Educational technology (Edtech) is short for education technology. It’s a useful term any teacher, student, or parent should know and you’ll be seeing it more and more. At this point, Edtech typically covers the use of technology like tablets, apps, web tools, and social media to improve learning. Below 10 Edtech Trends listed some of the biggest Edtech trends of the modern classroom and also what’s coming soon to a classroom near you.
Educational Technology (Edtech) Trends for Students, Parents, and Teachers
Table of contents
4 Current trends to know
6 Upcoming Edtech trends
Resource
4 Current trends to know
- The usage of SMS / text messaging in the classroom. Apps like Remind are taking off and making it easier for parents, teachers, and students to communicate.
- Leveraging social media IN the classroom. Teachers are communicating with students via Twitter like never before.
- Free online courses are a sort of ‘Tutoring 2.0′ for many students. This includes Khan Academy, edX, Udacity, and other providers.
- 3D printing is being used in some high schools as a way to provide hands-on learning through the use of technology.
6 Upcoming Edtech trends
- Universities (and many other schools) are starting to embrace digital textbooks. Huge money-saving times ahead?
- Many school counselors can make ‘house calls’ and keep better track of students using time management tools and communication software.
- A new push into STEAM is happening. This is your typical STEM studies with a healthy dose of art. That’s the ‘A’ in case you were curious. It’s offering a truly varied educational experience for all ages.
- BYOD is continuing to become the biggest way for Edtech to come into the classroom. Check out the Los Angeles iPad rollout to see what happens when you don’t go BYOD and opt for a more school-centric approach.
- Google Classroom and the array of other free cloud-based tools are making it easier for schools to move important information into the cloud. Look for more free cloud-based apps and tools to pop up in the form of Edtech startups.
- Open textbooks are gaining ground in many K-12 schools in the U.S. This means students, parents, and teachers will be able to download, refine, and share their textbooks with ease.
Resource
Varsity Tutors is the largest live learning platform in the United States and we have numerous free resources to help students and parents cope with school and summer camp closures. We’ve had 250,000 registrations for our free, live online classes alone in the last 2 months.
Virtual Summer Camps: Free half-day summer camps are a week-long, with enrichment-based classes in subjects like foreign languages, chess, theater, coding, Minecraft, how to be a detective, photography, and more. These live, interactive camps will be taught by expert instructors vetted through Varsity Tutors’ platform. We already have 300+ camps scheduled for the summer and 2,000 families per day signing up.
