A few years ago, when researchers at Boston University and Harvard University set out to review all the existing research on educational apps for children from preschool through third grade, they realized that there were hundreds of thousands of apps out there. Despite being classified as educational apps, there were only 36 studies on educational apps in the searched databases. “That's not a strong evidence base for completely redesigning the entire schooling system,” Josh Gilbert, one of the study's co-authors, told me by phone.
That said, a meta-analysis published in 2021 on the impact of educational app use on children's literacy and math skills found that well-designed apps improve “constrained and It was found that there is a possibility of having a positive effect on “skills”. Mathematics multiplication tables and the sounds of letters in reading and writing. Unconstrained skills are more complex skills that are developed through lifelong learning and can deepen over many years. (Please note that many popular educational apps are not of high quality.)
Overall, “the range of effects was huge,” Gilbert said. They were all over the place, so “you have to go beyond average effectiveness and say, who does the app work for?” Under what conditions? What measures are you taking? mosquito? And I think these are questions that researchers, policy makers, school leaders, teachers and principals should be asking,” he said. “What is the best use case for this digital technology in the classroom?”
In last week's newsletter, I talked pretty passionately about the pitfalls of educational technology in American classrooms. I believe too many schools have not taken a thoughtful or evidence-based approach to how they use screens and apps since students returned to in-person learning after the disruption of 2020-2021. Masu. It's time to stop and reconsider. But that doesn't mean there aren't benefits to using educational technology.
So for Part 2 of this series, we wanted to talk to people who have seen real-world benefits from using technology in their classrooms. Their experience supports some of the available research showing that educational technology can help teachers differentiate course materials to meet the needs of students with a wide range of proficiency levels. Additionally, teachers report that students with disabilities can greatly benefit from assistive technology provided by screens and apps.
Debbie Marks, who teaches third grade in Oklahoma, said that by allowing her students to use school-issued laptops, she was able to use school-issued laptops to provide “differentiated reading intervention specifically designed for them.” “I can participate in it,'' he told me. This differentiation allows her to better assess each student's progress and tailor instruction to each student.
“So, for example, you can work on story elements, you can work on characters,” she explained when I spoke to her. “One student may be just trying to identify who the main character is. Another student may be trying to identify character traits, while higher-level students may be trying to compare characters. , and identifying how characters change throughout the story based on the plot. So you can develop one-on-one lessons for every child in your classroom.”
Marks works in a rural area about 90 minutes from Tulsa, and some students may commute 45 minutes to an hour just to get to class. She said the devices allow her to better connect with students' parents and get them more involved in what's going on in the physically distant classroom. Marks also said the screens have allowed for activities like virtual author visits, which she says have really gotten the kids excited and excited about reading.
We also heard from several teachers that assistive technology has made a huge difference for students with special needs. Duncan Roe, a special education support teacher at an elementary school in Oregon, said: In the best-case scenario, technology-enabled learning is guided and closely monitored by teachers, and students actively participate in feedback. For students with dysgraphia or dyslexia, word processing tools provide a meaningful way to demonstrate/assess their writing skills. ”
Some middle school and high school teachers who said technology was helpful in their classrooms seemed to be using it as an efficient way to teach students more memorization tasks, which led to more class time. can be spent building “unconstrained” skills.
Doug Shorey, a high school English teacher in Indiana who has been teaching since 1996, gave an example of how integrating technology has changed quizzes over time. He used to just give students simple vocabulary quizzes where they had to define the words. Currently, he and his colleagues are working on “dictionary quizzes,” which challenge students to understand the nuances of using certain words in sentences.
Mr Shorey said it was now easier to look up words quickly than in the days of paper dictionaries, and students “have access to an online dictionary” during quizzes. They are given four synonyms and asked to decide which synonym best fits the sentence. “To determine that, you need to go beyond its basic definition. They need to understand the connotative meaning of the word and the common usage of the word,” he explained.
But Shorey also said she monitors her children very closely. When they are performing tasks that use the laptop, he has the laptop set up so that all screens are facing towards him. He estimates that typically out of a class of 25 people, there are only one or two people who can't stay on task when they're actually looking at a screen.
He also said that while ChatGPT has been a hot topic, the school has made the decision not to block AI, including ChatGPT. The challenge of dealing with AI has been a hot topic among older teachers, but the general feeling I get is that no one really knows how to deal with AI yet. did.
After we spoke, Shorey emailed me and said, “We need to carefully determine how much and how technology is used at each level of education.” And he wrote a sentence (which is also a classic English teacher line) that I think really sums up both the possibilities and dangers of educational technology.
I couldn't help but think that Prometheus rebelled against the Olympic gods by sharing humanity's first technological advancement: fire. Like other important advances since then, fire has simultaneously propelled society forward and consumed it. It enlightened our hearts and souls, tormenting them just as Prometheus was constantly tormented by the punishment of sharing too much of the divine power.
Perhaps intentionally, one popular digital whiteboard is the Promethean board.
Technology isn't going away. We need to start creating better frameworks for thinking about how students and teachers use technology in schools. Because technology companies won't stop promoting their products, regardless of whether there's evidence of educational benefits. CNN's Claire Duffy reports that Meta will “launch new software for educators aimed at making it easier to use VR headsets in the classroom” later this year, but that “students' The extent to which virtual reality can help improve learning remains unclear.
In next week's newsletter, we'll explore solutions to some of the problems posed by educational technology, minimize some of the most egregious dangers of distraction and invasion of privacy, and highlight some of the greatest educational possibilities technology offers. sex.
