZE is "a competition that challenges teams from around the world to develop open source scalable software solution that will enable children in developing countries to teach themselves basic reading, writing and arithmetic within the 18-month competition field-testing period". While some critics may be put off by this prize, considering it to be an example of 'techno-utopian Silicon Valley solutionism' (if not ' ed-tech imperialism ') that is harmful or unproductive, the quality of many of the groups competing for this prize (two of the finalists are in the list above) are absolutely top-notch. In my perspective, no other group has been as successful as XPRIZE in catalyzing diverse groups of talented educators, researchers and technologists to come together to develop tools and products explicitly meant to address the needs of learners in very difficult learning environments in low income countries. Will this work? Who knows, and the cautionary words of critics are well worth considering, but the semi-finalist and finalist competitors are really a top-notch bunch.
• UNICEF and the Center for Education Innovations at R4D have identified many notable programs in this regard. Here's a big list of many of them.
• A number of initiatives have been singled out for recognition under the WISE Prize for Education ; the WISE Accelerator has supported a number of efforts that it hopes many merit recognition for the WISE prize in future years.
• Start-up activity in the education sector across Africa has been simmering for a while. A number of firms are receiving support from the Injini accelerator; Teresa Mbagaya and VentureBurn highlight some others. The famous Silicon Valley startup incubator/accelerator Y Cominator has traditionally shied away from supporting edtech firms and non-profit efforts ( OpenCurriculum has been a notable exception), but this may be beginning to change . An e xcellent recent report from Caribou Digital concludes that "an ad-supported internet isn’t going to be sustainable in emerging markets". If this is true, it might be that it will be from emerging markets and the do-called 'developing world' that some of the most innovative edtech business models might emerge.

Have I missed other resources and projects? Absolutely. Some people may disagree with the aims or approaches of some of these groups; others may think that we need a lot more efforts like those listed above (I suppose it's possible to hold both views as well.) Hopefully, though, I've helped point some people towards some projects and organizations that they've never heard about, but which they might find of interest: to support; to collaborate with; and/or to engage with critically. I do think, however, that we can learn something from all of them.  You may also be interested in the following posts from the EduTech blog :

• Innovative educational technology programs in low- and middle-income countries
• A new wave of educational efforts across Africa exploring the use of ICTs
• Why we need more (not fewer) ICT4D pilot projects in education
• ICT & Education: Eleven Countries to Watch -- and Learn From
• Promising uses of technology in education in poor, rural and isolated communities around the world
• Educational technology and innovation at the edges

  Note : The image used at the top of this blog post ("Oh no, what am I missing?") comes from Pixabay and is in the public domain ( CC0 1.0 ).

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The Hottest Topics in Edtech in 2021

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For a few years now, we’ve shared the hottest edtech trends of the year based on the topics resonating with educators at the annual ISTE conference. Although the topics themselves often don’t change much from year to year, the approach to them does. But 2020 was a year like no other, and thus new topics emerged on the list and others moved up a few notches. 

Digital citizenship, professional learning and social-emotional learning still made the list like they did the year before, but they took on new urgency as schooling moved online. Meanwhile, topics like e-sports, online learning design and creativity were new to the list. 

All these topics will be well represented at ISTELive 21 this year. The fully online conference will run for four days, June 26-30. Here’s a look at the trending topics and why they are especially important now.

1. Digital citizenship

Digital citizenship has been a hot topic for educators for nearly a decade — but it has quickly evolved in the past two years — especially in the past year as remote and hybrid learning has shifted learning online. 

In the beginning, digital citizenship was focused on safety, security and legality (protect your passwords, keep your identity secret, and cite sources when using intellectual property). Now the focus is on making sure students feel empowered to use digital tools and platforms to do good in the world — and that they do so responsibly. 

The DigCitCommit movement was born out of this shift to focus on the opportunities of the digital world rather than the dangers. DigCitCommit breaks down digital citizenship into five focus areas: 

Inclusive: Open to multiple viewpoints and being respectful in digital interactions. Informed: Evaluating the accuracy, perspectif and validity of digital media and social posts. Engaged: Using technology for civic engagement, problem solving and being a force for good. Balanced : Prioritizing time and activities online and off to promote mental and physical health.  Alert : Being aware of online actions and their consequences and knowing how to be safe and ensuring others are safe online.

Look for digital citizenship sessions at ISTELive 21 that focus on global collaboration, media literacy and social justice projects. 

2. Online learning design

One of the biggest challenges educators have faced in responding to the pandemic has been how to effectively move lessons that were designed for an in-person classroom online. Many educators around the world had to make that transition in less than a week in spring 2020 and, in some cases, less than a day. 

What many discovered immediately was that you just can’t simply upload worksheets to Google Classroom and expect the same learning success.

Michele Eaton, author of the book,  T he Perfect Blend: A Practical Guide to Designing Student-Centered Learning , says good in-person teaching doesn’t equate with good online teaching. 

 “I have a strong belief that if all we ever do is replicate what we do face to face, then online learning will just be a cheap imitation of the classroom experience.” In her post,  4 tips for creating successful online content , Eaton outlines ways educators can design online lessons that are interactive, reduce cognitive load, and build in formative assessments. 

Look for ISTELive 21 sessions that focus on online learning strategies and ideas for the hybrid classroom. Check out ISTE’s Summer Learning Academy, a course designed to help educators take what they learned from teaching in online and hybrid settings and moving to the next level.  

3. Equity and inclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed many of the ugly inequities that have existed in education for a long time. It also created a few new ones. When school moved online, many young learners and students with disabilities were unable to access learning without parental help, which was often unavailable because parents were working.

The lack of devices and bandwidth hampered many rural and low income students. Most districts were able to secure funding to get hotspots and laptops or tablets into the hands of students who needed them, but those solutions were not always ideal. Hotspots were at times unreliable and devices would be in disrepair. Because of these problems and others, many teachers reported a high percentage of missing students — those who never showed up online.

Patricia Brown, an instructional technology coach for Ladue School district in Missouri, said the pandemic has been a watershed moment. In the blog, COVID-19 Thrusts Digital Equity to the Forefront , Brown shares some of the complexities of the inequities wrought by the pandemic.

 “It’s definitely bringing some attention to things that a lot of people have been talking about and nobody was listening to,” Brown said. “Now, when it affects people in their own communities, they are realizing they don’t have it together like they thought they had it together. People are having their eyes opened.”

Those inequities aren’t just limited to ensuring students have devices and internet access. Brown says there are multiple dimensions of digital equity. One focus is on the need for professional learning and providing support for teachers, students and families.

“When we talk about equity, we can talk a lot about devices and curriculum, but we also have to think about the basic needs that our kids and our families have,” Brown said. “We need to think about those basic needs, whether that’s providing lunches or breakfasts, or social-emotional resources for families or having counselors and social workers available,” Brown said. “That’s part of equity, too, providing what is needed for your population or for your community.”

4. Social-emotional learning and cultural competence

We’ve lumped these two important topics together because much of the anxiety and trauma students have faced during the pandemic relate to both. Social-emotional learning, or SEL, involves the skills required to manage emotions, set goals and maintain positive relationships, which are necessary for learning but also a tall order for students facing a barrage of COVID-related issues like family job loss, stressed parents and the illness or death of friends or relatives. 

The pandemic has caused enormous emotional stress and trauma to students across the board, but the emotional effects have disproportionately affected students of color, English language learners and students in other marginalized groups. 

That’s why in order to help students process their emotions, it’s important for educators to have cultural competence, which is the ability to understand, communicate with and interact with people across cultures. 

In the blog, 3 Ways Teachers Can Integrate SEL Into Online Learning , educator Jorge Valenzuela writes that “dealing with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has caused multiple traumas — which have been heightened by news and graphic images of the murder of George Floyd and the outrage and fear that followed.” 

That is why he says all educators should seek out cultural competence training in addition to learning about restorative justice, trauma-informed teaching and culturally responsive teaching. 

5. Professional development

Teacher professional development, especially related to edtech, is nothing new, of course. But the pandemic changed that, too. No longer are teachers attending daylong face-to-face lectures at the district office or out-of-town seminars and events. 

Because of social distancing, the urgency to quickly learn new skills, and increasingly tight budgets, many educators have formed professional learning communities within their schools and districts. Some of these are grouped by grade level, others by content area. In her post, 4 Benefits of an Active Professional Learning Community , Jennifer Serviss explores how PLCs enhance teaching and learning. 

Many educators have sought PD online — some for the first time. Those used to attending conferences in person might feel at sea trying to plan for and navigate a virtual conference. In her post,   10 Tips for Getting the Most out of a Virtual PD Event , Nicole Zumpano, a regional edtech coordinator, shares ideas for making the most out of virtual PD. 

It can seem daunting to choose the most worthwhile online conferences and courses in a learning landscape flooded with choices. Probably the best way to select: Look to the trusted sources. ISTE offers online courses and a slate of virtual events to prepare educators for the future of learning. 

Esports — aka competitive video gaming — has exploded as a form of entertainment in the past decade, and now it’s naturally finding its way into schools, clubs and after-school programs. Many educators are embracing esports as a way to engage hard-to-reach students who don’t necessarily gravitate to athletic sports or academic pursuits. Research indicates that 40% of students involved in esports have never participated in school activities. 

Esports also promote interest in STEM careers and are a pipeline to jobs in the burgeoning esports industry.

Kevin Brown, an esports specialist with the Orange County Department of Education in California, says educators can tap esports in the classroom to support just about every subject because esports connect student interests to learning in a positive way.

Brown says esports have seen explosive growth in the last few years. The North America Scholastic Esports Federation started as a regional program in Southern California with 25 clubs and 38 teams. In 2½ years, it has grown to include more than 1,000 clubs and 11,000 students in North America.

Many educators mistakenly believe that if they aren’t gamers themselves, they can’t incorporate esports in the curriculum or organize a club. Not true, says Joe McAllister, an education esports expert for CDW who helps schools and districts get programs off the ground. 

He often sees reluctance from people who say, “Oh, I don't really play video games.”

“That’s OK. Do you do enjoy kids growing and learning and providing them structure? Of course, that’s what teachers do,” he said. “The content and strategy for the games, that’s all out there on YouTube and Twitch. Most students will bring that to the table.”

Esports was the topic of a daylong series of events at ISTE20 Live in December and will be a focus again at ISTELive 21. In the meantime, check out the ISTE Jump Start Guide " Esports in Schools ."

7. Augmented and virtual reality

Pokemon Go may have introduced the terms virtual and augmented reality to a majority of educators in 2017, but there’s a lot more learning potential in AR/VR than chasing around imaginary creatures. The game that took the world by storm has faded in popularity these days but AR/VR has not. 

The reason for that, says Jaime Donally, author of the ISTE book, The Immersive Classroom: Create Customized Learning Experiences With AR/VR , is because AR/VR deepens learning. It allows students to see the wonders of the world up close and it grants them access to experiences that they wouldn’t be able to get any other way, such as an incredibly detailed 3D view of the human body or a front row seat to unfolding world events. 

The technology is becoming more affordable and sophisticated all the time, allowing students to do more than consume AR/VR experiences. They can actually create them. 

Most of the AR experiences in the past 10 years involved using a trigger image to superimpose an object or video on top. The trigger image is similar to a barcode telling the mobile device precisely what to add to the image. Newer AR technology eliminates the trigger image and places objects in your space by surface tracking. In the past four years, this technology is included on most mobile devices and uses ARKit for the Apple platform and ARCore for Android, Donally explained, which opens up even more possibilities for students and educators.

8. Project-based learning

At first blush, it seemed like project-based learning, or PBL, would be one of those educational strategies that would have to go by the wayside during remote and online learning. After all, you can’t really organize collaborative projects when students are not together in the same room, right?

“Wrong,” says Nichlas Provenzano, a middle school technology teacher and makerspace director in Michigan.

When the pandemic hit, Provenzano was teaching an innovation and design class, and it wasn’t immediately clear how he could teach that class remotely. He decided to implement genius hour, the ultimate PBL strategy. Genius hour is an instructional approach that allows students to  decide what they want to learn and how they want to learn it. The teacher’s job is to support the student by offering resources and helping them understand complex material.

He told his students to create something using the resources they had at home. One student submitted images demonstrating his ability to build a side table that he designed himself. 

Another student hydro-dipped some shoes and then created a website to demonstrate the process.

“This approach to personalized learning was a huge success in my middle school class just like it was in my high school class,” Provanzano says in the video, “ The emphasis on personalization increases engagement, but more importantly, it builds the skills necessary to be lifelong learners long after they leave our classrooms.

Learn how to infuse project-based learning in your classroom by enrolling in the ISTE U course, Leading Project-Based Learning With Technology .

9. Creativity  

Of course creativity is nothing new. Cave drawings dating back to the late Stone Age continue to awe and inspire us, as do the ivory, stone and shell artifacts created by ancient peoples. Nevertheless, creativity is considered a hot topic because educators are embracing more creative and less traditional methods for students to demonstrate skills and content knowledge. 

Tim Needles, an art teacher from Smithtown High School in New York, loves to show teachers how to incorporate creativity into all topic areas. In his video “ Digital Drawing Tools for Creative Online Learning ,” he demonstrates how to “draw with code,” using the Code.org lesson called Artist . It merges math and computer science with art.

Needles who has presented at ISTE’s Creative Constructor Lab, is also a big fan of sketchnoting, a method of taking notes by drawing pictures. Sketchnoting is not just a fun method for getting information on paper, it’s a proven strategy backed by learning science to help students recall information.

Nichole Carter, author of Sketchnoting in the Classroom , says that sketchnoting is not about drawing the perfect piece of art. It’s about getting the content on the page. That’s why she says it’s important for teachers to help student improve their visual vocabulary. Watch the video below to understand more about this. 

These nine topics represent a mere fraction of the content you'll fine at ISTELive 21. Register today to ensure the best registration price, then return to the site in March to browse the program. 

Diana Fingal is director of editorial content for ISTE. 

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Digital learning and transformation of education

Digital technologies have evolved from stand-alone projects to networks of tools and programmes that connect people and things across the world, and help address personal and global challenges. Digital innovation has demonstrated powers to complement, enrich and transform education, and has the potential to speed up progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) for education and transform modes of provision of universal access to learning. It can enhance the quality and relevance of learning, strengthen inclusion, and improve education administration and governance. In times of crises, distance learning can mitigate the effects of education disruption and school closures.

What you need to know about digital learning and transformation of education

2-5 September 2024, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France

Digital competencies of teachers

in Member States of the Group of 77 and China

Best practices

The call for applications and nominations for the 2023 edition is open until 21 February 2024

Open educational resources

A translation campaign to facilitate home-based early age reading

or 63%of the world’s population, were using the Internet in 2021

do not have a household computer and 43% of learners do not have household Internet.

to access information because they are not covered by mobile networks

in sub-Saharan Africa have received minimum training

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Education Technology: What Is Edtech? A Guide.

Edtech, or education technology, is the combination of IT tools and educational practices aimed at facilitating and enhancing learning.

What Is Edtech?

Edtech, or education technology, is the practice of introducing information and communication technology tools into the classroom to create more engaging, inclusive and individualized learning experiences.

Today’s classrooms have moved beyond the clunky desktop computers that were once the norm and are now tech-infused with tablets, interactive online courses and even robots that can take notes and record lectures for absent students.

The influx of edtech tools are changing classrooms in a variety of ways. For instance, edtech robots , virtual reality lessons and gamified classroom activities make it easier for students to stay engaged through fun forms of learning. And edtech IoT devices are hailed for their ability to create digital classrooms for students, whether they’re physically in school, on the bus or at home. Even machine learning and blockchain tools are assisting teachers with grading tests and holding students accountable for homework.

The potential for scalable individualized learning has played an important role in the edtech industry’s ascendance . The way we learn, how we interact with classmates and teachers, and our overall enthusiasm for the same subjects is not a one-size-fits-all situation. Everyone learns at their own pace and in their own style. Edtech tools make it easier for teachers to create individualized lesson plans and learning experiences that foster a sense of inclusivity and boost the learning capabilities of all students, no matter their age or learning abilities.

And it looks like technology in the classroom is here to stay. In a 2018 study , 86 percent of eighth-grade teachers agreed that using technology to teach students is important. And 75 percent of the study’s teachers said technology use improved the academic performance of students. For that reason, many would argue it’s vital to understand the benefits edtech brings in the form of increased communication, collaboration and overall quality of education.

Related Reading 13 Edtech Examples You Should Know

How Does Edtech Help Students and Teachers?

Benefits of edtech for students.

An influx of technology is opening up new avenues of learning for students of all ages, while also promoting collaboration and inclusivity in the classroom. Here are five major ways edtech is directly impacting the way students learn.

Increased Collaboration

Cloud-enabled tools and tablets are fostering collaboration in the classroom. Tablets loaded with learning games and online lessons give children the tools to solve problems together. Meanwhile, cloud-based apps let students upload their homework and digitally converse with one another about their thought processes and for any help they may need.

24/7 Access to Learning

IoT devices are making it easier for students to have full access to the classroom in a digital environment. Whether they’re at school, on the bus or at home, connected devices are giving students Wi-Fi and cloud access to complete work at their own pace — and on their own schedules — without being hampered by the restriction of needing to be present in a physical classroom.

Various apps also help students and teachers stay in communication in case students have questions or need to alert teachers to an emergency.

“Flipping” the Classroom

Edtech tools are flipping the traditional notion of classrooms and education. Traditionally, students have to listen to lectures or read in class then work on projects and homework at home. With video lectures and learning apps, students can now watch lessons at home at their own pace, using class time to collaboratively work on projects as a group. This type of learning style helps foster self-learning, creativity and a sense of collaboration among students.

Personalized Educational Experiences

Edtech opens up opportunities for educators to craft personalized learning plans for each of their students. This approach aims to customize learning based on a student’s strengths, skills and interests.

Video content tools help students learn at their own pace and because students can pause and rewind lectures, these videos can help students fully grasp lessons. With analytics, teachers can see which students had trouble with certain lessons and offer further help on the subject.

Instead of relying on stress-inducing testing to measure academic success, educators are now turning to apps that consistently measure overall aptitude . Constant measurements display learning trends that teachers can use to craft specialized learning plans based on each student’s strengths and weaknesses or, more importantly, find negative trends that can be proactively thwarted with intervention.

Attention-Grabbing Lessons

Do you remember sitting in class, half-listening, half-day dreaming? Now, with a seemingly infinite number of gadgets and outside influences vying for a student’s attention, it’s imperative to craft lesson plans that are both gripping and educational. Edtech proponents say technology is the answer. Some of the more innovative examples of students using tech to boost classroom participation include interacting with other classrooms around the world via video, having students submit homework assignments as videos or podcasts and even gamifying problem-solving .

Benefits of Edtech

• Personalized education caters to different learning styles.
• On-demand video lectures allow classroom time to focus on collaboration.
• Gamified lessons engage students more deeply.
• Cloud computing with 24/7 access lets students work from anywhere.
• Automated grading and classroom management tools help teachers balance responsibilities.

Benefits of Edtech for Teachers

Students aren’t the only group benefitting from edtech. Teachers are seeing educational tech as a means to develop efficient learning practices and save time in the classroom. Here are four ways edtech is helping teachers get back to doing what they do — teaching.

Automated Grading

Artificially intelligent edtech tools are making grading a breeze. These apps use machine learning to analyze and assess answers based on the specifications of the assignment. Using these tools, especially for objective assignments like true/false or fill-in-the-blank assessments, frees up hours that teachers usually spend grading assignments. Extra free time for teachers provides more flexibility for less prep and one-on-one time with both struggling and gifted students.     

Classroom Management Tools

Let’s face it, trying to get a large group of kids to do anything can be challenging. Educational technology has the potential to make everything — from the way teachers communicate with their students to how students behave — a little easier. There are now apps that help send parents and students reminders about projects or homework assignments, as well as tools that allow students to self-monitor classroom noise levels. The addition of management tools in the classroom brings forth a less-chaotic, more collaborative environment.

Read Next Assistive Technology in the Classroom Is Reimagining the Future of Education

Paperless Classrooms

Printing budgets, wasting paper and countless time spent at the copy machine are a thing of the past thanks to edtech. Classrooms that have gone digital bring about an easier way to grade assignments, lessen the burden of having to safeguard hundreds of homework files and promote overall greener policies in the classroom.   

Eliminating Guesswork

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New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

Digital Technologies in Education

The use of information and communication technologies in education can play a crucial role in providing new and innovative forms of support to teachers, students, and the learning process more broadly.

The World Bank Group is the largest financier of education in the developing world, working on education programs in more than 80 countries to provide quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all.

The WBG works in partnership with governments and organizations worldwide to support innovative projects, timely research, and knowledge sharing activities about the effective and appropriate use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education systems -- "EdTech" -- to strengthen learning and contribute to poverty reduction around the world, as part of its larger work related to education .

The World Bank estimated the levels of “Learning Poverty” across the globe by measuring the number of 10-year old children who cannot read and understand a simple story by the end of primary school. In low- and middle-income countries “learning poverty” stands at 53%, while for the poorest countries, this is 80% on average.  With the spread of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), 180+ countries mandated temporary school closures, leaving ~1.6 billion children and youth out of school at its height and affecting approximately 85% of children world-wide. While most countries are working towards re-opening schools, there are still intermittent closures and use of hybrid learning. 

Reflecting on COVID Response and Remote Learning

Technology played and continues to play an essential role to deliver education to the students outside of school. Commendably, all countries were able to deploy remote learning technologies using a combination of TV, Radio, Online and Mobile Platforms. However, many children in low income countries did not participate in remote learning with about a third of low income countries reporting that 50% of children had not been reached in a joint UNESCO-UNICEF-World Bank survey . The pandemic has also led to significant losses in learning. School closures and limited access to remote learning means that Learning Poverty is likely to worsen from 53% to 63% especially in low-income countries if no remediation interventions are taken.  

The crisis has starkly highlighted the inequalities in digital access and that ‘business as usual’ will not work for delivery of education to all children. To close the digital divides in Education and leverage the power of technology to accelerate learning, reduce learning poverty, and support skills development a focus must be placed in bridging the gaps in: i) digital infrastructure (connectivity, devices and software); ii) human infrastructure (teacher capacity, student skills and parental support); and iii) logistical and administrative systems to deploy and maintain tech architecture.

Education systems must adapt. It is against this backdrop that the EdTech team at the World Bank has identified five key questions to address in the short to medium term. These questions touch on the need to re-imagine education, to provide an equitable, engaging and fun learning experience for all children.

How can countries leverage EdTech investments to develop resilient hybrid learning systems?   This question requires both reflecting on the lessons from implementation of remote learning during COVID and addressing the new digital infrastructure access divide.  The World Bank is working with countries to identify how to address issues of affordable connectivity, device procurement, cloud solutions and multi-modal delivery of education.  Moreover, the investments that countries have made in remote learning could be leveraged address existing challenges in education. Many countries are now thinking about a dual role for remote learning: as an insurance policy against future calamites especially in a world experiencing climate change as well as a way to reach out of school children and provide a lifelong education to all citizens.  

How can countries recover learning loss, more effectively harness data and personalize learning with technology? The World Bank is deepening its work on adaptive learning systems, remote assessment and how education systems can more effectively use learning analytics to personalize education.  A major part of this work will be developing a new strategy for Education Management Information Systems (EMIS 2.0) to support more effective use of data.  

What are the changing roles and new skills for teachers in hybrid learning systems and how can additional human connections be leveraged through technology? The World Bank is exploring teacher competency frameworks, teacher networks, and communities of innovative teachers to support countries to empower teachers.  Teachers are still central to learning even, or rather, especially in an environment rich with technology. Evidence is growing that bypassing Teachers and not engaging them with technology does not lead to student learning improvement.

How can countries leverage open technology ecosystems to expand access to quality content and learning experiences? The World Bank will collaborate with partners developing open global public goods and strategies to engage the large ecosystem of innovators in client countries to support the design and development of new educational content and curriculum.  The team will develop communities of practice around EdTech innovation hubs and creative talent to develop new open educational libraries.  A key content area of focus will be climate change.

How can technology support the development, measurement and accreditation of future skills? The World Bank will support countries to define 21st century competencies in students and teachers; explore ways to more effectively measure these skills and accredit these skills in collaboration with external partners sharing knowledge and experience in communities of practice on hard to measure skills and blockchain for education.  

Education technology by itself is not a panacea

Though investment in EdTech has been increasing, learning and outcomes as a result have not changed considerably in many countries. An OECD report found that, when it comes to impact of computer usage in schools as measured through PISA, “impact on student performance is mixed, at best."  COVID however has changed the debate on EdTech from a question of if to a question of how.  Experience to date highlights that teaching and learning remotely is not the same as face-to-face pedagogy.  Many teachers with access to e-content, for instance, use it like any another textbook to read from in class.  Some adjustments include shorter and more modular content, more engaging content such as edutainment, continuous feedback, smaller group on-line discussions on more open-ended questions. Education at its heart is about human connections and relationships.  While we can never replace the magic that happens between great teachers and students in an in-person environment, we should focus on the social aspects of technology to enhance connections from a distance. Much more attention must be directed on how technology will enhance teaching and learning in a blended learning environment reaching students, both in school and at home.

World Bank EdTech Strategy

As education systems invest in EdTech, the World Bank advocates these five principles for how to design and implement technology to re-imagine education:

1. ASK WHY:   EdTech policies need to be developed with a clear purpose, strategy and vision of the intended education change to address the learning crisis.

If technology is the answer, what is the question? Education technology should be focused on the “education” and not just on the “technology”. Before investing in and deploying EdTech, policymakers must ask what education challenges need to be addressed and what resulting change is desired.  Policies must be holistic to account for teacher capacity and incentives, appropriate digital learning resources linked to the curriculum, and formative assessments that capture learning.  Education at its core is a human-centered socially intensive endeavor. Technology is a means to these goals.

2. DESIGN FOR SCALE: EdTech design should be flexible and user-centered with equity and inclusion at its heart in order to realize scale and sustainability for all.

Design for scale begins with proactive engagement and empathy for all possible end-users -- students, teachers, administrators, parents, etc. Engagement with different users will reveal different needs. Understanding these needs will lead to inclusive and flexible designs that will be equitable and hence scalable.  Today, the use of EdTech has demonstrated and is exacerbating inequities in education systems.  This need not be the case.  Beginning the design process with how technology can be utilized for all will lead to initiatives that are equitable and adaptable to specific contexts and thereby sustainable at scale.

3. EMPOWER TEACHERS: Technology should enhance teacher engagement with students through access to content, data and networks allowing them to focus on personalized student learning.EdTech cannot replace teachers, it can only augment teaching.

Evidence from around the world shows that, over time, the role of teachers become more central, and not peripheral, as the result of the effective use of EdTech.  Technology will replace some of what teachers currently do, while at the same time supporting teachers as they take on new, often more sophisticated duties and responsibilities as a result of technological change. Teachers can be facilitators of learning, part of a learning team, a collaborator with outside expert mentors, a team leader on a project-based learning activity, etc. At the same time, in those circumstances where there is a scarcity of teachers or low-capacity teachers, technology can play an important role in assisting learners to, in part, overcome this absence. Where teachers lack content or pedagogical knowledge, technology can support structured lesson plans or text-based nudges to build this capacity. Teachers’ use of technology will empower them to leverage an array of resources to provide more focused, personalized learning to students.

4. ENGAGE THE ECOSYSTEM: Education systems should take a whole of government and multi-stakeholder approach to engage and incorporate the most innovative ideas to support student learning.Ministries of Education should leverage all stakeholders in the education system when developing and implementing EdTech programs and policies. The best content, software, applications, algorithms and edutainment will be spread across many innovators in the country and around the world.

Ministries of Education should actively identify ways to find, incentive, integrate and sustain the creators in their country. This content can be delivered over the most appropriate channel – radio, TV, mobile, web – and bundled with data on learning and feedback to support continuous learning.  This ecosystem includes key stakeholders such as students, teachers, school leaders, parents, NGOs, donors and the private sector including app developers, publishers, equipment manufacturers, telecommunication companies and cloud service providers. Clearly, EdTech requires that all these actors work in concert to a common goal taking a “whole of government approach.” Successful EdTech policies and deployments requires that Ministries of Education leverage all stakeholders – inside and outside the education system.

5. DATA DRIVEN: Transparent standards and interoperable data architecture supports evidence-based decision making and a culture of learning and experimentation.

Technology can and should be used to easily collect data from educational institutions, analyze this data and support decision making. Technology is currently available to measure outcomes, track student performance, manage student retention, track book distribution, manage teacher recruitment, track education system spending, etc. Without these, countries will not be as efficient in supporting schools, students and teachers. This data however is diffused through various systems in Ministries of Education and other parts of government. Countries must have flexible, scalable systems that avoid data silos that don’t talk to one another and vendor-lock in (where future decisions on the use of EdTech are constrained by technology choices made in the past). To operationalize this principle, Ministries of Education should promote transparent standards that facilitate interoperability of systems, data and content and remove barriers to competition in order to promote a data-driven decision-making culture.  Many times, learnings from this data is not fed back into the system.  A culture of gathering rigorous data about the ‘impact of EdTech’ must be priority. With the pace of technological change, evidence quickly becomes stale. Hence, constant learning through iteration, controlled experimentation, and nimble evaluations is critical to separate ‘hope’ from 'hype' surrounding different technologies and informing all further EdTech decisions. The culture of data-driven decision making must be strengthened.

In order to operationalize these principles, the World Bank focuses on the discovery, diffusion and deployment of new technologies.  

Discover, document, generate and analyze evidence-based technology solutions in education attuned to developing countries. 

The World Bank supports the EdTech community across countries to discover new innovations, build the evidence base and facilitate the transformation of ministries of education into learning organizations. In some sense, policy makers are supported to think like a system, but act like entrepreneurs. This is achieved through institutional support for Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) into projects that use EdTech; the inclusion of partnerships with like-minded organizations and the development of global public goods that can be used across multiple countries.

Diffuse this knowledge widely across policy makers in our client countries and support capacity development to better use this new knowledge. The World Bank promotes multi-stakeholder approaches, including partnerships beyond the traditional education sector, to support the effective, appropriate and impactful use of EdTech.

The World Bank works in partnership with governments, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, private companies, civil society and communities worldwide to support innovative projects, timely research, and knowledge-sharing about EdTech with the ultimate goal of improving teaching and learning. To do this, it invests in the capabilities of its staff to identify and lead partnerships, drawing on relevant experience and expertise. The World Bank also recognizes the role played by the private sector and seeks to harness its innovation and ingenuity to strengthen efficiencies in the public sector.  This approach of networking expertise is critical to ensure that EdTech experiences are effectively shared across regions and that last-mile support to educational institutions supports implementation of government programs.

Deploy solutions, at the pilot level and at scale, tackling adoption barriers (including in procurement) and in ways informed by evidence, and which allow for efficient course correction. The World Bank supports countries as they seek to strengthen and expand existing educational practices and approaches through the use of new technologies, as well as to transform them. The World Bank works with partners to develop digital global public goods that adhere to its 5 EdTech principles. These digital global public goods are digitized knowledge and ideas that countries can build upon and adapt to their contexts.

To execute this strategy the World Bank will provide support to countries through lending operations, partnership networks, and development of digital global public goods in support of the overall World Bank education approach.

Reimagining Human Connections: Technology and Innovation in Education at the World Bank

Current and Past Projects

Notable recent projects include:

• In Burundi, the Burundi Skills for Jobs: Women and Youth aims at supporting job creation for women and youth, with a focus on digital skills and support the creation of a new Institute of Computer Science/Computer Engineering and Digital Transformation, anchored at the University of Burundi in partnership with world class universities.
• In Nigeria, the Edo Basic Education Sector and Skills Transformation Operation leverages technology to improve  teaching  and  learning  processes  in  basic  education  and has institutionalized remote learning EdoBEST@Home program to provide access to all students outside school.
• In Pakistan, the Higher Education Development Project  includes support to equip Students and Higher Education Institutions with Modern Technology and to leverage technology to improve the teaching, learning and research environment in Pakistan including upgrading Pakistan’s National Research and Education Network (NREN)).
• In Morocco, the pandemic created an electroshock on the education system that motivated the country to come up with a new system that prepares the schools for the new realities and for the future of education. Classrooms are kept smaller and new methods of teaching have been developed to enable teachers to animate classes in a way that students understand better. In addition, the schools are more connected than ever. System of evaluation of the new way of teaching and learning is being developed. Complementing, but not replacing in-person teaching by online classes. Developing pedagogical models that support the return to school and provide different learning formats for different situations/students. Morocco is introducing a hybrid-model for families to choose.
• In Turkey, an COVID emergency response Project – Safe Schooling and Distance Education Project aims to build future resilience in the education system by creating a new hybrid learning model to support access to digital resources, improve connectivity and access to education data. The Project will also build out the national ecosystem of innovators to support the development of new learning resources and build capacity of teachers to effectively use these digital resources to support hybrid learning.  
• EVOKE, an online alternate reality game supporting social innovation among young people around the world including a latest iteration on use of Blockchain for conditional cash transfer in Colombia. Also support for FabLabs in higher education institutions in countries like Bangladesh, research into the use of e-readers in schools in Lagos, and pilots of the Khan Academy in Nigeria and Guyana.
• Join Upcoming Events (Twitter Announcements)
• Learn about Past Events (Events Archive)

Resources 

We release a number of publications each year on specific projects and themes related to technology and innovation in education.  See attached a sample of some of these resources linked to the critical questions we will address in the coming year:

1. How can countries leverage EdTech investments to develop resilient hybrid learning systems?  

• What is Hybrid Learning?
• Exploring the potential of Digital Infrastructure
• Understanding the perceived effectiveness of remote learning – lessons from 18 countries
• How can countries implement low tech remote learning?
• Remote Learning During COVID-19 – how to implement multi-channel delivery

2. How can countries recover learning loss, more effectively harness data and personalize learning with technology? 

• Mitigating learning losses and accelerating learning through Adaptive Learning
• Considering an adaptive learning system – a roadmap for policy makers
• Remote Assessment – Potential of phone-based formative assessments to support learning continuity

3. What are the changing roles and new skills for teachers in hybrid learning systems and how can additional human connections be leveraged through technology?  

• Supporting teachers in the age of the pandemic
• The Changing Role of Teachers and Technologies amidst the COVID-19 pandemic  
• Transforming how teachers use technology
• How to use technology to help teacher be better

4. How can countries leverage open technology ecosystems to expand access to quality content and learning experiences?  

• Open Learning Management Systems – How to select and evaluate
• Open Educational Resources are free but you still need to invest to use them

5. How can technology support the development, measurement and accreditation of future skills?   

• Reimagining Youth Skills
• Leveraging Blockchain
• Digital Learning and Skills part I

Comprehensive list of past publications (Archive)

Download Knowledge Packs

Knowledge Packs are resources developed by the World Bank’s EdTech team to serve as short, practical guides on individual topics within education technology. 

• Virtual and XR Laboratories for Workforce Development (pdf, last version September 2023)
• Education TV Knowledge Pack  – (pdf, last version June 2020)
• EdTech Knowledge Pack on Remote Learning response to COVID-19 (pdf, last draft 8 April 2020). 
• EduRadio knowledge pack
• Mobile Distance & Hybrid Education Solutions knowledge pack
• More COVID-19-specific resources

Founded in 2019, the EdTech Hub was established to accelerate progress toward ending the global learning crisis by increasing the use of evidence to inform decision-making about education technology. Technology has the potential to help address the global learning crisis. But that potential is not yet being realised. Some reasons for this include:

• incomplete understanding of what works and what does not
• many under-researched issues
• intervention designs are often not evidence-based
• policy decisions are often not evidence-based
• stakeholders are disconnected
• the evidence that does exist is not easily accessible

The EdTech Hub aims to address these gaps. The EdTech Hub will synthesize existing evidence, conduct new research, support innovations to scale, and provide advisory support to governments and other country partners.

The EdTech Hub is collaboratively run by a partnership of organisations: Overseas Development Institute, Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, Results for Development, Open Development and Education, Brink, Jigsaw Consult, BRAC, Afrilabs and eLearning Africa. The EdTech Hub is funded by the UK Department for International Development, the World Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Education Continuity Partnership under COVID-19 with OECD, Harvard & HundrED

In the wake of COVID-19, the Harvard Global Education Innovation Initiative , HundrED , the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills and the World Bank Group Education Global Practice is gathering information from around the world on the education response to the crisis. This includes a series of webinar conversations and a series of education stories.

Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund ( SIEF )

The World Bank’s Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund (SIEF) supports scientifically rigorous research that measures the impact of programs and policies to improve education, health, access to quality water and sanitation, and early childhood development in low and middle income countries. The majority of the evaluations are randomized control trials (RCTs) and they were chosen through a competitive process open to researchers worldwide.

On July 29, 2020, SIEF announced six evaluation teams that will receive funding through SIEF’s COVID-19 emergency window . These evaluations will rapidly generate evidence on how to keep students engaged with learning and remote education at home and how to prepare them for the return to school. Each evaluation will also collect detailed cost data that can help shed light on the resources required for scale and sustained implementation. Teams include: Bangladesh, Ecuador, Ghana, Guatemala, Pakistan, Sierra Leone.

Global EdTech Readiness Index Partnership

The Global Edtech Readiness Index is part of the Global Education Policy Dashboard (GEPD) funded by a partnership between the World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, U.K.'s Department for International Development and government of Japan.

The World Bank, with support from Imaginable Futures has created the EdTech Readiness Index (ETRI). The tool will enable countries to: (a) identify good practices and areas where EdTech policies can be strengthened, and (b) monitor progress as countries take action. 

The ETRI goes beyond measuring the availability of devices and the level of connectivity to capture key elements of the larger education-technology ecosystem in a country, guiding efforts to increase learning opportunities and reduce inequalities. ETRI is organized around 6 pillars: School Management, Teachers, Students, Devices, Connectivity, and Digital Resources. For each pillar, the ETRI reports on a practice indicator (to capture the practices at the school level), a de jure policy indicator (to capture whether there is a policy to inform each practice), and a de facto policy indicator (to measure the extent to which the policy is implemented)

Continuity and Acceleration of Learning

The Continuous and Accelerated Learning (CAL) program aims to support multi-modal continuous learning by supporting the development, dissemination and delivery at scale of new and existing global public goods and regional learning continuity approaches, in the short term to offset the impacts of school closures, and in the medium to long term to ensure continuity and accelerate learning after schools re-open while building resilience into the education system. Support will be focused on improving foundational learning and lowering learning poverty by adapting to students’, teachers’ and parents’ needs, anywhere, anytime in a more inclusive, equitable, effective and resilient way than pre-COVID-19.

As part of the Continuous and Accelerated Learning (CAL) program “Teachers for a Changing World: Transforming Teacher Professional Development Spotlight” (T4T) in partnership with HundrED a created a global contest to identify and promote scalable and impactful solutions for teacher professional development using technology.

The CAL work is supported by GPE and other donors and involves partnerships with UNESCO and UNICEF.

Reimagine Education: Digital Learning for Every Child Everywhere with UNICEF

UNICEF and the World Bank are joining forces to support countries to use technology as an accelerator to address key global education challenges related to equitable access to quality and relevant learning.  This partnership will build on, extend, and complement existing global joint initiatives partnerships and programs that use digital technology to address the learning crisis. It also supports the improvement of teachers’ effectiveness in the classroom; student development of skills needed to succeed in school, work, and life; connecting all schools to the Internet; and research on technological innovations for education. This partnership is unique, representing the convergence and alignment of the World Bank and UNICEF’s global and country-level expertise, reach and ability to support implementation at scale. 

mEducation Alliance

The mEducation Alliance is a non-governmental organization focused on the evidence-driven and sustainable role of technology in education to  advance quality educational outcomes. Formed in 2010, the mEducation Alliance is a  unique, multi-stakeholder convening platform for government and donor policymakers, other investors, researchers, and practitioners to work together, particularly in lower-resource, developing country contexts.

The mEducation Alliance is dedicated to strengthening formal and non-formal educational systems by:

• Convening: connecting EdTech investors, policymakers, and practitioners;
• Communicating: sharing good practices within the global EdTech community; and,
• Catalyzing: accelerating EdTech investments and the scaling of promising interventions and initiatives.

Key mEducation Alliance Key Activities and Product Highlights

• Ecosystem building for and acceleration of EdTech interventions
• Dissemination of good practices via a variety of multimedia channels
• Annual Symposia and other networking events (virtual and in person)
• EdTech research profiles and research roundtables
• Landscape and literature reviews
• Investment consultations for donors and EdTech service providers
• Catalyzing education grand challenges and competition calls
• Working groups for donors and policymakers
• Launch and support of a range of signature EdTech initiatives (e.g, Math Attacks!, Young Digital Champions, EdTech Academy)

The World Bank is an alliance member, along with the British Council, EdTech Hub, GIZ, Gesci, Global Partnership for Education, GSMA, IAmLearn, IDRC CRDI, ISTE, ITU, KERIS, Norad, OAS, Peace Corps, SPRIDER, US State Department, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNESCO, DFID, USAID, World Vision, World Wide Web Foundation, Brookings, and ADEA.

Choosing our Future: Education for Climate Action

AI Revolution in Education

Tipping the scales: AI's dual impact on developing nations

Flyer: EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY OR ‘EDTECH’ – April 2022

Blog:  EdTech hope or hype? Insights from East Asia Pacific

EduTech Blog Series

Digital Education in Latin America and the Caribbean 

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Main Insights & Analytics Top 100 innovative EdTech projects in Russia and the CIS 2020

Top 100 innovative EdTech projects in Russia and the CIS 2020

In August 2020, HolonIQ announced first annual Russia & CIS EdTech 100 — a list of the 100 most innovative education technology companies in Russia and CIS countries.The HolonIQ Education Intelligence Unit evaluated 800+ organizations from the region powered by data and insights from our Global Intelligence Platform. Ranking represents the breadth and depth of the region’s ecosystem, with strong representation from both the K12 and Workforce sectors, where innovation is supporting Tech Upskilling, Language Learning as well as technology-led innovations in XR, Games and Simulations as well as STEAM and Coding. While all countries in the region have innovative solutions, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan and Armenia are the most represented in the 2020 Russia & CIS EdTech 100.

Ranking of Russian Edtech companies (Q1 2020)

The 2020 AI Strategy Landscape

The Global AI Strategy Landscape 2019

Tech in Moscow #21 (25-31 January 2021)

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Lessons from technology - 8 Innovative educational projects

The new school year is about to start all over the world. In the US, it started the 1st of August, In Europe, most schools start on the 1st of September. Nonetheless, a new school year is always exciting. Schools try to surpass themselves every new school year.

To do that, schools set up schoolwide projects, and teachers try to reinvent themselves using their creativity. Frontline Education reached out to us with the idea of combining amazing stories of schools transforming their processes with technology by setting up innovating projects.

This post will show you 8 educational projects that make excellent use of technology to make both small and big changes. We hope that these ideas inspire you.

Innovative classroom projects

1. the camera doesn’t lie.

When we think of innovative technology, terms like artificial intelligence and machine learning certainly come to mind. But teachers at Martin County School District in Florida are enhancing their classrooms with a more ordinary piece of technology — a camera.

“Any serious athlete watches footage of their performances,” April Strong, a former teacher and now instructional coach, told us. “Why not teachers, too?”

April started using video in two ways. First, by watching other experienced teachers who have recorded and shared their teaching videos. Then, by reviewing her own classroom instruction. To get started, she borrowed an iPad from the school’s media center and simply pushed record every single day. The value, she found, was not only in accountability to her craft, but it also brought clarity to her teaching—and still does.

“Video brought clarity to my practice so I could bring the greatest work to my classroom for my students. That’s the power of video. Nobody told me I had to do it. There was no other reason other than it was the perfect time because I was wondering what I truly looked like as a teacher. Video was, and is still, very clarifying. I might be using the most effective strategy ever, but if I don’t actually see it as my students saw it, I’m not growing and I’m not truly clear on if I hit my target. That’s what makes me most passionate about video in the classroom.”

Using video helped shape how April and Martin County School District teachers become the best in their profession. When asked how others should get started, her message was simple: “All you need is your cell phone, and a place to prop it up, and the bravery to literally just push that red button.”

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2. Johnsonville Learning network

Anthony Johnson is a 4th & 5th-grade science and social studies educator. He’s also an Apple Distinguished Educator, TED Innovative Educator, Lego Master Educator, Defined STEM Certified Educator and Rowan-Salisbury Schools Teacher of the Year for 2016-17. AND the mayor of Johnsonville, his classroom.

Anthony’s classroom, called Johnsonville, focuses on three main elements: collaboration, critical thinking, and citizenship. Anthony’s goal is to inspire a love for learning. Johnsonville is a very busy place that encourages hands-on learning and uses interesting projects to teach students everything about science and social studies.

He uses “Hotweels” to teach students the basics of physics like Newton’s third law, “Spheros”, “Lego” and drones to teach them about forces and motion, and a 3D printer to teach them about the human body. Check out how he does this right here:

Innovative school-wide projects

3. ar school wall.

Augmented Reality is an excellent tool to plan an interactive learning walk in your school to show (new) parents around. Only recently, principal Joost Dendooven of the Mozaiek primary school in Belgium renovated his school’s hallway with a new eye-catcher: a photo wall.

The school selected more than 400 photos out of the school’s archive and placed them on the wall. Then, the school added an augmented reality effect to the photos on the wall using the HP Reveal app. In order to add augmented reality effects to the photo wall, the school looked for interesting newspaper articles and fun videos about their school activities.

When parents or other visitors enter the hallway, they get an iPad or iPhone with the installed AR-app. All they have to do is scan a particular photo on the photo wall with their device and the image will come to life with some background information, a newspaper article or a video.

Even around the school and on the playground, they added AR-effects with videos and explanations of school activities that took place.

4. Cutting Edge Rural

Forty-five miles west of Columbus, Ohio sits Graham Local Schools in rural Champagne County. Three buildings make up the entire school district: one elementary building, a middle school, and a high school. Rolling hills and fertile farmland are abundant in this section of Ohio, access to professional development and neighboring resources, however, are not. So when then-superintendent Dr. Kirk Koennecke began his role, his challenge was making sure teachers had opportunities to grow while balancing budgeting needs and the reality of how far a district can send their teachers for those opportunities.

That’s where technology and innovative thinking came in.

Like many rural districts, it’s not always easy for Graham Local Schools to access in-person professional development, so they began using a blended learning model, allowing remote teachers to learn on their own time, in the way that works best for them.

“We’ve really tried to become more progressive and personalize a model of professional learning at Graham where teachers get to choose from a menu of opportunities, most of which are led by our own staff.”

Dr. Koennecke utilized personalized learning pathways, where teachers can choose an area of development, allowing them to feel a greater connection to their educational journey. He wanted to empower his teachers and even started encouraging them to meet students and professionals where they are — on any platform.

“The last thing that we did is, we’ve tried to push social media use with our teachers. While we don’t require it, I’m very proud of the way the use of Twitter and Facebook and Instagram have grown in our district to try to meet people where they are, especially now students. Our Instagram accounts are growing and growing because we’re trying to push information to students. But Twitter is a way that all of our leaders and many of our teachers not only share and celebrate information in each other, but also learn.”

5. Appy Day

As there are many interesting educational events around the globe, the Primary school “Mozaiek” is worth your visit (if you’re from Belgium of course). Every school that focuses on using technology to optimize a students’ learning outcomes should consider sharing their ideas by organizing an inspirational day for all educators in the environment. It’s very important that other principals and educators learn from each other and step out of their comfort zone. There’s only so much to learn.

Appy Day focuses on practical classroom examples and several “spark”- sessions. 6 Belgian Top teachers share their knowledge of how an iPad can be the lever to a powerful learning environment. Appy Day also teaches visitors how a school can transform digitally in the most efficient way. Maybe your school is next to organize an “Appy Day”.

Innovative world-wide school projects

6. the kakuma project.

Koen Timmers , a top-10 Global teacher award nominee, is the driving force behind the Kakuma Project project. This project, started in 2015, is a group of more than 350 teachers from 75 countries over 6 continents willing to offer free education via Skype. They sent some laptops to the Kakuma Refugee Camp (Kenya), and started to teach via Skype.

Imagine up to 200 students taking a look at one single laptop screen. The teachers teach courses like Maths, Science, English, and Religion to the refugees.

Besides the main goal – to educate refugee students – this project also connects students from all over the world with the refugee students so they get a better understanding of what “living as a refugee” actually means.

7. The innovation playlist

First, watch this video that raises an important question: “What is school for?”.

Now, dive into these important questions: To what extent does this video reflect the perspectives of different constituencies in your school community? Would you be willing to ask your students to watch it? Why or why not?

Rather difficult isn’t it? This video is one of the many resources on the innovation playlist, a playlist that wants to encourage educators and principals to change the old fashioned school system for the better. The Innovation Playlist can help your school make a positive and informed change. It represents a teacher-led model, based on small steps leading to big change. It shows you best practices from innovating educators and non-profits from across the US.

8. Teach SDGs

Teach SDGs stands for teaching Sustainable Development Goals. There are 17 SDG’s, such as “No poverty”, “Clean water and sanitation” or “Life below water”.

Teaching students about these topics and making them aware of these world problems is one thing. Engaging them to step up is another. Students need to look for “solutions” and pitch their idea. They can use social media and other tools to shape their project.

To give you an idea of the impact students can have: A school in Canada used a 3D printer to print coral reefs, a technique to make sure that the real coral reefs don’t fade. Another school found out about mealworms that consume plastic.

During this project, students make videos of what they’ve learned and share them with other schools so they learn from each other across the globe.

Looks like you got some new ideas for the starting new school year. I hope these innovative projects inspired you to think bigger and more creative. Or that they simply gave you some new ideas on how to develop your own teaching skills. If you need more on professional development, this post helps you to get started. And if you’re looking to digitize your lessons, you should try out BookWidgets . 👍

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The Evolution of Technology in K–12 Classrooms: 1659 to Today

Alexander Huls is a Toronto-based writer whose work has appeared in  The New York Times ,  Popular Mechanics ,  Esquire ,  The Atlantic  and elsewhere.

In the 21st century, it can feel like advanced technology is changing the K–12 classroom in ways we’ve never seen before. But the truth is, technology and education have a long history of evolving together to dramatically change how students learn.

With more innovations surely headed our way, why not look back at how we got to where we are today, while looking forward to how educators can continue to integrate new technologies into their learning?

DISCOVER:  Special education departments explore advanced tech in their classrooms.

Using Technology in the K–12 Classroom: A History

1659: magic lantern.

• Inventor:  Christiaan Huygens
• A Brief History:  An ancestor of the slide projector, the magic lantern projected glass slides with light from oil lamps or candles. In the 1680s, the technology was brought to the education space to show detailed anatomical illustrations, which were difficult to sketch on a chalkboard.
• Interesting Fact:  Huygens initially regretted his creation, thinking it was too frivolous.

1795: Pencil

• Inventor:  Nicolas-Jacques Conté
• A Brief History : Versions of the pencil can be traced back hundreds of years, but what’s considered the modern pencil is credited to Conté, a scientist in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army. It made its impact on the classroom, however, when it began to be mass produced in the 1900s.
• Interesting Fact:  The Aztecs used a form of graphite pencil in the 13th century.

1801: Chalkboard

• Inventor:  James Pillans
• A Brief History:  Pillans — a headmaster at a high school in Edinburgh, Scotland — created the first front-of-class chalkboard, or “blackboard,” to better teach his students geography with large maps. Prior to his creation, educators worked with students on smaller, individual pieces of wood or slate. In the 1960s, the creation was upgraded to a green board, which became a familiar fixture in every classroom.
• Interesting Fact:  Before chalkboards were commercially manufactured, some were made do-it-yourself-style with ingredients like pine board, egg whites and charred potatoes.

1888: Ballpoint Pen

• Inventory:  John L. Loud
• A Brief History:  John L. Loud invented and patented the first ballpoint pen after seeking to create a tool that could write on leather. It was not a commercial success. Fifty years later, following the lapse of Loud’s patent, Hungarian journalist László Bíró invented a pen with a quick-drying special ink that wouldn’t smear thanks to a rolling ball in its nib.
• Interesting Fact:  When ballpoint pens debuted in the U.S., they were so popular that Gimbels, the department store selling them, made $81 million in today’s money within six months.

LEARN MORE:  Logitech Pen works with Chromebooks to combine digital and physical learning.

1950s: Overhead Projector

• Inventor:  Roger Appeldorn
• A Brief History:  Overhead projects were used during World War II for mission briefings. However, 3M employee Appeldorn is credited with creating not only a projectable transparent film, but also the overhead projectors that would find a home in classrooms for decades.
• Interesting Fact:  Appeldorn’s creation is the predecessor to today’s  bright and efficient laser projectors .

1959: Photocopier

• Inventor:  Chester Carlson
• A Brief History:  Because of his arthritis, patent attorney and inventor Carlson wanted to create a less painful alternative to making carbon copies. Between 1938 and 1947, working with The Haloid Photographic Company, Carlson perfected the process of electrophotography, which led to development of the first photocopy machines.
• Interesting Fact:  Haloid and Carlson named their photocopying process xerography, which means “dry writing” in Greek. Eventually, Haloid renamed its company (and its flagship product line) Xerox .

1967: Handheld Calculator

• Inventor:   Texas Instruments
• A Brief History:  As recounted in our  history of the calculator , Texas Instruments made calculators portable with a device that weighed 45 ounces and featured a small keyboard with 18 keys and a visual display of 12 decimal digits.
• Interesting Fact:  The original 1967 prototype of the device can be found in the Smithsonian Institution’s  National Museum of American History .

1981: The Osborne 1 Laptop

• Inventor:  Adam Osborne, Lee Felsenstein
• A Brief History:  Osborne, a computer book author, teamed up with computer engineer Felsenstein to create a portable computer that would appeal to general consumers. In the process, they provided the technological foundation that made modern one-to-one devices — like Chromebooks — a classroom staple.
• Interesting Fact:  At 24.5 pounds, the Osborne 1 was about as big and heavy as a sewing machine, earning it the current classification of a “luggable” computer, rather than a laptop.

1990: World Wide Web

• Inventor:  Tim Berners-Lee
• A Brief History:  In the late 1980s, British scientist Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web to enable information sharing between scientists and academics. It wasn’t long before the Web could connect anyone, anywhere to a wealth of information, and it was soon on its way to powering the modern classroom.
• Interesting Fact:  The first web server Berners-Lee created was so new, he had to put a sign on the computer that read, “This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!”

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What Technology Is Used in Today’s K–12 Classrooms?

Technology has come so far that modern classrooms are more technologically advanced than many science labs were two decades ago. Students have access to digital textbooks,  personal devices , collaborative  cloud-based tools , and  interactive whiteboards . Emerging technologies now being introduced to K–12 classrooms include voice assistants, virtual reality devices and 3D printers.

Perhaps the most important thing about ed tech in K–12 isn’t what the technology is, but how it’s used.

How to Integrate Technology into K–12 Classrooms

The first step to integrating technology into the K–12 classroom is  figuring out which solution to integrate , given the large variety of tools available to educators. That variety comes with benefits — like the ability to align tech with district objectives and grade level — but also brings challenges.

“It’s difficult to know how to choose the appropriate digital tool or resource,” says Judi Harris, professor and Pavey Family Chair in Educational Technology at the William & Mary School of Education. “Teachers need some familiarity with the tools so that they understand the potential advantages and disadvantages.”

Judi Harris Professor and Pavey Family Chair in Educational Technology, William and Mary School of Education

K–12 IT leaders should also be careful not to focus too much on technology implementation at the expense of curriculum-based learning needs. “What districts need to ask themselves is not only whether they’re going to adopt a technology, but how they’re going to adopt it,” says Royce Kimmons, associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University.

In other words, while emerging technologies may be exciting, acquiring them without proper consideration of their role in improving classroom learning will likely result in mixed student outcomes. For effective integration, educators should ask themselves, in what ways would the tech increase or support a student’s productivity and learning outcomes? How will it improve engagement?

Integrating ed tech also requires some practical know-how. “Teachers need to be comfortable and confident with the tools they ask students to use,” says Harris.

Professional development for new technologies is crucial, as are supportive IT teams, tech providers with generous onboarding programs and technology integration specialists. Harris also points to initiatives like YES: Youth and Educators Succeeding, a nonprofit organization that prepares students to act as resident experts and classroom IT support.

KEEP READING:  What is the continued importance of professional development in K–12 education?

But as educational technology is rolled out and integrated, it’s important to keep academic goals in sight. “We should never stop focusing on how to best understand and help the learner to achieve those learning objectives,” says Harris.

That should continue to be the case as the technology timeline unfolds, something Harris has witnessed firsthand during her four decades in the field. “It’s been an incredible thing to watch and to participate in,” she notes. “The great majority of teachers are extremely eager to learn and to do anything that will help their students learn better.”

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Technology Integration in STEM Education: Tools and Techniques

Integrating technology in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education for K-12 students helps create engaging learning experiences for future-ready students. This blog explores STEM educational technology and digital resources that support innovative teaching strategies that enhance STEM education. Dive in to discover how these tools and techniques can transform your classroom.

The Importance of Technology in STEM Education

Technology in STEM education enhances learning by making it interactive and engaging, fostering critical thinking and creativity, two of the qualities most valued by employers. 1 Students also build essential skills for future STEM careers by working with technology, helping them prepare to meet the demands of a technology-driven world.

Using Technology to Support STEM Learning

Technology supports a blended learning approach to instruction, combining digital and in-person classwork to enhance learning by offering personalized, student-centered experiences. 2 One effective method within this model is the flipped classroom , where students first encounter new material through online lectures or readings before coming to class. Class time is then dedicated to interactive activities that deepen understanding and application of concepts. This approach fosters independent learning and allows for more personalized instruction, making complex STEM disciplines more approachable and engaging.

Online Collaboration Tools

Digital collaboration tools enhance stem learning along with student productivity and creativity. Applicable across subjects, these tools allow students to brainstorm, create media, collaborate on projects, annotate, provide and receive feedback, or simply connect. These tools enable students to share research materials, document their thoughts, and communicate privately with teachers, giving them a voice in their learning process. 3 Here are some ways online collaboration tools can support active learning in STEM education:

• Live Discussion : Video conferencing tools like Zoom allow breakout rooms, facilitating online learning through virtual discussions and small group work.
• Text-Based Discussion : Platforms like NowComment and Parlay allow students to engage in text-based discussions, fostering critical thinking and nuanced responses. 4  
• Project Management : Digital bulletin boards like Padlet or Nearpod Collaborate help manage projects and organize information.
• Collaborative Model Building : Students can work together in virtual worlds like Minecraft and Roblox to build models.
• Peer Feedback : Students can record videos on platforms like Flip, allowing classmates to comment or create response videos. 5  

Tools and Technologies for Teaching STEM Subjects

Tools for teaching STEM subjects range from broadly applicable classroom technologies to specialized tools designed specifically for STEM education. Here's an overview of some technologies that enhance learning and engagement, helping students develop critical skills:

Interactive whiteboards

Interactive whiteboards make learning more interactive and engaging, supporting personalized and collaborative education. They enhance student-centered learning by allowing students to share screens, work on projects, and participate in educational activities. Teachers gain flexibility to incorporate multimedia content, boosting engagement and learning outcomes. 6

Data Analysis Tools

Data analysis tools are essential for developing students' analytical and creative thinking skills, which are foundational for success. 1 Teachers can integrate data science into lesson plans across subjects and grade levels, incorporating technology into different experiential learning activities. Free and paid tools are available, including spreadsheet programs, data visualization, programming, and online data sources.

Spreadsheet software: a foundational tool for organizing, manipulating and visualizing data. Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, and Apple Numbers are versatile, easy to learn, and offer a strong foundation for data analysis.

Data visualization tools: help identify patterns and trends and facilitate data storytelling. CODAP is a free online data analysis platform for education from the Concord Consortium. Tableau also offers a limited free version of its powerful visualization platform.

Programming languages: facilitate advanced data analysis and manipulation. Python and R can be introduced to students in higher grade levels.

Online data platforms: allow students to explore and analyze real-world data sets. Kaggle and data.gov are two examples.

Coding Platforms

Teaching coding provides numerous educational benefits. It enhances problem-solving skills and analytical thinking. Students learn to understand computer processes, which complements their ability to use applications effectively. Coding also helps develop attention to detail, logical thinking, persistence, and collaborative skills. It encourages students to construct, hypothesize, explore, and experiment independently, fostering their natural drive to learn. 7

Various coding tools cater to beginners, intermediate, and advanced learners, offering instruction and practice through games and practical applications. Coding platforms enhance students' literacy, logic, and iteration skills. 8

Younger students often start with block-based coding tools, where coding language is embedded in drag-and-drop blocks that snap together. Code.org, Scratch, Kodable, Microsoft MakeCode Arcade, and Tynker all offer tools for beginning instruction. Code.org, MakeCode Arcade and Scratch are free tools. 9

Code.org and MakeCode Arcade also support more advanced coding education. Other free apps include EarSketch for making music and Autodesk Tinkercad for computer-aided design. 10

Simulation Software

Simulation software offers interactive and practical ways to understand complex concepts, making learning more engaging and effective. It provides a safe space for students to experiment and learn from mistakes, fostering critical thinking and resilience. Simulations replicate real-life scenarios, making learning relevant and impactful, allowing continuous practice, and promoting deep understanding. In school laboratories, simulations enhance science education by enabling virtual experiments. Teachers can use simulations for accurate assessments and early detection of learning issues, facilitating personalized support. 11

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)

AR and VR technologies can offer students immersive, participatory STEM learning experiences adaptable to subjects and grade levels. Applications for augmented reality tools such as Wakelet, Merge Edu, and CleverBooks Augmented Classroom range from virtual field trips to explorations of the solar system, the human body or the chemical composition of a substance. 12

In addition to creating a vivid educational experience, an AR platform can help you differentiate instruction for diverse student learning styles. AR and VR also offer the opportunity to create virtual communities where students can work collaboratively to solve problems, share ideas and develop projects. 13

3D Printing

3D printing enhances student engagement by transforming theoretical concepts into physical objects, which is especially helpful to tactile and kinesthetic learners. 3D printing also helps students acquire technical skills such as CAD modeling, used in various professional fields. Additionally, 3D printing fosters essential soft skills like creativity, problem-solving, and teamwork, as students often collaborate on design and printing tasks. Using bio-based materials like PLA can make 3D printing safer and more affordable. 14

Robotics Kits for STEM Education

Robotics kits provide versatile tools for teaching STEM subjects across various grade levels. These kits help students develop critical skills such as engineering design, programming, problem-solving, collaboration, and project management. 15

In elementary school, kits from LEGO and Bee-Bot introduce basic engineering and coding skills through hands-on activities that connect to math and science. Students can build robots to visualize story characters or solve mathematical problems, fostering early STEM engagement. 16

More advanced kits from Lego, Sphero, Ozobot, and Vex Robotics offer a deeper exploration of engineering and programming concepts for middle and high school students. Students design, build, and program robots to investigate scientific solutions, perform collaborative tasks, and compete in challenges, applying their physics, algebra, and computer science knowledge. 15

Other Digital Resources for STEM Education

In addition to the tools discussed here, digital resources for teaching STEM skills include digital textbooks, educational apps, and e-learning platforms.

Digital textbooks and online resources provide up-to-date and accessible STEM content, enhancing learning and making information readily available to students and educators.

Educational apps like Khan Academy, Duolingo, and Wolfram Alpha support STEM learning. Khan Academy offers free online tools, video lessons, practice exercises, and an AI-powered teaching assistant. Duolingo provides free, gamified language instruction, while Wolfram Alpha uses AI to answer factual questions and provide visualizations.

Tech-Enhanced STEM Learning Strategies

The STEM education technology discussed here supports effective learning strategies, including project-based learning, gamification, and personalization. Tools such as simulation software and coding platforms support project-based learning and actively involve students in the learning process. In turn, this fosters critical thinking and problem-solving. 11 AR and VR enhance gamification strategies, which make learning immersive and engaging. 17 Personalized learning is supported through adaptive learning technologies and digital resources, addressing diverse student needs.

Master STEM Tools with the University of Iowa

Incorporating technology in STEM education fosters engaging, personalized learning experiences by making learning activities interactive and encouraging curiosity and critical thinking. Combining these tools with gamification and project-based learning strategies can help you better prepare your students for success in STEM fields and our technology-driven world.

Learn more about how you can engage students and support their success in the affordable University of Iowa Online Master of Science in STEM Education . The innovative curriculum will help you develop the research and pedagogical competencies to teach your students the problem-solving and innovation skills to succeed in today’s world. Keep teaching while you learn and complete your degree with a part-time course load in as few as two years. Schedule a call with an admissions outreach advisor today to learn more.

• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2023.pdf
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from study.com/teach/blended-learning.html  
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from commonsense.org/education/lists/best-student-collaboration-tools
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from commonsense.org/education/articles/6-online-discussion-tools-to-fuel-student-engagement
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from edutopia.org/video/how-keep-kids-collaborating-remotely
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2024/04/high-touch-learning-modern-classroom
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from edutopia.org/discussion/coded-success-benefits-learning-program
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from commonsense.org/education/lists/best-apps-and-websites-for-learning-programming-and-coding
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from commonsense.org/education/best-in-class/the-best-block-based-coding-tools-for-beginners
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from commonsense.org/education/best-in-class/the-best-coding-tools-that-go-beyond-the-basics
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from childrenwhocode.com/post/childrenwhocode-the-role-of-simulation-software-in-learning-complex-concepts
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from edutopia.org/article/7-augmented-reality-tools-classroom/
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from edtechreview.in/trends-insights/insights/ar-and-vr-in-education-enhancing-the-learning-experience/
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from sphero.com/blogs/news/3d-printing-in-stem
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from edutopia.org/blog/student-robotics-k-12-curriculum-mark-gura
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from edutopia.org/article/incorporating-robotics-across-curriculum
• Retrieved on August 14, 2024, from edutopia.org/article/using-gamification-ignite-student-learning

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9 Collaborative Technology Projects Your Students Will Love!

If your classroom is far from a 1:1 environment (more like 1:32), it can be hard to find great technology projects that really work.

If your classroom is far from a 1:1 environment (more like 1:32), it can be hard to find great technology projects that really work. Here are some simple tech tools students can use to create awesome projects. Students can work together in cooperative learning groups or independently depending on your access to technology in your school district. Bonus: They’re all free!

Inkle   is a fun digital storytelling tool for students. Rather than having students use Microsoft Word, change things up by having them create a digital book. Students will love adding images to make their story come to life! Cooperative learning idea: Students can collaborate and create a Choose Your Own Adventure story! Each child adds a paragraph to the story and at least two options for readers to choose from. They insert images by adding the link to an image they like online. This Web 2.0 tool is free and the children’s work can be saved and shared.

2. Story Bird

With Story Bird , kids can choose images and invent their very own unique story to go along with the pictures. Students must use their inference skills to depict an image. What is the character feeling? Where does the story take place (setting)? What’s the plot? It’s up to kids to decide after they carefully examine every detail of their image. There is no right or wrong answer.

Cooperative learning idea:  Have students share a computer and agree on an image. Then they go off and depict the image as they see it. The students can then compare and contrast their results.

3. Build Your Wild Self

New York Zoos and Aquarium / Wildlife Conservation Society has an interactive game called  Build Your Wild Self!  Students choose different body parts and limbs for their creature. Then, they choose a habitat. When they’re all finished, the site describes each attribute they chose. For example, orb spider eyes: “You have six eyes, but you can’t see very well. You use your keen sense of touch to track down prey.” 

Cooperative l earning idea:  Have students work together to build a “wild self” and write a paragraph describing what their animal would eat, their animal’s habitat, exceptional characteristics and talents, as well as their unique adaptations. You could also group students into teams to create a habitat that would be suitable for all of their animals!

4. Blabberize

Blabberize is a free tool that makes photos come to life! Students upload a photo, create a mouth and record whatever they would like their image to say!

Cooperative learning idea: Students can take turns talking. This tool can be used to give a history or science report. Students could describe an animal’s adaptations by making the animal they researched talk!

5. Little Bird Tales

Students can create digital books, add or draw photos and insert their very own voice with Little Bird Tales ! You could have each student create a page to create a class book. Click here for an example.

Cooperative learning idea: Older students can work in teams and create a digital book for a presentation. This is a great project for students who don’t enjoy giving oral presentations.

6. What if? Genie

If students aren’t feeling inspired, have them ask the story genie ! The genie randomly generates a “what if?” question for kids. The “what if?” questions are crazy and imaginative, ones kids would have a blast writing about! Hit the genie square to generate a question.

Cooperative learning idea:  Students can share a computer, generate a “What if?” question, then go off and write! Then they can compare and contrast their results.

7. Free Rice

Have students make a difference by practicing their math, chemistry, anatomy, geography, foreign language, vocabulary, grammar, humanities and even for the SAT. “For each answer they get right, 10 grains of rice is donated  through the World Food Programme to help end hunger.”

Cooperative learning idea: Students can go on Free Rice and calculate how much rice they donated as a group and create a graph to show their weekly results. This can be an ongoing project throughout the year. Groups can compare and contrast their results.

A free Animoto account lets students create 30-second videos, which can be challenging!

Cooperative learning idea: Have students explain something in 30 seconds through music and images. Above is an example of a water cycle video.

How many letters can you chain together to form a word? Point value: 3 or 4 letters = 1 point, 5 = 2 points, 6 = 3 points, 7 = 5 points, 8 or more = 11 points. Goal: Try to form as many words as you can before time runs out! Visit  Teacher Led  for a free letter generator!

Cooperative learning idea: Have students work in teams to create words. Then as a math project, they can create fractions (words created / how many times they rolled the dice) or graphs (compare/contrast the number of words created).

Erin Bittman is a designer turned teacher. Check out her blog E Is for Explore ! You can also find E Is for Explore! on Facebook and Pinterest .

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20 Activities to Support Letter Naming Fluency

Super fun ways to practice, practice, practice! Continue Reading

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Global Education Monitoring Report

• 2023 GEM REPORT

Technology in education

• Recommendations
• 2023 Webpage
• Press Release
• RELATED PUBLICATIONS
• Background papers
• 2021/2 GEM Report
• 2020 Report
• 2019 Report
• 2017/8 Report
• 2016 Report

A tool on whose terms?

Ismael Martínez Sánchez/ProFuturo

• Monitoring SDG 4
• 2023 webpage

Major advances in technology, especially digital technology, are rapidly transforming the world. Information and communication technology (ICT) has been applied for 100 years in education, ever since the popularization of radio in the 1920s. But it is the use of digital technology over the past 40 years that has the most significant potential to transform education. An education technology industry has emerged and focused, in turn, on the development and distribution of education content, learning management systems, language applications, augmented and virtual reality, personalized tutoring, and testing. Most recently, breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI), methods have increased the power of education technology tools, leading to speculation that technology could even supplant human interaction in education.

In the past 20 years, learners, educators and institutions have widely adopted digital technology tools. The number of students in MOOCs increased from 0 in 2012 to at least 220 million in 2021. The language learning application Duolingo had 20 million daily active users in 2023, and Wikipedia had 244 million page views per day in 2021. The 2018 PISA found that 65% of 15-year-old students in OECD countries were in schools whose principals agreed that teachers had the technical and pedagogical skills to integrate digital devices in instruction and 54% in schools where an effective online learning support platform was available; these shares are believed to have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Globally, the percentage of internet users rose from 16% in 2005 to 66% in 2022. About 50% of the world’s lower secondary schools were connected to the internet for pedagogical purposes in 2022.

The adoption of digital technology has resulted in many changes in education and learning. The set of basic skills that young people are expected to learn in school, at least in richer countries, has expanded to include a broad range of new ones to navigate the digital world. In many classrooms, paper has been replaced by screens and pens by keyboards. COVID-19 can be seen as a natural experiment where learning switched online for entire education systems virtually overnight. Higher education is the subsector with the highest rate of digital technology adoption, with online management platforms replacing campuses. The use of data analytics has grown in education management. Technology has made a wide range of informal learning opportunities accessible.

Yet the extent to which technology has transformed education needs to be debated. Change resulting from the use of digital technology is incremental, uneven and bigger in some contexts than others. The application of digital technology varies by community and socioeconomic level, by teacher willingness and preparedness, by education level, and by country income. Except in the most technologically advanced countries, computers and devices are not used in classrooms on a large scale. Technology use is not universal and will not become so any time soon. Moreover, evidence is mixed on its impact: Some types of technology seem to be effective in improving some kinds of learning. The short- and long-term costs of using digital technology appear to be significantly underestimated. The most disadvantaged are typically denied the opportunity to benefit from this technology.

Too much attention on technology in education usually comes at a high cost. Resources spent on technology, rather than on classrooms, teachers and textbooks for all children in low- and lower-middle-income countries lacking access to these resources are likely to lead to the world being further away from achieving the global education goal, SDG 4. Some of the world’s richest countries ensured universal secondary schooling and minimum learning competencies before the advent of digital technology. Children can learn without it.

However, their education is unlikely to be as relevant without digital technology. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights defines the purpose of education as promoting the ‘full development of the human personality’, strengthening ‘respect for … fundamental freedoms’ and promoting ‘understanding, tolerance and friendship’. This notion needs to move with the times. An expanded definition of the right to education could include effective support by technology for all learners to fulfil their potential, regardless of context or circumstance.

Clear objectives and principles are needed to ensure that technology use is of benefit and avoids harm. The negative and harmful aspects in the use of digital technology in education and society include risk of distraction and lack of human contact. Unregulated technology even poses threats to democracy and human rights, for instance through invasion of privacy and stoking of hatred. Education systems need to be better prepared to teach about and through digital technology, a tool that must serve the best interests of all learners, teachers and administrators. Impartial evidence showing that technology is being used in some places to improve education, and good examples of such use, need to be shared more widely so that the optimal mode of delivery can be assured for each context.

CAN TECHNOLOGY HELP SOLVE THE MOST IMPORTANT CHALLENGES IN EDUCATION?

Discussions about education technology are focused on technology rather than education. The first question should be: What are the most important challenges in education? As a basis for discussion, consider the following three challenges:

• Equity and inclusion: Is fulfilment of the right to choose the education one wants and to realize one’s full potential through education compatible with the goal of equality? If not, how can education become the great equalizer?
• Quality: Do education’s content and delivery support societies in achieving sustainable development objectives? If not, how can education help learners to not only acquire knowledge but also be agents of change?
• Efficiency: Does the current institutional arrangement of teaching learners in classrooms support the achievement of equity and quality? If not, how can education balance individualized instruction and socialization needs?

How best can digital technology be included in a strategy to tackle these challenges, and under what conditions? Digital technology packages and transmits information on an unprecedented scale at high speed and low cost. Information storage has revolutionized the volume of accessible knowledge. Information processing enables learners to receive immediate feedback and, through interaction with machines, adapt their learning pace and trajectory: Learners can organize the sequence of what they learn to suit their background and characteristics. Information sharing lowers the cost of interaction and communication. But while such technology has tremendous potential, many tools have not been designed for application to education. Not enough attention has been given to how they are applied in education and even less to how they should be applied in different education contexts.

On the question of equity and inclusion , ICT – and digital technology in particular – helps lower the education access cost for some disadvantaged groups: Those who live in remote areas are displaced, face learning difficulties, lack time or have missed out on past education opportunities. But while access to digital technology has expanded rapidly, there are deep divides in access. Disadvantaged groups own fewer devices, are less connected to the internet (Figure 1) and have fewer resources at home. The cost of much technology is falling rapidly but is still too high for some. Households that are better off can buy technology earlier, giving them more advantages and compounding disparity. Inequality in access to technology exacerbates existing inequality in access to education, a weakness exposed during the COVID-19 school closures.

Figure 1: Internet connectivity is highly unequal

Percentage of 3- to 17-year-olds with internet connection at home, by wealth quintile, selected countries, 2017–19 Source: UNICEF database.

Education quality is a multifaceted concept. It encompasses adequate inputs (e.g. availability of technology infrastructure), prepared teachers (e.g. teacher standards for technology use in classrooms), relevant content (e.g. integration of digital literacy in the curriculum) and individual learning outcomes (e.g. minimum levels of proficiency in reading and mathematics). But education quality should also encompass social outcomes. It is not enough for students to be vessels receiving knowledge; they need to be able to use it to help achieve sustainable development in social, economic and environmental terms.

There are a variety of views on the extent to which digital technologies can enhance education quality. Some argue that, in principle, digital technology creates engaging learning environments, enlivens student experiences, simulates situations, facilitates collaboration and expands connections. But others say digital technology tends to support an individualized approach to education, reducing learners’ opportunities to socialize and learn by observing each other in real-life settings. Moreover, just as new technology overcomes some constraints, it brings its own problems. Increased screen time has been associated with adverse impact on physical and mental health. Insufficient regulation has led to unauthorized use of personal data for commercial purposes. Digital technology has also helped spread misinformation and hate speech, including through education.

Improvements to efficiency may be the most promising way for digital technology to make a difference in education. Technology is touted as being able to reduce the time students and teachers spend on menial tasks, time that can be used in other, educationally more meaningful activities. However, there are conflicting views on what is meaningful. The way that education technology is used is more complex than just a substitution of resources. Technology may be one-to-many, one-to-one or peer-to-peer technology. It may require students to learn alone or with others, online or offline, independently or networked. It delivers content, creates learner communities and connects teachers with students. It provides access to information. It may be used for formal or informal learning and can assess what has been learned. It is used as a tool for productivity, creativity, communication, collaboration, design and data management. It may be professionally produced or have user-generated content. It may be specific to schools and place-based or transcend time and place. As in any complex system, each technology tool involves distinct infrastructure, design, content and pedagogy, and each may promote different types of learning.

Technology is evolving too fast to permit evaluation that could inform decisions on legislation, policy and regulation. Research on technology in education is as complex as technology itself. Studies evaluate experiences of learners of various ages using various methodologies applied in contexts as different as self-study, classrooms and schools of diverse sizes and features, non-school settings, and at system level. Findings that apply in some contexts are not always replicable elsewhere. Some conclusions can be drawn from long-term studies as technologies mature but there is an endless stream of new products. Meanwhile, not all impact can be easily measured, given technology’s ubiquity, complexity, utility and heterogeneity. In brief, while there is much general research on education technology, the amount of research for specific applications and contexts is insufficient, making it difficult to prove that a particular technology enhances a particular kind of learning.

Why is there often the perception nevertheless that technology can address major education challenges? To understand the discourse around education technology, it is necessary to look behind the language being used to promote it, and the interests it serves. Who frames the problems technology should address? What are the consequences of such framing for education? Who promotes education technology as a precondition for education transformation? How credible are such claims? What criteria and standards need to be set to evaluate digital technology’s current and potential future contribution to education so as to separate hype from substance? Can evaluation go beyond short-term assessments of impact on learning and capture potential far-reaching consequences of the generalized use of digital technology in education?

Exaggerated claims about technology go hand in hand with exaggerated estimates of its global market size. In 2022, business intelligence providers’ estimates ranged from USD 123 billion to USD 300 billion. These accounts are almost always projected forward, predicting optimistic expansion, yet they fail to give historic trends and verify whether past projections proved true. Such reporting routinely characterizes education technology as essential and technology companies as enablers and disruptors. If optimistic projections are not fulfilled, responsibility is implicitly placed on governments as a way of maintaining indirect pressure on them to increase procurement. Education is criticized as being slow to change, stuck in the past and a laggard when it comes to innovation. Such coverage plays on users’ fascination with novelty but also their fear of being left behind.

The sections below further explore the three challenges this report addresses: equity and inclusion (in terms of access to education for disadvantaged groups and access to content), quality (in terms of teaching through and about digital technology) and efficiency (in terms of education management). After identifying technology’s potential to tackle these challenges, it discusses three conditions that need to be met for that potential to be fulfilled: equitable access, appropriate governance and regulation, and sufficient teacher capacity.

EQUITY AND INCLUSION: ACCESS FOR DISADVANTAGED GROUPS

A wide range of technology brings education to hard-to-reach learners. Technology has historically opened up education to learners facing significant obstacles in access to schools or well-trained teachers. Interactive radio instruction is used in nearly 40 countries. In Nigeria, radio instruction combined with print and audiovisual materials has been used since the 1990s, reaching nearly 80% of nomads and increasing their literacy, numeracy and life skills. Television has helped educate marginalized groups, notably in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Telesecundaria programme in Mexico, combining televised lessons with in-class support and extensive teacher training, increased secondary school enrolment by 21%. Mobile learning devices, often the only type of device accessible to disadvantaged learners, have been used in hard-to-reach areas and emergencies to share educational materials; complement in-person or remote channels; and foster interactions between students, teachers and parents, notably during COVID-19. Adults have been the main target of online distance learning, with open universities having increased participation for both working and disadvantaged adults.

Inclusive technology supports accessibility and personalization for learners with disabilities. Assistive technology removes learning and communication barriers, with numerous studies reporting a significant positive impact on academic engagement, social participation and the well-being of learners with disabilities. However, such devices remain inaccessible and unaffordable in many countries, and teachers often lack specialized training to use them effectively in learning environments. While people with disabilities used to rely exclusively on specialized devices to gain access to education, technology platforms and devices are increasingly incorporating accessibility features, which support inclusive, personalized learning for all students.

Technology supports learning continuity in emergencies. Mapping of 101 distance education projects in crisis contexts in 2020 showed that 70% used radio, television and basic mobile phones. During the Boko Haram crisis in Nigeria, the Technology Enhanced Learning for All programme used mobile phones and radios to support the learning continuity of 22,000 disadvantaged children, with recorded improvement in literacy and numeracy skills. However, there are significant gaps in terms of rigorous evaluation of education technology in emergencies, despite some limited recorded impact. Meanwhile, most projects are led by non-state actors as short-term crisis responses, raising sustainability concerns; education ministries implemented only 12% of the 101 projects.

Technology supported learning during COVID-19, but millions were left out. During school closures, 95% of education ministries carried out some form of distance learning, potentially reaching over 1 billion students globally. Many of the resources used during the pandemic were first developed in response to previous emergencies or rural education, with some countries building on decades of experience with remote learning. Sierra Leone revived the Radio Teaching Programme, developed during the Ebola crisis, one week after schools closed. Mexico expanded content from its Telesecundaria programme to all levels of education. However, at least half a billion, or 31% of students worldwide – mostly the poorest (72%) and those in rural areas (70%) – could not be reached by remote learning. Although 91% of countries used online learning platforms to deliver distance learning during school closures, the platforms only reached a quarter of students globally. For the rest, low-tech interventions such as radio and television were largely used, in combination with paper-based materials and mobile phones for increased interactivity.

Some countries are expanding existing platforms to reach marginalized groups. Less than half of all countries developed long-term strategies for increasing their resilience and the sustainability of interventions as part of their COVID-19 response plans. Many have abandoned distance learning platforms developed during COVID-19, while others are repurposing them to reach marginalized learners. The digital platform set up in Ukraine during the pandemic was expanded once the war broke out in 2022, allowing 85% of schools to complete the academic year.

EQUITY AND INCLUSION: ACCESS TO CONTENT

Technology facilitates content creation and adaptation. Open educational resources (OERs) encourage the reuse and repurposing of materials to cut development time, avoid duplication of work and make materials more context-specific or relevant to learners. They also significantly reduce the cost of access to content. In the US state of North Dakota, an initial investment of USD 110,000 to shift to OERs led to savings of over USD 1 million in student costs. Social media increases access to user-generated content. YouTube, a major player in both formal and informal learning, is used by about 80% of the world’s top 113 universities. Moreover, collaborative digital tools can improve the diversity and quality of content creation. In South Africa, the Siyavule initiative supported tutor collaboration on the creation of primary and secondary education textbooks.

Digitization of educational content simplifies access and distribution. Many countries, including Bhutan and Rwanda, have created static digital versions of traditional textbooks to increase availability. Others, including India and Sweden, have produced digital textbooks that encourage interactivity and multimodal learning. Digital libraries and educational content repositories such as the National Academic Digital Library of Ethiopia, National Digital Library of India and Teachers Portal in Bangladesh help teachers and learners find relevant materials. Learning management platforms, which have become a key part of the contemporary learning environment, help organize content by integrating digital resources into course structures.

Open access resources help overcome barriers. Open universities and MOOCs can eliminate time, location and cost barriers to access. In Indonesia, where low participation in tertiary education is largely attributed to geographical challenges, MOOCs play an important role in expanding access to post-secondary learning. During COVID-19, MOOC enrolment surged, with the top three providers adding as many users in April 2020 as in all of 2019. Technology can also remove language barriers. Translation tools help connect teachers and learners from various countries and increase the accessibility of courses by non-native students.

Ensuring and assessing the quality of digital content is difficult. The sheer quantity of content and its decentralized production pose logistical challenges for evaluation. Several strategies have been implemented to address this. China established specific quality criteria for MOOCs to be nationally recognized. The European Union developed its OpenupED quality label. India strengthened the link between non-formal and formal education. Micro-credentials are increasingly used to ensure that institution and learner both meet minimum standards. Some platforms aim to improve quality by recentralizing content production. YouTube, for example, has been funnelling financing and resources to a few trusted providers and partnering with well-established education institutions.

Technology may reinforce existing inequality in both access to and production of content. Privileged groups still produce most content. A study of higher-education repositories with OER collections found that nearly 90% were created in Europe or North America; 92% of the material in the OER Commons global library is in English. This influences who has access to digital content. MOOCs, for example, mainly benefit educated learners – studies have shown around 80% of participants on major platforms already have a tertiary degree – and those from richer countries. The disparity is due to divides in digital skills, internet access, language and course design. Regional MOOCs cater to local needs and languages but can also worsen inequality.

TEACHING AND LEARNING

Technology has been used to support teaching and learning in multiple ways. Digital technology offers two broad types of opportunities. First, it can improve instruction by addressing quality gaps, increasing opportunities to practise, increasing available time and personalizing instruction. Second, it can engage learners by varying how content is represented, stimulating interaction and prompting collaboration. Systematic reviews over the past two decades on technology’s impact on learning find small to medium-sized positive effects compared to traditional instruction. However, evaluations do not always isolate technology’s impact in an intervention, making it difficult to attribute positive effects to technology alone rather than to other factors, such as added instruction time, resources or teacher support. Technology companies can have disproportionate influence on evidence production. For example, Pearson funded studies contesting independent analysis that showed its products had no impact.

The prevalence of ICT use in classrooms is not high, even in the world’s richest countries. The 2018 PISA found that only about 10% of 15-year-old students in over 50 participating education systems used digital devices for more than an hour a week in mathematics and science lessons, on average (Figure 2) . The 2018 International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) showed that in the 12 participating education systems, simulation and modelling software in classrooms was available to just over one third of students, with country levels ranging from 8% in Italy to 91% in Finland.

Figure 2: Even in upper-middle- and high-income countries, technology use in mathematics and science classrooms is limited

Percentage of 15-year-old students who used digital devices for at least one hour per week in mathematics or science classroom lessons, selected upper-middle- and high-income countries, 2018 Source: 2018 PISA database.

Recorded lessons can address teacher quality gaps and improve teacher time allocation. In China, lesson recordings from high-quality urban teachers were delivered to 100 million rural students. An impact evaluation showed improvements in Chinese skills by 32% and a 38% long-term reduction in the rural–urban earning gap. However, just delivering materials without contextualizing and providing support is insufficient. In Peru, the One Laptop Per Child programme distributed over 1 million laptops loaded with content, but no positive impact on learning resulted, partly due to the focus on provision of devices instead of the quality of pedagogical integration.

Enhancing technology-aided instruction with personalization can improve some types of learning. Personalized adaptive software generates analytics that can help teachers track student progress, identify error patterns, provide differentiated feedback and reduce workload on routine tasks. Evaluations of the use of a personalized adaptive software in India documented learning gains in after-school settings and for low-performing students. However, not all widely used software interventions have strong evidence of positive effects compared to teacher-led instruction. A meta-analysis of studies on an AI learning and assessment system that has been used by over 25 million students in the United States found it was no better than traditional classroom teaching in improving outcomes.

Varied interaction and visual representation can enhance student engagement. A meta-analysis of 43 studies published from 2008 to 2019 found that digital games improved cognitive and behavioural outcomes in mathematics. Interactive whiteboards can support teaching and learning if well integrated in pedagogy; but in the United Kingdom, despite large-scale adoption, they were mostly used to replace blackboards. Augmented, mixed or virtual reality used as an experiential learning tool for repeated practice in life-like conditions in technical, vocational and scientific subjects is not always as effective as real-life training but may be superior to other digital methods, such as video demonstrations.

Technology offers teachers low-cost and convenient ways to communicate with parents. The Colombian Institute of Family Welfare’s distance education initiative, which targeted 1.7 million disadvantaged children, relied on social media platforms to relay guidance to caregivers on pedagogical activities at home. However, uptake and effectiveness of behavioural interventions targeting caregivers are limited by parental education levels, as well as lack of time and material resources.

Student use of technology in classrooms and at home can be distracting, disrupting learning. A meta-analysis of research on student mobile phone use and its impact on education outcomes, covering students from pre-primary to higher education in 14 countries, found a small negative effect, and a larger one at the university level. Studies using PISA data indicate a negative association between ICT use and student performance beyond a threshold of moderate use. Teachers perceive tablet and phone use as hampering classroom management. More than one in three teachers in seven countries participating in the 2018 ICILS agreed that ICT use in classrooms distracted students. Online learning relies on student ability to self-regulate and may put low-performing and younger learners at increased risk of disengagement.

DIGITAL SKILLS

The definition of digital skills has been evolving along with digital technology. An analysis for this report shows that 54% of countries have identified digital skills standards for learners. The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp), developed on behalf of the European Commission, has five competence areas: information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, safety, and problem-solving. Some countries have adopted digital skills frameworks developed by non-state, mostly commercial, actors. The International Computer Driving Licence (ICDL) has been promoted as a ‘digital skills standard’ but is associated mainly with Microsoft applications. Kenya and Thailand have endorsed the ICDL as the digital literacy standard for use in schools.

Digital skills are unequally distributed. In the 27 European Union (EU) countries, 54% of adults had at least basic digital skills in 2021. In Brazil, 31% of adults had at least basic skills, but the level was twice as high in urban as in rural areas, three times as high among those in the labour force as among those outside it, and nine times as high in the top socioeconomic group as in the two bottom groups. The overall gender gap in digital skills is small, but wider in specific skills. In 50 countries, 6.5% of males and 3.2% of females could write a computer program. In Belgium, Hungary and Switzerland, no more than 2 women for every 10 men could program; in Albania, Malaysia and Palestine, 9 women for every 10 men could do so. According to the 2018 PISA, 5% of 15-year-olds with the strongest reading skills but 24% of those with the weakest ones were at risk of being misled by a typical phishing email.

Formal skills training may not be the main way of acquiring digital skills. About one quarter of adults in EU countries, ranging from 16% in Italy to 40% in Sweden, had acquired skills through a ‘formalised educational institution’. Informal learning, such as self-study and informal assistance from colleagues, relatives and friends, was used by twice as many. Still, formal education is important: In 2018, those with tertiary education in Europe were twice as likely (18%) as those with upper secondary education (9%) to engage in free online training or self-study to improve their computer, software or application use. Solid mastery of literacy and numeracy skills is positively associated with mastery of at least some digital skills.

A curriculum content mapping of 16 education systems showed that Greece and Portugal dedicated less than 10% of the curriculum to data and media literacy while Estonia and the Republic of Korea embedded both in half their curricula. In some countries, media literacy in curricula is explicitly connected to critical thinking in subject disciplines, as under Georgia’s New School Model. Asia is characterized by a protectionist approach to media literacy that prioritizes information control over education. But in the Philippines, the Association for Media and Information Literacy successfully advocated for incorporation of media and information literacy in the curriculum, and it is now a core subject in grades 11 and 12.

Digital skills in communication and collaboration matter in hybrid learning arrangements. Argentina promoted teamwork skills as part of a platform for programming and robotics competitions in primary and secondary education. Mexico offers teachers and students digital education resources and tools for remote collaboration, peer learning and knowledge sharing. Ethical digital behaviour includes rules, conventions and standards to be learned, understood and practised by digital users when using digital spaces. Digital communication’s anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity and minimization of authority can make it difficult for individuals to understand its complexities.

Competences in digital content creation include selecting appropriate delivery formats and creating copy, audio, video and visual assets; integrating digital content; and respecting copyright and licences. The ubiquitous use of social media has turned content creation into a skill with direct application in electronic commerce. In Indonesia, the Siberkreasi platform counts collaborative engagement among its core activities. The Kenya Copyright Board collaborates closely with universities to provide copyright education and conducts frequent training sessions for students in the visual arts and ICT.

Education systems need to strengthen preventive measures and respond to many safety challenges, from passwords to permissions, helping learners understand the implications of their online presence and digital footprint. In Brazil, 29% of schools have conducted debates or lectures on privacy and data protection. In New Zealand, the Te Mana Tūhono (Power of Connectivity) programme delivers digital protection and security services to almost 2,500 state and state-integrated schools. A systematic review of interventions in Australia, Italy, Spain and the United States estimated that the average programme had a 76% chance of reducing cyberbullying perpetration. In Wales, United Kingdom, the government has advised schools how to prepare for and respond to harmful viral online content and hoaxes.

The definition of problem-solving skills varies widely among education systems. Many countries perceive them in terms of coding and programming and as part of a computer science curriculum that includes computational thinking, algorithm use and automation. A global review estimated that 43% of students in high-income countries, 62% in upper-middle-income, 5% in lower-middle-income but no students in low-income countries take computer science as compulsory in primary and/or secondary education. Only 20% of education systems require schools to offer computer science as an elective or core course. Non-state actors often support coding and programming skills. In Chile, Code.org has partnered with the government to provide educational resources in computer science.

EDUCATION MANAGEMENT

Education management information systems focus on efficiency and effectiveness. Education reforms have been characterized by increased school autonomy, target setting and results-based performance, all of which require more data. By one measure, since the 1990s, the number of policies making reference to data, statistics and information has increased by 13 times in high-income, 9 times in upper-middle-income, and 5 times in low- and lower-middle-income countries. But only 54% of countries globally – and as low as 22% in sub-Saharan Africa – have unique student identification mechanisms.

Geospatial data can support education management. Geographical information systems help address equity and efficiency in infrastructure and resource distribution in education systems. School mapping has been used to foster diversity and reduce inequality of opportunity. Ireland links three databases to decide in which of its 314 planning areas to build new schools. Geospatial data can identify areas where children live too far from the nearest school. For instance, it has been estimated that 5% of the population in Guatemala and 41% in the United Republic of Tanzania live more than 3 kilometres away from the nearest primary school.

Education management information systems struggle with data integration. In 2017, Malaysia introduced the Education Data Repository as part of its 2019–23 ICT Transformation Plan to progressively integrate its 350 education data systems and applications scattered across institutions. By 2019, it had integrated 12 of its main data systems, aiming for full integration through a single data platform by the end of 2023. In New Zealand, schools had been procuring student management systems independently and lack of interoperability between them was preventing authorities from tracking student progress. In 2019, the government began setting up the National Learner Repository and Data Exchange to be hosted in cloud data centres, but deployment was paused in 2021 due to cybersecurity concerns. European countries have been addressing interoperability concerns collectively to facilitate data sharing between countries and across multiple applications used in higher-education management through the EMREX project.

Computer-based assessments and computer adaptive testing have been replacing many paper-based assessments. They reduce test administration costs, improve measurement quality and provide rapid scoring. As more examinations shift online, the need for online cheating detection and proctoring tools has also increased. While these can reduce cheating, their effectiveness should be weighed against fairness and psychological effects. Evidence on the quality and usefulness of technology-based assessments has started to emerge, but much less is known about cost efficiency. Among 34 papers on technology-based assessments reviewed for this report, transparent data on cost were lacking.

Learning analytics can increase formative feedback and enable early detection systems. In China, learning analytics has been used to identify learners’ difficulties, predict learning trajectories and manage teacher resources. In the United States, Course Signals is a system used to flag the likelihood of a student not passing a course; educators can then target them for additional support. However, learning analytics requires all actors to have sufficient data literacy. Successful education systems typically have absorptive capacity, including strong school leaders and confident teachers willing to innovate. Yet often seemingly trivial issues, such as maintenance and repair, are ignored or underestimated.

ACCESS TO TECHNOLOGY: EQUITY, EFFICIENCY AND SUSTAINABILITY

Access to electricity and devices is highly unequal between and within countries. In 2021, almost 9% of the global population – and more than 70% of people in rural sub-Saharan Africa – lacked access to electricity. Globally, one in four primary schools do not have electricity. A 2018 study in Cambodia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Myanmar, Nepal and Niger found that 31% of public schools were on grid and 9% were off grid, with only 16% enjoying uninterrupted power supply. Globally, 46% of households had a computer at home in 2020; the share of schools with computers for pedagogical purposes was 47% in primary, 62% in lower secondary and 76% in upper secondary education. There were at most 10 computers per 100 students in Brazil and Morocco but 160 computers per 100 students in Luxembourg, according to the 2018 PISA.

Internet access, a vital enabler of economic, social and cultural rights, is also unequal. In 2022, two in three people globally used the internet. In late 2021, 55% of the world’s population had mobile broadband access. In low- and middle-income countries, 16% less women than men used mobile internet in 2021. An estimated 3.2 billion people do not use mobile internet services despite being covered by a mobile broadband network. Globally, 40% of primary, 50% of lower secondary and 65% of upper secondary schools are connected to the internet. In India, 53% of private unaided and 44% of private aided schools are connected, compared with only 14% of government schools.

Various policies are used to improve access to devices. Some one in five countries have policies granting subsidies or deductions to buy devices. One-to-one technology programmes were established in 30% of countries at one time; currently only 15% of countries pursue such programmes. A number of upper-middle- and high-income countries are shifting from providing devices to allowing students to use their own devices in school. Jamaica adopted a Bring Your Own Device policy framework in 2020 to aim for sustainability.

Some countries champion free and open source software. Education institutions with complex ICT infrastructure, such as universities, can benefit from open source software to add new solutions or functionalities. By contrast, proprietary software does not permit sharing and has vendor locks that hinder interoperability, exchange and updates. In India, the National e-Governance Plan makes it mandatory for all software applications and services used in government to be built on open source software to achieve efficiency, transparency, reliability and affordability.

Countries are committed to universal internet provision at home and in school. About 85% of countries have policies to improve school or learner connectivity and 38% have laws on universal internet provision. A review of 72 low- and middle-income countries found that 29 had used universal service funds to reduce costs for underserved groups. In Kyrgyzstan, renegotiated contracts helped cut prices by nearly half and almost doubled internet speed. In Costa Rica, the Hogares Conectados (Connected Households) programme, which provided an internet cost subsidy to the poorest 60% of households with school-age children, helped reduce the share of unconnected households from 41% in 2016 to 13% in 2019. Zero-rating, or providing free internet access for education or other purposes, has been used, especially during COVID-19, but is not without problems, as it violates the net neutrality principle.

Education technology is often underutilized. In the United States, an average of 67% of education software licences were unused and 98% were not used intensively. According to the EdTech Genome Project, 85% of some 7,000 pedagogical tools, which cost USD 13 billion, were ‘either a poor fit or implemented incorrectly’. Less than one in five of the top 100 education technology tools used in classrooms met the requirements of the US Every Student Succeeds Act. Research had been published for 39% of these tools but the research was aligned with the act in only 26% of cases.

Evidence needs to drive education technology decisions. A review in the United Kingdom found that only 7% of education technology companies had conducted randomized controlled trials, 12% had used third-party certification and 18% had engaged in academic studies. An online survey of teachers and administrators in 17 US states showed that only 11% requested peer-reviewed evidence prior to adopting education technology. Recommendations influence purchase decisions, yet ratings can be manipulated through fake reviews disseminated on social media. Few governments try to fill the evidence gap, so demand has grown for independent reviews. Edtech Tulna, a partnership between a private think tank and a public university in India, offers quality standards, an evaluation toolkit and publicly available expert reviews.

Education technology procurement decisions need to take economic, social and environmental sustainability into account. With respect to economic considerations, it is estimated that initial investment in education technology accounts for just 25% or less of the eventual total cost. Regarding social concerns, procurement processes need to address equity, accessibility, local ownership and appropriation. In France, the Territoires Numériques Educatifs (Digital Educational Territories) initiative was criticized because not all subsidized equipment met local needs, and local governments were left out of the decisions on which equipment to purchase. Both issues have since been addressed. Concerning environmental considerations, it has been estimated that extending the lifespan of all laptops in the European Union by a year would save the equivalent of taking almost 1 million cars off the road in terms of CO2 emissions.

Regulation needs to address risks in education technology procurement. Public procurement is vulnerable to collusion and corruption. In 2019, Brazil’s Comptroller General of the Union found irregularities in the electronic bidding process for the purchase of 1.3 million computers, laptops and notebooks for state and municipal public schools. Decentralizing public procurement to local governments is one way to balance some of the risks. Indonesia has used its SIPLah e-commerce platform to support school-level procurement processes. However, decentralization is vulnerable to weak organizational capacity. A survey of administrators in 54 US school districts found that they had rarely carried out needs assessments.

GOVERNANCE AND REGULATION

Governance of the education technology system is fragmented. A department or an agency responsible for education technology has been identified in 82% of countries. Placing education ministries in charge of education technology strategies and plans could help ensure that decisions are primarily based on pedagogical principles. However, this is the case in just 58% of countries. In Kenya, the 2019 National Information, Communications and Technology Policy led the Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology to integrate ICT at all levels of education.

Participation is often limited in the development of education technology strategies and plans. Nepal established a Steering and a Coordination Committee under the 2013–17 ICT in Education Master Plan for intersectoral and inter-agency coordination and cooperation in its implementation. Including administrators, teachers and students can help bridge the knowledge gap with decision makers to ensure that education technology choices are appropriate. In 2022, only 41% of US education sector leaders agreed that they were regularly included in planning and strategic conversations about technology.

The private sector’s commercial interests can clash with government equity, quality and efficiency goals. In India, the government alerted families about the hidden costs of free online content. Other risks relate to data use and protection, privacy, interoperability and lock-in effects, whereby students and teachers are compelled to use specific software or platforms. Google, Apple and Microsoft produce education platforms tied to particular hardware and operating systems.

Privacy risks to children make their learning environment unsafe. One analysis found that 89% of 163 education technology products recommended for children’s learning during the COVID-19 pandemic could or did watch children outside school hours or education settings. In addition, 39 of 42 governments providing online education during the pandemic fostered uses that ‘risked or infringed’ upon children’s rights. Data used for predictive algorithms can bias predictions and decisions and lead to discrimination, privacy violations and exclusion of disadvantaged groups. The Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Education introduced regulations in 2019 requiring parental consent before devices powered by AI, such as cameras and headbands, could be used with students in schools and required data to be encrypted.

Children’s exposure to screen time has increased. A survey of screen time of parents of 3- to 8-year-olds in Australia, China, Italy, Sweden and the United States found that their children’s screen exposure increased by 50 minutes during the pandemic for both education and leisure. Extended screen time can negatively affect self-control and emotional stability, increasing anxiety and depression. Few countries have strict regulations on screen time. In China, the Ministry of Education limited the use of digital devices as teaching tools to 30% of overall teaching time. Less than one in four countries are banning the use of smartphones in schools. Italy and the United States have banned the use of specific tools or social media from schools. Cyberbullying and online abuse are rarely defined as offences but can fall under existing laws, such as stalking laws as in Australia and harassment laws in Indonesia.

Monitoring of data protection law implementation is needed. Only 16% of countries explicitly guarantee data privacy in education by law and 29% have a relevant policy, mainly in Europe and Northern America. The number of cyberattacks in education is rising. Such attacks increase exposure to theft of identity and other personal data, but capacity and funds to address the issue are often insufficient. Globally, 5% of all ransomware attacks targeted the education sector in 2022, accounting for more than 30% of cybersecurity breaches. Regulations on sharing children’s personal information are rare but are starting to emerge under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. China and Japan have binding instruments on protecting children’s data and information.

Technology has an impact on the teaching profession. Technology allows teachers to choose, modify and generate educational materials. Personalized learning platforms offer teachers customized learning paths and insights based on student data. During the COVID-19 pandemic, France facilitated access to 17 online teaching resource banks mapped against the national curriculum. The Republic of Korea temporarily eased copyright restrictions for teachers. Online teacher-student collaboration platforms provide access to support services, facilitate work team creation, allow participation in virtual sessions and promote sharing of learning materials.

Obstacles to integrating technology in education prevent teachers from fully embracing it. Inadequate digital infrastructure and lack of devices hinder teachers’ ability to integrate technology in their practice. A survey in 165 countries during the pandemic found that two in five teachers used their own devices, and almost one third of schools had only one device for education use. Some teachers lack training to use digital devices effectively. Older teachers may struggle to keep up with rapidly changing technology. The 2018 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) found that older teachers in 48 education systems had weaker skills and lower self-efficacy in using ICT. Some teachers may lack confidence. Only 43% of lower secondary school teachers in the 2018 TALIS said they felt prepared to use technology for teaching after training, and 78% of teachers in the 2018 ICILS were not confident in using technology for assessment.

Education systems support teachers in developing technology-related professional competencies. About half of education systems worldwide have ICT standards for teachers in a competency framework, teacher training framework, development plan or strategy. Education systems set up annual digital education days for teachers, promote OER, support the exchange of experiences and resources between teachers, and offer training. One quarter of education systems have legislation to ensure teachers are trained in technology, either through initial or in-service training. Some 84% of education systems have strategies for in-service teacher professional development, compared with 72% for pre-service teacher education in technology. Teachers can identify their development needs using digital self-assessment tools such as that provided by the Centre for Innovation in Brazilian Education.

Technology is changing teacher training. Technology is used to create flexible learning environments, engage teachers in collaborative learning, support coaching and mentoring, increase reflective practice, and improve subject or pedagogical knowledge. Distance education programmes have promoted teacher learning in South Africa and even equalled the impact of in-person training in Ghana. Virtual communities have emerged, primarily through social networks, for communication and resource sharing. About 80% of teachers surveyed in the Caribbean belonged to professional WhatsApp groups and 44% used instant messaging to collaborate at least once a week. In Senegal, the Reading for All programme used in-person and online coaching. Teachers considered face-to-face coaching more useful, but online coaching cost 83% less and still achieved a significant, albeit small, improvement in how teachers guided students’ reading practice. In Flanders, Belgium, KlasCement, a teacher community network created by a non-profit and now run by the Ministry of Education, expanded access to digital education and provided a platform for discussions on distance education during the pandemic.

Many actors support teacher professional development in ICT. Universities, teacher training institutions and research institutes provide specialized training, research opportunities and partnerships with schools for professional development in ICT. In Rwanda, universities collaborated with teachers and the government to develop the ICT Essentials for Teachers course. Teacher unions also advocate for policies that support teachers. The Confederation of Education Workers of the Argentine Republic established the right of teachers to disconnect. Civil society organizations, including the Carey Institute for Global Good, offer support through initiatives such as providing OER and online courses for refugee teachers in Chad, Kenya, Lebanon and Niger.

Top 10 Creative EdTech Projects

Home Blog Career Top 10 Creative EdTech Projects

Getting students' attention during a classroom session is of the utmost priority to educators. If only the students pay attention to the teacher, they will understand the concepts thoroughly and perform well. Utilizing innovative tools and techniques can create a fun and exciting environment for them.  

Understanding the significance of student engagement in education, many companies have shifted their focus to this domain.  When the students use the tools or techniques developed under the  Edtech projects , their learning environment improves, and they will build a sense of liking towards school and classwork . Going for the  Microsoft Excel training  will aid you understand about rows, cells, columns and other data types . 

What are  Edtech Projects ?  

EdTech is the domain that combines education with technology. The introduction of tablets, computers, projectors, and other technical equipment in a classroom or conducting different activities comes under  educational technology projects . The EdTech platforms help students by providing a comprehensive education using technology. As per a report by Grand view research, the market is expected to show 16% growth in the next seven years.

There are various techniques that companies working in the EdTech sector have introduced so far. The educator should learn about them to decide which would be best for his students. Understand that using an efficient EdTech Project can bring a remarkable change in children's academic growth. You can also opt for the  most effective training to get future-ready  and enhance your skills.   

Innovative  EdTech Projects

Let us dig deeper and discuss a few innovative projects. It will help you decide which project can boost your teaching process:  

It is a cloud-based lab that gives an excellent virtual experience to those students who do not have access to actual laboratories. Students at various locations do not get the best learning experience as the cost of building and maintaining the labs is too high. Stan Lab has eliminated this issue and has worked as a boon for pupils who cannot reach a real lab.  

It is not a typical EdTech firm but a private education provider that uses information and communication technologies as a part of its business strategy. It lets educators and trainers train and engage their employees better through performance management and skill development tools they have integrated. 

Using this LMS app, you can set goals and agendas for the students. So, when someone wants to learn a skill from you, you can assign them the course and track their progress.  

Cloud Computing

Exploring EdTech open-source projects that can change the learning process, you cannot miss cloud computing. The use of the cloud is not confined to the big multinationals handling significant tech projects. 

Even schools and other training institutes can also use this technology. Cloud helps make the study material available online, which the students can access from anywhere in the world. 

Everything, from regular classroom sessions to assessment tests, happens on the cloud endpoint. Students do not have to lug around books or leave the comfort of their homes. They only need authorized access to the cloud, and all the learning will conveniently happen.  

Competency-based Learning

As the name suggests, this learning mechanism works by comparing the skills that two or more individuals attain. Though this teaching pedagogy has multiple benefits, only skilled instructors or educators can use it efficiently. 

Understand that when you assess students based on how they are putting their skills to use, it might lead to negative competition. A qualified educator strategically handles this and ensures that the students develop a competitive spirit but take it healthily.   

It is another Edtech project that provides language certification courses through an app. The platform got more than 500 million downloads during the last decade. Moreover, the daily number of users of the app is increasing rapidly. 

The company has a mission to make learning fun and exciting for students, and for that, they have made its interface super attractive. When you start using the app, it will feel like a game. So, the students would learn everything without feeling any pressure, which will certainly improve their performance.  

Alison  

It is a free online skill development platform with various courses listed. The app has countless users from different parts of the world and excellent reviews. You can join the certification program that interests you the most and get certified to explore better opportunities in your domain.   

BRCK  

It is a digital classroom in a box that has transformed the way learning happens in the schools of Kenya. They have designed their setup strategically to solve the connectivity issues in African countries. Their software and hardware design are user-friendly, and so far, a plethora of students have benefited from this digital learning pedagogy.  Advanced Microsoft Excel training  will support you in gaining immense knowledge of pivot tables and charts.

EkStep  

It is a commendable initiative to improve the literacy level in India. The aim is to make education accessible to over 200 million children through online resources. Through their online study environment only, they develop an ecosystem that significantly improves the overall learning experience for children. It is growing as an open-source platform that the government can use to overcome various challenges in the education industry.   

It is an initiative by a small NGO in Kenya through which they make learning happen through visual impairments. They believe physical inability should not become a disability and stop children from getting literate. So, they collaborate with different tech companies and other third parties to push their students to fit in the mainstream world.  

This platform offers adaptive learning solutions for various learners in Brazil. Each student gets custom resources based on the grasping power and learning pace. In addition, the educators on this platform can also offer a one-to-one tutoring option that gives students a classroom-like feel and improves their overall performance.   

University of the People

UoPeople works as a tuition-free online university that offers various degree programs. Learners from different developing countries can avail themselves of the courses on this platform and keep brushing up on their skills. You can find multiple graduate and post-graduate programs on this platform, and the degree you get is valid worldwide.   

It is a technology-powered learning platform that provides a high-quality learning experience. The platform works with a vision to make interactive maths and science courses accessible to all students. They have more than 10 million textbooks on the desk, which the students can use to learn. Moreover, they check all the tests you give instantly, so you won’t have to wait for the results.  

Onebillion  

Onebillion is a constantly evolving learning platform that focuses on improving the numeracy skills of students. The teaching pedagogy they use is utterly engaging. Moreover, the best part is that all the learning is student-centric.   

Nafham  

This online platform offers video lessons to students based on Egyptian or Syrian curriculum plans. The educator is right in front of the student during a teaching session. So, the overall experience becomes much more convenient and gives the feel of a real classroom. There are over 23 thousand videos on the platform, and 1 million students have enrolled in it.  

Enuma  

Their famous KitKit school gained much popularity as a promising EdTech project. There are other learning suites under Enuma, including TODO English TODO Maths, which can help make learning simple yet effective. They use the concept of online gaming to meet the special education needs of the students. 

It is one of the best self-directed learning solutions that can help build a strong learning foundation. Moreover, the numeracy skills of students can also improve exponentially with this platform.   

EdTech Ideas for Students and Teachers

Businesses, educators, and parents always look for innovative EdTech ideas to make learning fruitful for children. According to a study conducted by McGraw Hill Education, 4 out of the 5 students agree that technology has helped them perform better.  

P latform for Special Kids  

You can use motion-based learning practices for special kids to ripe extra benefits. These children actively react to movements and bring all their attention to them. Especially kids who have dyslexia or autism can benefit greatly from these platforms. Moving objects make them challenge their brains and grasp what is being taught.   

Example    

The best examples of such platforms are Soli and Kinems.  

Studying with Augmented Reality  

Augmented reality is a widely used education practice these days. Research shows that when you integrate AR into your teaching practices, your students are more likely to retain the concepts taught to them. In addition, the classroom sessions conducted through augmented reality practice discuss the challenging topics in detail. That is why it is wise to switch to this learning mode.  

The best examples of platforms that make studying with augmented reality possible are ImmersiveVReducation and Gamar.   

Teacher Lessons Marketplace  

Some platforms let teachers build their own marketplace and share the lessons they curated with their students. They can create their profile on these platforms and share their portfolio. From here, students can pick the educator of their choice and continue to learn.   

Example  

Core Learning Exchange and Teachable are the best examples of platforms where teachers can create their profiles. They can also create a marketplace for their courses that the students can access.    

Course Selection with AI

Another fruitful technique that educators can use is providing career counseling to students. There are many courses available these days, so it gets challenging for students to decide where they want to enroll. This startup idea comes under the  EdTech genome project . So, educators can use  artificial intelligence to help students choose the best-suited course based on their behavior and body language.  

Example   

Delphia and Cognii are the best examples of platforms that help in course selection with AI.   

Live Classroom with Robotic Camera  

Online classes are no longer a new concept. However, this one with a robotic camera is an entirely different experience. It is more interactive and gives a real-time classroom experience. The teacher stands before the screen, and the session gets broadcasted to the student community worldwide.  

Harvard HBX is the first and the best live classroom with a robotic camera setup.   

Gamified Courses and Classes  

It is the trendiest and most opted-for ed-tech platform for school learning in the current times. It uses graphics, motion pictures, and interactive storytelling to deliver lectures with students engaging well. This concept has proven results; any educator can implement it in the classroom without a second thought.   

The best example of this learning mode is Brainscape.   

Top EdTech Companies  

The inclination of renowned businesses towards an  EduTech project  is increasing with each passing day. Every tech giant has directed its research toward the education sector, and companies in education-related domains are introducing technology into their operations. Some of the top EdTech companies that are the talk of the town these days and are changing the way learning happens are listed below:  

• Amplify  
• 2U, Inc.  
• Great Minds  
• Bright Horizons  
• Skillsoft   
• Guild Education  
• Multiverse   
• Duolingo  
• Dreambox Learning  

There are plethora of other industrial giants working in this domain. Moreover, the number is rising rapidly with each passing day.   

The competition at the school and professional levels is rising every day. Hence, only the students who focus on conceptual understanding and deeper learning can survive and make an excellent living. To make it possible, educators should try innovative learning pedagogies that interest students and build their interest. They should explore the ideas and tools listed above and see what brings extraordinarily great results for their students. You can master the emerging technology with  KnowledgeHut IoT training  and identify market opportunities.

Secure a position among the best paid jobs in the world. Where every workday brings you closer to your financial dreams. Your journey to prosperity begins now!  

The best examples of Edtech are: Udemy, Multiverse, Google Meet, and even YouTube is one of the EdTechs .  

The most common educational technology is e-learning or video-assisted classroom session.   

EdTech introduces technology into the education sector to make learning fun and result-oriented .  

Abhresh Sugandhi

Abhresh is specialized as a corporate trainer, He has a decade of experience in technical training blended with virtual webinars and instructor-led session created courses, tutorials, and articles for organizations. He is also the founder of Nikasio.com, which offers multiple services in technical training, project consulting, content development, etc.

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Welcome to the Idaho Assistive Technology Project

The Idaho Assistive Technology Project provides support for individuals with disabilities and older persons in their personal selection of assistive technology as they live, work, and play in their communities.

"For most of us, technology makes things easier. For a person with a disability, it makes things possible."

— Judy Heumann, American Disability Rights activist and Former Assistant Secretary, US Department of Education, Office of Special Programs

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The Idaho Assistive Technology Project is a federally funded grant project located at the Center on Disabilities and Human Development as part of the University of Idaho's College of Education, Health and Human Sciences . The Project was founded in 1992 and funded through the Assistive Technology Act of 1998, as amended. Our goal is to help Idahoans with disabilities acquire the assistive technology they need to live more independent lives.

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The role of gender in Chinese junior high students’ self-efficacy, creative thinking and project-based learning perceived value in technology and engineering education

• Published: 13 September 2024

Cite this article

• Qiuyue Yang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6162-2992 1 , 4 ,
• Xiaofeng Li 1 ,
• Jianjun Gu 2 ,
• Jon-Chao Hong 3 &
• Tiancong Hao 2  

Previous research has demonstrated that stereotypes associated with the female gender can impact technology and engineering education results. However, it remains unclear whether these stereotypes affect other relevant factors in technology and engineering education performance. The research used quantitative methods to investigate the correlation between technology and engineering self-efficacy, creative thinking attitudes, and project-based learning value, moderated by gender stereotypes. A total of 262 junior high school students were involved in the research. Correlation analysis showed that dimensions of creative thinking attitudes were positively correlated with project-based learning value, and technology and engineering self-efficacy was positively correlated with creative thinking attitudes and project-based learning value. Moreover, gender stereotypes can effectively moderate individuals’ creative thinking attitudes and technology and engineering self-efficacy in technology and engineering education environments based on the project-based learning approach. Therefore, teachers should create an inclusive learning environment, utilizing authentic teaching methods and diverse materials to showcase gender achievements, thereby highlighting the potential of both genders. In addition, it is possible to create a more equitable environment to minimize the impact of gender stereotypes on students .

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Yang, Q., Li, X., Gu, J. et al. The role of gender in Chinese junior high students’ self-efficacy, creative thinking and project-based learning perceived value in technology and engineering education. Int J Technol Des Educ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-024-09929-y

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