everyday learning. In a recent New York Times article, Natasha Singer explained, “Google is driving a more philosophical change in education by prioritizing skills like teamwork and problem-solving while de-emphasizing the teaching of traditional academic knowledge, like math formulas.”
In a similar manner, by having students interact with technology so closely, the industry is attempting to prepare them for a digital world in which their ability to quickly access and process information will help them succeed in school and beyond. This allows teachers to further unbundle their classrooms by allowing them to step away from giving out recycled homework problems. Instead, students are forced to gather information on their own, rather than just having to memorize a definition, or find an answer on a textbook page.
The Access Effect: Democratizing Learning for All
Despite the increasing emphasis on edtech, some schools aren’t able to provide individual devices to all their students. Reports reveal that over 50 percent of teachers now can provide each individual student with their own device, but there are still many schools that aren’t able to do this. This technology gap has ignited a debate over whether students should be able to “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) into the classroom. For proponents, BYOD connects in-classroom learning to out-of-school technology, but for opponents, there’s a serious equity issue at stake (imagine if one student has this year’s iPhone and another is using an Android device from a decade ago).
A good sign: The U.S. is on the road to closing this technology gap in schools. In 2014, President Barack Obama, along with the Federal Communications Commission and several private technology companies, made $3 billion in commitments to provide devices and high-speed Internet access to 15,000 schools. As of 2016, 88 percent of school districts in the U.S. are meeting the FCC’s minimum internet connectivity standards.
Despite some of the challenges associated with BYOD—the temptation to browse social networks, the distraction of games, videos, and other content—in-class devices are vehicles that make the unbundling of learning possible. It is now up to administrators and teachers to figure out which applications make sense for their classrooms, because the opportunities that BYOD presents for students to learn anywhere they are, and at all times, are too exciting to be hampered by old-school regulations.
We have reached a tipping point for the technology industry that has brought about entirely new ways to teach and learn. Further investments in edtech will foster this trend of unbundling content by allowing greater customization and thus, ways to appeal to individual students. This will create an environment where we will be able to pick and choose the skills and information we want to acquire based on our own unique goals, using technology to set ourselves up for success in ways that were never before possible.
Quizlet is a consumer technology company based in San Francisco, CA.
Photo courtesy of Quizlet
