Dive Brief:

• Google has added augmented reality tools to its Expeditions app, which allows students to direct themselves on field trips even without a teacher guide. Students in 99 New York City (NYC) schools beta-tested the tool as part of the Expeditions Pioneer Program during the 2017-2018 school year, wrote EdSurge.
• The NYC Department of Education believes that exposing students to technology like AR and VR tools helps prepare them for future careers.
• Students in the Pioneer Program can project AR objects, bringing ancient Rome to elements of the Periodic Table, right into their classroom.

Dive Insight:

The demand for more career education in curriculum is being voiced loudly by policymakers and educational experts. While students can certainly develop workforce skills from after-school jobs, the stress of balancing work demands with school requirements can be a struggle, as Education Dive recently reported.

Finding ways to then tie career education into the school day is a path curriculum designers can take to help instill these tools in students without adding to their daily pressures. Policymakers in particular are looking for just this outcome, as evidenced by a proposal to merge the U.S. departments of Labor and Education, with one of four new subdivisions partly focused on workforce development.

Whether or not that reorganization takes place, administrators can take steps on their own, from building community partnerships to even launching career and technical education courses which can tie into science, technology, engineering and math curriculum, while also emphasizing career-readiness skills. Giving students more opportunities to prepare and master work skills and abilities is something that administrators can seed into the K-12 experience, to better help students prepare for whatever next step is before them.