As a non-profit, we are offered the opportunity to take deep dives into our mission. Over the next few weeks, we will do just this through a series of guest blog posts to our site and on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Please sign up below to download the eBook for free and join the conversation. We truly want to hear from you. If you would like to be considered for our next Point of View discussion and Virtual Round Table, please let me know the topic and your interest.
In the articles that follow, our editorial contributors answer a host of pivotal questions, including:
- Are the potential benefits of technology-enhanced learning in schools wishful thinking? If they’re not, how can they be realized at scale, given the underlying challenges in so many of our nation’s schools?
- Can technology-enhanced learning really narrow the achievement gap, and, if so, what needs to happen or change?
- What needs to change to help teachers in any classroom leverage technology to improve learning for students?
- What metrics really matter when we’re assessing the changes that technology-enhanced learning stimulates in classrooms?
Lee Vargas, Executive Vice President at AVID and a former superintendent, has successfully implemented technology in a host of school districts, and he makes it clear how important it is to embrace a systems approach.
In the article by Steven Hodas, Practitioner in Residence at the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) and former Executive Director of the New York City Department of Education’s Office of Innovation, he sounds a cautionary note as we bring more technology into the classroom that the problem we’ve defined must align with the problem educators want to solve.
There’s a good reality check from Bob Wise, President of the Alliance for Excellent Education. Bob points out that the public still doesn’t fully understand how data advances student learning.
Bobbi Kurshan at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education talks about a bottom-up approach in which teachers adopt and leverage kids’ ideas and attitudes about technology.
In the piece by Pat Wasley, Chief Executive Officer of the Teaching Channel, she explains how technology can help teachers collaborate and get much-needed feedback.
Karen Cator, President and CEO of Digital Promise, says that technology can help every student and teacher take charge of their own individual learning journeys.
Robin Lake, Director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at the University of Washington Bothell, views technology as a powerful tool if it’s paired with fantastic teaching and is part of a coherent instructional strategy.
Taken together, these seven contributions offer us much to consider as we try to improve education for an entire generation of students. Follow us on Twitter as we post each blog separately, or go straight to our website www.enlearn.org to get the entire eBook. We want to continue the discussion with you. If you have any questions, or would like to discuss any of the issues raised in this publication, or if you would like to be considered in our next Virtual Round Table, please get in touch with me. I look forward to hearing from you.
