Dive Brief:

• Educators often use a teacher-centric framing about what they want students to do, but CDW education strategist Nathan Lang suggests flipping that and assigning work tied to what students want to become, perhaps using student blogging or podcast tools to give them a platform to be heard like Google Sites, Seesaw, Soundcloud or Vocaroo.
• Lang also advocates helping students understand why something is important to learn, as well as contextualizing how they can get things done.
• One way this can be done, for example, is by using applications like Trello and Stack as project management tools, in addition to Crossbraining by GoPro to aid in student creation and capture the process.

Dive Insight:

There are an overwhelming number of ed tech tools on the marketplace, some of them free and others on a license or subscription model. Districts should be careful to monitor classroom use of new products, especially because of the security concerns inherent in handing over the personal information of students to create new accounts.

A digital ed tech pricing library, recently launched by the Technology for Education Consortium, can help districts be sure they are not overpaying for common software or devices. Knowing how much other districts pay can give CIOs and CTOs better leverage at the bargaining table with vendors. Pilot networks have also sprung up around the country to help schools select and study the impact of educational technologies in the classroom. The findings from this research can inform ed tech decision-making, too.