the service can be used for a variety of functions at schools and colleges, including verifying credentials, tracking donations and payments, or handling other student records.
a K-6 educational app called SpoonRead
Blockchain is a decentralized system where every record is linked and transparent, and any alterations leave a trail that supposedly can’t be hidden.
Some have questioned whether there is a need for blockchain in student records, considering that other kinds of encryption techniques already exist to protect and verify things like credentials.
The tools that have delivered are specific, targeted solutions that are easy to use and provide teachers and students delight. Simple solutions, like Read 180, which helps accelerate learning for struggling students, still deliver 20 years later, now under Houghton Mifflin Harcourt instead of Scholastic. Accelerated Reader, a product that started more than 30 years ago, still motivates kids to read.
Companies that aim to provide student data in a usable fashion, like Schoology, still provide value.
the promise of data in education is still proving itself. It has taken awhile, but we’re getting to a point where data is more actionable. Renaissance just acquired Schoolzilla, which was launched in 2011, for this reason.
When it comes to devices, many kids today have access to iPads or Chromebooks. Although one-to-one computing hasn’t been as transformational as some predicted in 2010, we’ve certainly seen a huge shift
Most of these [textbook providers] companies tried to re-platform every unique product into one monolithic model, but the promise didn’t pan out—the products proved clunky and hard to use
Predictions that educators would want more assessment data to drive instruction have proven true. https://www.renaissance.com/
The prediction that digital reading would be simple and easy to implement has also proven true.
Virtual reality hasn’t panned out yet.
The rise of gaming in education was another prediction that has largely faded.
started to solve the challenge of data interoperability and portability.
Alongside that, privacy and data responsibility are still a problem
The role of the teacher, however, is still critical. Rather than take over responsibility for educating students, technology’s role should be—and increasingly is—to put multiple options into educators’ hands to easily solve different types of challenges for individual students.
1. Share your ideas and practice of badge distribution and/or microcredentialing
2. What is a digital badge/microcredentialing?
3. How to create and award D2L digital badges for your class?
4. How to motivate the students in earning digital badges?
5. How it aligns with COSE’s strategic plan 2022/Husky Compact?
What we hope to achieve
• Create a community of digital badgers
• Catalyze professional development opportunity for faculty/staff
The Babson Survey Research Group, an organization that tracks online enrollment, notes that between 2012 and 2016 the percent of online enrollment in universities increased 17.2 percent while overall enrollment decreased. But that expansion doesn’t necessarily correlate with how the public perceives the quality of online courses, historically questioned for its lack of rigor and limited measurable learning gains.
A Gallup poll conducted back in 2015, found that 46 percent of Americans “strongly agree” or “agree” that online colleges and universities offer a high-quality education—up 30 percent from when the poll was conducted in 2011.
However, researchers caveat these findings, noting that these perception changes happen within particular pockets and are sometimes the result of strategic practices, such as universities not listing the medium of learning on student transcripts.
The last academic leader perception survey released by the Babson Research Group was in 2016.
“We’ve had more and more of the group in the middle that said, ‘I’m not sure’ move into a pro online learning stance,” says Seaman, speaking of the academic leaders he surveyed in the past. “The negative group [those who viewed online learning negatively] had not wavered at all. The positive group did not waiver at all, but we had a steady migration flow of academic leaders in the middle.”
Lowenthal has also researched student perceptions of online learning in the past, finding that learners tend to give such courses more negative evaluations than in-person courses. He says that the findings may represent the lack of experience some educators have teaching in online classrooms. He expects that to change over time, noting that good teachers in person will eventually become good teachers online.
A business-minded person may think a large class with 50 students, one adult and 50 screens makes fiscal sense, and is therefore an “innovative” idea.A business person may also think that because focus groups of children demonstrate that kids like and enjoy a tech product, that it is educationally sound. Education shouldn’t be viewed as simply a “market,” and children are certainly not “widgets.”
Technology can and should be used with fidelity in schools, but we must balance technology use with developmental psychology, the psychology of addiction and educational psychology. We need educational technology that puts highly trained teachers at the center of product design and implementation. It is human interaction that truly engages children and inspires them.
