Dive Brief:
- It has become a mantra in the K-12 world that education technology should be a means to an end, rather than the end itself, and schools are still figuring out how to stay true to that goal.
- Nathan Lang, an education strategist for CDW writes for EdTech: Focus on K-12, that educators tend to get caught up in terms like “blended learning” instead of focusing on the underlying work it describes, but eventually blended learning will simply be known as learning.
- Lang urges schools to keep students at the center, focusing not on the right tech tool, but the needs of students and the ways teachers and administrators can help them grow and thrive.
Dive Insight:
Virtually all schools have the best intentions when approaching ed tech initiatives, but it is still incredibly easy to get lost along the way. Often it is because of a sense of urgency that leads to rushed implementation. Moving too fast can mean top-down initiatives never get buy-in from teachers and families or devices end up in the hands of students before teachers are properly trained or the building infrastructure can handle it.
A common result of rushed implementation is that new technology ends up being passively used by students, replicating activities that could have been done with pencil and paper. Active tech use, on the other hand, is the gold standard. It gives students the chance to practice real-world problem-solving using hands-on, creative methods. And it is still far too rare.
