Education technology tool. As Digital Alternatives to Textbooks Grow, Students Swap Backpacks for Tablets. For many college students, the fall semester has just begun.
Freshmen are outfitting their dorm rooms with posters, finding their way around campus and possibly still reeling from the price of renting textbooks for a few months. According to The College Board, the average student at a four-year in-state college spent about $1,207 on textbooks in the 2013–2014 school year. Research from the National Association of College Stores has shown that students are looking for ways to offset these costs, and many are turning to digital textbooks to lighten the load. To fill demand, a new marketplace for digital textbooks has sprung up, offering competitive pricing. Case in point: the 2012 startup Packback, which has found success with on-demand textbook rentals priced between $3 and $5 a day. Digital rental services like Packback bring publishers back into the fold and give students more options on rental pricing.
Boundless currently offers more than 500 digital books priced at $20. Five Strategies for Edtech Success During the New School Year. I am an ambitious teacher with big dreams at the start of each school year.
You probably are, too. So how can you and I ensure that this year will be the year? The year that students will really use all of the amazing resources that their school, friends, and the Internet provide? The year their work will be noticed and discussed by people outside of their classroom, school, community, and--dare we dream--country? Before the kids even enter my classroom, I put together five strategies I’m planning to use during the first days of school to make these dreams a reality.
5 Strategies to Reach At-Risk Students with Technology. A new report has shown that technology can produce significant gains in student achievement and engagement, particularly among students most at risk.
The report, Using Technology to Support At-Risk Students’ Learning, was released Sept. 10 by the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington D.C. –based policy and advocacy organization. LEGO Design: An Ed Tech Savior? The iconic LEGO toy building blocks are all about interoperability, something sorely lacking in education technology.
I spent countless hours playing with LEGO sets as a kid. Edtech Incubator - The UK's & Europe's first education technology accelerator programme. These Six Companies Are Leading The Way In EdTech. The race to develop the best online learning platform is nearly as old as the internet itself.
Almost as soon as Al Gore (cough) recognized the revolutionary commercial potential of the Web, entrepreneurs and educators had similar epiphanies regarding its abilities to alter and then augment the way we learn. But of course the challenges have been enormous. The fundamental act of learning is quite different — much more personal, intimate, nuanced — than, say, the process of shopping for a new scarf.
Learning is an investment of time and pride; it holds a mirror up to our minds. The internet must fill in the gaps as our brains are still evolving slowly. After two decades of progress, and after at least eight years of ambitious educational technology (edtech) startups spending fortunes on R&D (and marketing), the sector has finally reached a modicum of maturity. HEDLINE: UK Technology Strategy Board to invest £1.1 million in EdTech. The Technology Strategy Board together with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills launched a Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition to further stimulate the development of education technology products in the UK.
Through this SBRI competition organisations can attract a 100% funded development contract of up to £80k (inclusive of VAT) and projects will last up to six months. The Technology Strategy Board and BIS are to invest a total of up to £1.1 million through the competition. Key Takeaway Usually SBRI competitions have two phases, Phase 1 is to test the technical feasibility and commercial viability of the proposed concept and in Phase 2 organisations develop and evaluate prototypes of the concepts tested in Phase 1. Intrinsic Strategy : Edtech startups, now with teachers inside! It’s become clear that if an education technology startup wants to have an impact on classrooms today, it must have teachers directly or indirectly involved in the company.
But does that hold true for those looking at longer time horizons? Over at EdSurge, I examine teachers in startup roles through the microcosm of five companies presenting at the NY Edtech Startup Showcase in March. All had teachers involved in some way: as early adopters (pretty typical), as hands-on product consultants and advisers, or — at one extreme — as full-time co-founders. (Of course, for the last case to work, a teacher may need to become a former teacher.) Now think, in their respective industries, about what the founders of Nest, Tesla, Uber and, uh, Apple’s iTunes had in common. Read, “Teachers Not (Necessarily) Included,” over at EdSurge. Related Pitching an edtech (or any) startup In "Marketing" A field guide to industry edu conferences Those industry-focused education conferences.