Thanks to Elon Musk’s influence, the president-elect has waffled on the future of America’s electric transition.

With all the talk of the downsides of smartphones for teenagers, parents have looked to smartwatches as a way to stay in contact with their young children while avoiding the full internet and social media access of a phone.

At least that was the narrative a couple of years ago. But more recently, more companies have been marketing smartwatches to kids as young as 4 and 5 years old. And at younger ages, it’s not the kids asking for the devices, but parents looking to keep tabs on their children out of concern for their safety.

That’s what EdSurge senior reporter Emily Tate Sullivan found when she spent months researching the recent boom in smartwatches for kids, for a feature story that EdSurge co-published with WIRED magazine last week.

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“The worst case scenario in the minds of the parents I talked to is just always looming,” she says. “These parents think, ‘If there's a school shooting, if there's a lockdown, I want to be able to communicate with my child in that locked down classroom. If they are abducted, I want to be able to know exactly where they are. Maybe there's still a watch on their wrist and I can track them.’ I mean, these are things that are so improbable, but it doesn't really matter. The fear is pervasive. It's a really powerful force.”

But while parents focus on physical safety as they hand kids smartwatches, they may not be considering the downsides of starting a digital life so early, according to digital media experts. And schools are increasingly seeing the devices as a distraction — sometimes from parents texting their kids during the school day. Yet watches are often not included in school bans on smartphones, and they’re not always mentioned in the conversation about the effects of digital devices on children.

For this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we go behind the story with an interview with Tate Sullivan, including details that she wasn’t able to fit into the final piece. And in the second half of the episode, the author reads the full article, so you can catch this story in podcast form.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or on the player below.

© Z U M R U T / Shutterstock

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NextWave STEM is a leader in K-12 STEM education. Using the “five essentials” (leadership, self-development, team development, strategic thinking, civic-mindedness and innovation), the company’s vision is to empower students and educators to excel in a continuously changing world. Since its founding in 2017, NextWave STEM has partnered with more than 500 schools and community organizations nationally, served more than 200,000 students, and created award-winning STEM programs in emerging technologies. Schools and community organizations who have partnered with NextWave STEM report improved student attendance, increased student interest in STEM-related courses and careers, and increased teacher confidence in teaching STEM and emerging technologies.

NextWave STEM is a visionary leader that understands the needs of tomorrow and how to best equip and inspire the leaders of tomorrow with the tools and skills to be successful. By combining the project-based learning of STEM with innovative, emerging technologies, the company works to improve academic outcomes, close the achievement gap, and open new opportunities post high school and throughout one’s career.

The company makes STEM education engaging for students, easy for teachers and affordable for partners. Their solutions include award-winning curricula, hands-on exploration kits, and professional development. Courses cover: robotics and artificial intelligence, drones and coding, 3D printing and modeling, cybersecurity, entrepreneurship, and solar and renewable energy, and more. Courses are designed to help students develop the 21st Century skills needed to master problem solving and critical thinking, and be prepared for the influx of STEM-related careers, while professional development helps teachers master the facilitation of STEM education.

NextWaveSTEM® was born in Chicago as the brainchild of our founder, Udit Agarwal (pictured). While working as an IT analyst for Chicago Public Schools, Udit saw the need for excellent and easy-to-implement STEM education. He knew the importance of the education system and the economy at large to empower students with the 21st-century skills of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math as well as Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Innovation. Nonetheless, he didn’t see it being taught in a way that was fun for kids—while also meeting state and national standards.

As Udit learned more and became more interested in robotics, he started researching how to bring robotics classes to schools. He started putting the pieces together to start NextWaveSTEM. In 2017, Udit launched NextWaveSTEM® by offering after-school programming in Chicago. Today, at NextWaveSTEM, Udit’s company offers in-person and virtual courses for schools and turn-key curricula in Robotics, Drone Coding, Artificial Intelligence, 3D Printing, and more at K-12 schools nationwide.

“For our students, we hope to spark a new way of learning using real-world applications and inquiry-based learning,” says Udit. “For our fellow educators, we offer authentic support from our own educators, curriculum developers, and executive team.”

For these reasons and more, Udit Agarwal of NextWaveSTEM earned an EdTech Leadership Award for his visionary work in our field as part of The EdTech Awards from EdTech Digest. Learn more.

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Many parents are unable or unwilling to send their children to school with a phone. Smartwatch use among kids is booming, but experts warn the devices could be yet another “electronic umbilical cord.”

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As Jennifer Hill’s eldest child was heading into fifth grade, she began to wonder how she would communicate with him in the hour between his school bus drop-off and her arrival home from work in downtown Cleveland.

This story also appeared in WIRED.

“There’s no phone in this house if something goes wrong,” she remembers thinking. “It’s not safe.”

When Hill was a kid, there were no cellphones, sure, but there were landlines. And friendly neighbors keeping an eye out. And close-knit communities where everyone knew each other.

“It’s not the way it is anymore,” she says. “I can’t imagine my kid walking up to somebody’s house, knocking on a door, and saying, ‘My friend fell off his bike. Can I use your phone?’ We teach kids not to do that anymore.”

She wasn’t ready to get her 10-year-old a smartphone, not by a long shot. Nor did she intend to install a home phone. She wanted her son to be able to ride his bike around the neighborhood in the afternoons, too—not just be cooped up in their house.

She quickly whittled her options down to just one: a smartwatch.

Hill knew of another family that had just purchased their child one of these high-tech wearables. Back then, in 2018, the kid-focused options were fairly limited, as were their capabilities. Hill got her son a Verizon Gizmo watch, which, at the time, had only rudimentary features, storing up to 10 parent-approved phone numbers and allowing the user to send only a handful of preset text messages (think: “Where are you?” and “Call me”). The smartwatch also had some simple location-tracking capabilities.

Fast-forward six years, and Hill’s two oldest children, now high schoolers, both have graduated to smartphones. Her youngest, a 10-year-old daughter, wears a Gizmo watch, only hers comes with all the technological advancements and upgrades accumulated over the prior years: photo and video capture, video calling, access to a full keyboard for texting, voice messaging, group chats, geofencing, and up to 20 parent-approved phone numbers.

Today, says George Koroneos, a spokesperson for Verizon, the smartwatch is “truly a phone replacement on their wrist.”

And the product category is booming. A decade ago, only a few tech companies made smartwatches for kids. Today, the market is bloated with players, new and veteran, vying for kids’ and parents’ loyalty—and advertising smartwatches to children as young as 5.

[Smartwatches] are becoming a child's first device.

— Kris Perry

“They are becoming increasingly popular,” says Kris Perry, executive director of Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development. “They are becoming a child’s first device.”

Families are noticing, too—after all, they’re the ones driving this “explosion,” as Shelley Pasnik, former director of the Center for Children and Technology, describes it.

Hill has seen the evolution since her first watch purchase. When her sons were younger, she says, only a handful of their friends and classmates had smartwatches. Now, the devices are “huge” in her affluent suburban community of Westlake, Ohio.

“With my daughter, everyone’s got them. They’re as popular as Stanleys and Owalas,” she says, referring to the colorful, reusable water bottles that children have helped popularize. “All the little girls have watches.”

Kids clamoring for their first digital device are easily winning over adults who, let’s face it, aren’t putting up much of a fight in the first place, when always-on communication and precise location-tracking are part of the package that comes with modern parenting.

In fact, parent fears may be the real force propelling smartwatch proliferation.

The T-Mobile SyncUp is a kid-focused smartwatch that first launched in 2020. The company targets children ages 5 through 12 for the device. Photo courtesy of T-Mobile.

T-Mobile, which makes the SyncUp watch, conducted a consumer insights study and found that 92 percent of parents of children ages 4 through 12 felt it was important to “always know where their child was,” says Clint Patterson, senior vice president of product marketing at T-Mobile.

Today’s tools make such tracking possible.

“The way that parents monitor their kids has changed dramatically in just a generation or two,” says Mitch Prinstein, chief science officer at the American Psychological Association. “Parents are monitoring their kids far more closely, really wanting to be aware of their location [and] concerned about their safety.”

This heightened surveillance has trade-offs. The trend has seeped into schools, where teachers and leaders have grown frustrated by the introduction of yet another digital distraction to students’ learning, even as more districts enact cellphone bans.

It’s possible there are ways in which smartwatches are creating an electronic umbilical cord. That has possible risks as well.

— Mitch Prinstein

Yet no one really knows where these gadgets fit into the larger conversation around children and screens. Research on kids and smartwatches is thin. Even data about adoption and use is lacking. This has left digital media and child development experts to extrapolate and hypothesize about the possible pitfalls and benefits.

“If this is a way of parents or kids achieving their goals and delaying their kids on social media, this might not be such a bad thing,” says Prinstein, who codirects the Winston National Center on Technology Use, Brain, and Psychological Development and whose research focuses on adolescents and younger children.

“On the other hand,” Prinstein adds, “we don’t have a lot of research yet. It’s possible there are ways in which smartwatches are creating an electronic umbilical cord. That has possible risks as well.”

Technology ‘Training Wheels’

When the Apple Watch was released in 2015, it was seen—and priced—as a luxury good, notes Girard Kelly, the head of privacy at Common Sense Media.

It was also, back then, marketed to adults. But as new generations of the Apple Watch came out, some parents handed down older models to their children, says Pasnik of the Center for Children and Technology.

“Naturally, kids like to do things adults are doing,” says Jon Watkins, senior product manager for Bounce, a kid-focused smartwatch made by Garmin. “There’s a natural tendency for kids to want a watch like they see Mom and Dad wearing.”

Garmin makes a smartwatch for kids called Bounce. "Let kids be kids," an online promotion for the device says. "Save the smartphone, and let them explore the world with the Bounce kids smartwatch." Photo courtesy of Garmin.

Noting the trend—and in some cases, helping to grow it—other companies began to release kid-specific smartwatches with more limitations than an adult device. Apple, too, released a version, the Apple Watch SE, in 2020, with restricted features and a lower price.

Around that time, demand for kids’ smartwatches spiked, says Perry of Children and Screens. Educators, too, note a bump in adoption around the pandemic—one that has been sustained in the years since. The smartwatch market for kids is estimated to be worth more than $1 billion in 2024—and it’s growing rapidly, Perry adds.

A typical kids’ smartwatch today costs around $150 up front, plus an ongoing monthly subscription fee of $10 to $15. That’s certainly no pack of bubble gum, but it does put the device within reach for many families, particularly those who view the product as one that enhances their child’s safety, says Kelly of Common Sense.

Parents are, like, halfway in between giving their child or teen a phone, and the watch makes sense. It’s cheaper.

— Girard Kelly

“Parents are, like, halfway in between giving their child or teen a phone, and the watch makes sense,” he says. “It’s cheaper.”

To adults feeling pressure to introduce their kids to technology, a smartwatch may feel like a safer starting point than a cellphone that grants exposure to the entire internet, argues Kelly’s colleague Laura Ordoñez, executive editor and head of digital media family advice at Common Sense.

“What is the low-hanging fruit that doesn’t feel like it’s doing the most damage?” Ordoñez asks. “I believe that’s what’s motivating these parents.”

Numerous people cited social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s new book, “The Anxious Generation,” in interviews, noting the harm that smartphones and social media may be causing young people. Most smartwatches don’t have web browsers or social media applications. That in itself gives many parents an enormous sense of relief.

“Parents are increasingly aware of the problematic designs of smartphones and the troubling data on social media apps,” says Perry. “They want the connection, but they don’t want their child scrolling and online constantly.”

As the price of kids’ smartwatches has come down, though, it may have muddled how the wearable fits into a family’s overall technology goals. What started as a consolation prize offered to an older preteen or young teenager who craves technology, communication, and social inclusion has evolved into a sort of gateway device. Like bowling with bumpers.

“It’s a great way to ease into tech,” says Hill, the Ohio parent. “You can learn to take care of the technology in a small way before you are given it in a bigger way.”

That seems to be how the smartwatch makers view it, too. In interviews with executives at Verizon, Garmin, and T-Mobile, they describe their target users as ages 5 to 12, with the core customer base as parents of 8- to 10-year-olds.

“This is a very safe way to have a means of communication with a child,” claims Watkins of Garmin.

Patterson, at T-Mobile, describes kids’ smartwatches as “training wheels in the adoption of technology.”

“Just like you wouldn’t throw your kid on a bicycle, you don’t throw them at a smartphone or tablet with unfettered access,” Patterson adds.

What exactly are these training wheels preparing kids for? The bicycle metaphor suggests that someday, children will be allowed to zoom off on their own, liberated from their parents’ purview.

Yet untethering is not the trajectory families seem to have in mind when they buy their young kids entry-level digital tools. It’s not why Tim Huber, principal at Harris Creek Elementary School, part of North Carolina’s Wake County Public School System, is seeing more and more children in the early grades show up to school wearing smartwatches.

“It has been just a steady increase of kids, at younger grade levels, all the way down to kindergarten,” Huber notes.

To be sure, the reason that 5- and 6-year-olds—children who may not even be literate—have smartwatches is not to delay the purchase of their first smartphone or to ward off social media. For them, the watches are serving another purpose entirely.

‘Better Be Safe Than Sorry’

When Kristi Calderon’s daughter was in fifth grade, one of her classmates made a bomb threat.

“I rushed to them,” says Calderon, referring to her three school-age kids. “It was very scary.”

She saw only one of her children walk out of the building as the school was evacuated. In those next moments, she did not know where two of her children were or if they were OK.

“That’s what, like, killed me,” says Calderon, who lives in Long Beach, California.

The experience rattled her. Ever since, she says, she has ignored school policies around devices. She would rather know where her kids are and be able to communicate with them, to know that they are safe, than to be left to wonder and worry.

The youngest of her four children, now an 8-year-old in third grade, wears a smartwatch. He’s had one since he was in first grade.

Kristi Calderon with her family. The youngest of her four children, an 8-year-old, has worn a smartwatch since first grade. Photo courtesy of Calderon.

Experiences like Calderon’s—and the seemingly ever-present possibility of children encountering violence in schools—have driven parents to seek out location-tracking devices for their kids. Some settle for a simple AirTag fastened to a child’s backpack, but many also want the ability to communicate with their child, as Calderon does with her son during and outside of school hours.

Tina Laudando, a parent of two in Park Ridge, Illinois, just outside of Chicago, says she got her older son a smartwatch when he was 11 “so we could stay in touch with him and give him a little bit more freedom.”

Tina Laudando with her 12-year-old son. He was 11 when he got a smartwatch. Photo courtesy of Laudando.

His friends were getting together at the park, and she wanted him to be able to join them. And at his age, she didn’t want him to have to come with her every time she needed to make a trip to the grocery store. The watch, she figured, would allow him to stay home alone or meet his friends and communicate with his parents in case of an emergency.

Did she ever consider letting him join his friends at the park without a communication device? No, she says. That was never an option in her mind.

“The idea of him going to the park alone, going for a bike ride with his friends, without adult supervision, I think for me as an adult is scary,” Laudando says. “Being able to just, for myself, have that comfort level, knowing he’s OK, it gives me peace of mind.”

It’s a win-win, Laudando believes. Her son gets the feeling of more freedom and independence, and his parents feel confident giving that to him.

Laudando, like most of the parents interviewed for this story, grew up during a time when many kids would leave home on their bikes and be gone, unreachable, for hours, returning only for dinner. That was normal.

“It’s kind of sad, right? Because we lived without technology for so many years, and as I’m explaining this, I’m like, I don’t know what we would do without it,” Laudando says. “We’ve become reliant on it.”

But Laudando feels the world her children inhabit today is less safe than the one she was raised in.

Tina Laudando's older son, Nico, on his 12th birthday. He wears a smartwatch so his parents are comfortable letting him join his friends at the park and stay home alone. Photo courtesy of Laudando.

Tara Riggs, a parent of two in Livonia, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, can relate. She sees videos on social media, hears stories from friends, reads the news. She feels “inundated” with negative information. It wears her down, she says.

“I’m constantly worrying,” Riggs admits.

Indeed, the internet—and social media in particular—can leave many with the sense that the physical world is more dangerous today than ever, when in fact, by a number of measures, it is notably safer. (What has gotten worse, in the past few decades, is child and adolescent psychological and emotional well-being. Some researchers and leaders, including the US surgeon general, attribute this shift to high use of technology and social media among youth. Others cite intensive parenting practices that, ironically, seem to undermine the normal development of resilience in kids.)

“The perception of danger versus the actual danger is a distinction that’s probably important here,” says Prinstein, chief science officer at the American Psychological Association. “The perception of danger is heightened for a lot of parents.”

It’s a consequence of how much more connected our society is than it was a few decades ago, he adds. People can find out, in real time, about violent or disturbing events that happened many communities away. It leaves them with a sense that trouble—no matter how remote the possibility nor how many miles separate their families and the latest crisis making headlines—is looming.

Perhaps no tragedy feels more present and pernicious to a parent than a school shooting. One can take place on the other end of the United States, yet parents everywhere are reminded, viscerally, that their child, too, is at risk. It may have happened elsewhere, in Georgia, or Florida, or Texas, but the next one could be at their kid’s school.

“The psychology of fear—it’s extremely powerful,” says Huber, the elementary school principal. “We face that constantly. We are asking hundreds and hundreds of families every day to trust us with the safety and wellness of their child for seven to eight hours.”

Katie Joseph, assistant superintendent of Regional School Unit 1 in Bath, Maine, understands that school safety is a palpable concern for many families. Yet she urges those in her school community not to be overtaken by it.

I try to remind parents what I always tell myself: There is what is possible, and there is what is probable. Probably, all the things you’re worried about are not actually the things you should be worried about. You should be worried about the [device] in your child’s hand.

— Katie Joseph

“I try to remind parents what I always tell myself: There is what is possible, and there is what is probable. Probably, all the things you’re worried about are not actually the things you should be worried about. You should be worried about the [device] in your child’s hand.”

Joseph believes the kind of “independence” a child attains by donning a smartwatch only runs skin deep.

If a child’s parent is constantly monitoring them, in touch with their every move, then really they are not developing a strong sense of responsibility, she says. Everyday situations that might allow for a child to experience and overcome challenges, to take risks and build resilience, become virtually frictionless when their parents are just one tap away.

“If my child is riding his bike and something happens, he needs to be able to figure out, ‘What am I supposed to do in this situation?’” says Joseph, who has an 8-year-old. “The first thing we should want our kids to do is not to call us and have us do the thinking for them.”

Because of the relative affordability of the smartwatch, and its limitations, many families may not be asking themselves how likely it is that their child would be caught up in a violent event, Prinstein notes. Rather, they may be thinking, “Will I feel regret if I spend that 200 bucks on Starbucks versus just getting the device, just in case?” he says.

“I think the calculus there is a little bit like, ‘Better be safe than sorry,’ even though logic might follow that it’s not truly necessary,” he adds.

Yet Hill, the parent in Ohio, believes that her decision, years ago, to buy her kid a smartwatch as a safety precaution has been vindicated.

One afternoon, riding his bicycle home from swim practice, her oldest son was hit by a car. He wasn’t run over, Hill says, but the driver sideswiped him and he landed hard, with his bike toppling over him. With a few taps of his watch, he was able to make a quick call to his parents. Hill’s husband drove the mile to reach him and took him to the hospital.

“If that hadn’t been there,” Hill says of the watch, “I don’t know that he would have had the wherewithal to give my number to somebody with him. He was scared. He was 13. He was by himself. As much as we drill it into him, that’s a lot to ask of a kid.”

The smartwatch, in that moment, was a “resounding success,” she adds.

‘Opening Pandora’s Box’

Late last summer, Riggs, the parent who lives near Detroit, began to research smartwatches. She was considering buying one for her then 10-year-old daughter.

Riggs and her husband had recently caught their daughter disobeying them. One afternoon, their daughter was supposed to be at a friend’s house around the corner from their own, a block away. But when Riggs’ husband passed that friend’s house on his way home from work, he noticed their daughter’s bike wasn’t in the yard. Riggs sprang into action. She got in her car and drove around the neighborhood, going up and down each street until she found her daughter at another house.

“I didn’t like that feeling—that panicked feeling,” she says. “Where did they go? Did they cross the main road like they’re not supposed to? What are they getting up to?”

Her impulse was to prevent a similar situation by putting a tracker on her daughter. She spent months researching different smartwatch models, consulting other parents, scouring tech-focused parenting groups for insights. “I rabbit-holed that,” she says.

Then it occurred to her that maybe she was trying to solve the wrong problem. Riggs didn’t need a better strategy for monitoring her daughter. Rather, she needed to teach her child not to break the rules in the first place.

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“It seemed like I was opening Pandora’s box, when it wasn’t absolutely necessary,” she says of purchasing a smartwatch. (Still, she didn’t forswear technology entirely. Her daughter now bikes with a Wi-Fi–only tablet, connects it to the internet when she arrives at a friend’s house, and sends her mom a message on Facebook Messenger Kids letting her know she arrived safely.)

The possible drawbacks of smartwatch use extend beyond stunting character growth. Even though smartwatches are virtually unexplored in academic research and will require further study before anyone can say, conclusively, how they may affect kids and childhood, it’s clear that screens, in general, can cause children harm, Perry of Children and Screens argues.

“They interfere with so many aspects of child development,” she says, rattling off some examples: cognitive development, language development, social emotional and behavioral development, mental health.

True, the screen of a smartwatch is much smaller than that of a phone. Its functionalities are more limited. Some of the “irresistible” qualities of other devices are missing from smartwatches, Perry concedes. And even though most kids’ smartwatches come with games, they can be difficult to use and may deter kids from playing for long, or at all.

Still, that doesn’t make smartwatches safe from some of the addictive, distracting tendencies of phones, experts say. Watches vibrate, chime, and ping with notifications. They, like other devices, are built with persuasive design.

“The evidence is really clear that the notifications—the visual cues to look at your watch—those things are really disruptive and provide a real distraction from something else the child should be doing,” Perry says.

Teachers and school leaders would vouch for that.

They’re disruptive, distracting. It all just gets in the way of what teachers are trying to do.

— Katie Joseph

“They’re disruptive, distracting,” says Joseph, the district leader in Maine. “It all just gets in the way of what teachers are trying to do.”

She doesn’t see watches and phones as being wholly different from one another, especially in middle and high school settings where, increasingly, students have both devices with them during the school day. A phone may be put away, out of sight, but the watch on a student’s wrist will still be buzzing with news alerts, incoming text messages and photos, social media notifications, and the like.

Joseph’s school district, RSU 1, encompassing a small coastal region of Maine, updated its device policy over the summer, at a time when many schools and districts opted to do the same. Except, unlike RSU 1, most districts are narrowly focused on the potential harms of smartphones, multiple people shared in interviews. Their revised policies may not even mention smartwatches, creating a loophole for those devices.

For leaders at RSU 1, whose school board voted to “eliminate” both smartphones and smartwatches in grades six to 12, it was an attempt to increase student connection—real-life, in-person connection—and by extension improve their mental health. They’ll enforce this by collecting all watches and phones at the start of the school day, placing them in lockable Yondr pouches, and distributing them at dismissal.

Huber, the elementary school principal in North Carolina, also recently wrote smartwatches into his school’s device policy, requiring that they be in airplane mode—functioning only as a watch, not as a connected device—during the school day. “The watch is considered a cellphone UNLESS airplane mode is activated,” the policy reads.

He would take the policy a step further if he felt he could. Airplane mode can be disabled with one touch, and truthfully he’d rather not see the devices in his elementary school at all.

“There has not been one time I have ever heard from anybody, ‘I’m so glad this kid had a smartwatch,’” he says. “I can’t think of any scenario where there is a need or benefit to having it.”

Still, he’s not sure how much additional harm they could be causing for a generation of children who “have already been raised on tablets,” glued to parents’ smartphones at the dinner table. What’s one more screen?

Perry invites parents and families to think about it another way. Once a child is given their own personal device, their digital life begins. The child’s data is collected. Algorithms are built around their preferences and practices. An online profile is developed.

That can seem relatively innocuous—it’s just a watch, right?—but what people may not realize is that smartwatches collect thousands of data points, “easily,” per day, per user, according to Kelly of Common Sense.

“The younger you’re connecting your child to that world, the more risk there is to them than if you didn’t,” Perry says. “That’s a tough calculation as a parent.”

Is it better to stay out of touch with a child, trusting that they’ll be safe enough as they move about the physical world? Or to invest in a tool that enables constant monitoring and communication, albeit through the shadows of the emerging digital world?

The big question today’s parents must wrestle with, Perry says, is, “Which risks can I tolerate?”

© Illustration: Jacqui VanLiew, Reference Images: Getty Images

Het bericht Dit zijn de interieurtrends van dit najaar verscheen eerst op DutchCowboys.

My journey to play games like Starfield on anything except an Xbox accidentally proved the console still has its place.

A tech industry leader shares perspective on charting a course forward.

GUEST COLUMN | by Erik Stromquist

As a Chromebook OEM, CTL sits at the center of the edtech ecosystem. In a single day, I may chat with a district CIO at a business development event, take a support call from a tech director, and interface with the Google ChromeOS team. This gives me a unique perspective on what the industry is talking about—from new technology innovation to IT admin requests.

Lately, I’ve seen a few common threads running through many of our recent conversations: cybersecurity, connectivity, and sustainability.  Here is where I see the industry trajectories on all three topics, and how we’re encouraging the industry to work together to solve these common challenges.

Cybersecurity: An Ever-Evolving Challenge

School cybersecurity is increasingly under threat. From ransomware attacks to phishing scams, malicious actors increasingly target schools. In fact, according to K12 SIX data, there have been more than 1,600 attacks on schools since 2016, and unfortunately, no one expects it to get any better soon.

Even though we’re not directly involved in this layer of technology, as a Chromebook manufacturer and edtech solution provider, we are increasingly concerned for our customers. We’ve dedicated our company to ChromeOS cloud computing for one simple reason: ChromeOS has never been hacked. It’s the most secure, containerized operating system that provides the most out-of-the-box protection to users.

However, that’s just the protection out of the box. It’s a solid start, but maintaining that high level of security is critical once a device is deployed and used daily. That’s why, although we’re a hardware manufacturer, we’re investigating new partnerships with fellow travelers in this space. We want to help solve our customer’s cybersecurity concerns together. IT admins need to know the best tools and best practices available to help them prevent breaches and protect student and employee data.

It’s Cybersecurity Month, so this concern is top-of-mind for CTL and our customers. In a few weeks we’re bringing together our IT experts, the ChromeOS Team, a grant funding expert, and a phishing training software provider in a webinar to provide a wealth of cybersecurity updates and vital information to the edtech community.

Connectivity

Bridging the digital divide and closing the homework gap are great initiatives that all depend on the availability of connectivity. CTL believes strongly in providing digital access for every student, regardless of home internet status. We were the first to launch an LTE-connected Chromebook in 2018, and in the next several months we’ll be the first to launch 5G connectivity on Chromebooks for LTE-enablement and private wireless network access. This cause is one of our core corporate pillars of innovation.

The recent changes in E-Rate have left a lot of schools wondering how they can provide digital access beyond the school walls to close that homework gap. The FCC recently ruled it would continue to fund connectivity; however, it is exclusively limited to hotspots. Hotspots are certainly one way to deliver connectivity, but what we hear from our customers and large districts like the Los Angeles Unified School District is that they would prefer the FCC remove the hotspot requirement. Hotspots can be problematic for IT directors to roll out and manage – from provisioning the devices to keeping track of them, from frequent battery replacement to preventing unauthorized users. The hotspot is a limiting device, and we’ve written a letter supporting the LAUSD petition to remove the hotspot-only requirement for funding. School IT departments can select the best-connected devices for their populations if the funding transitions to be device-agnostic. For many school districts, deploying LTE-enabled Chromebooks is a single, streamlined solution that significantly reduces the extra device cost and management time.

Looking forward, CTL is most excited about district-wide private wireless networks for schools and the new 5G-enabled Chromebooks we’ll introduce next year. We’re involved in many districts around the country that are seeking to enable digital access for several use cases, including kids in need, rural communities, and even home-insecure students. Providing hardware and digital access for all students is the last mile in finally conquering the digital learning divide and providing true educational equity. We’re excited by the positive impacts on teaching and learning.

Sustainability

With the proliferation of student laptops, the industry has become increasingly concerned about sustainability over the last several years. Questions often arise, and when they do, we work to broaden the conversation beyond the simple recyclability of components. Sure, recycling is important, however, there is so much more we can do. This mission is so core to CTL that we recently became the first Chromebook manufacturer certified as a B Corporation™.

Going forward, CTL postulates that complete circularity in the Chromebook space is not only possible but a mandate. On the manufacturing side, we examine everything from the amount of post-consumer recycled plastic in our products to the to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSc) certification of our boxes as forest-based materials that meet the highest production standards from a sustainably managed forest. We encourage trade-ins once a district is ready to replace some of its fleet. This enables us to provide a rebate on the old devices towards new purchases, but more than that, it enables us to refurbish devices for a second life rather than simply recycling. This keeps components out of landfills longer and provides additional digital teaching and learning access for new use cases, such as loaners, spares, summer school students, and substitute teachers – the list is expansive.

The industry needs partners to help manage the entire lifecycle of Chromebooks and other electronic devices. Working together, we’re excited to see progress in creating innovative sustainability solutions that are great for learning and the planet.  

Moving Into the Future

CTL is growing by investing in these three key trends for student and teacher computing: cybersecurity, connectivity, and sustainability. I myself am moving on to a new role here at CTL, where I’ll be putting together the strategies, programs, and partnerships to ensure we solve these challenges and provide greater teaching and learning opportunities for educators and students throughout the next decade. If you have ideas or questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly. I’ll be listening.

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Erik Stromquist is Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board at CTL, a mission-driven company empowering success at school and work with innovative cloud-computing products and industry-leading services. Connect with Erik via LinkedIn. 

The post The Future of School Computing: Three Top Trends appeared first on EdTech Digest.

When Meta held its annual conference at the end of September, the tech giant announced it is betting that the next wave of computing will come in the form of smart eyeglasses.

Mark Zuckberberg, Meta’s founder and CEO, held up what he described as the first working prototype of Orion, which lets wearers see both the physical world and a computer display hovering in the field of vision.

“They’re not a headset,” he said on stage as he announced the device, which looked like a set of unusually chunky eyeglasses. “This is the physical world with holograms overlaid on it.”

For educators, this might not come as welcome news.

After all, one of the hottest topics in edtech these days is the growing practice of banning smartphones in schools, after teachers have reported that the devices distract students from classroom activities and socializing in person with others. And a growing body of research, popularized by the Jonathan Haidt book “The Anxious Generation,” argues that smartphone and social media use harms the mental health of teenagers.

When it’s proving hard enough to regulate the appropriate use of smartphones, what will it be like to manage a rush of kids wearing computers on their faces?

Some edtech experts see upsides, though, when the technology is ready to be used for educational activities.

The idea of using VR headsets to enter an educational multiverse — the last big idea Meta was touting when it changed its corporate name three years ago from Facebook — hasn’t caught on widely, in part because getting a classroom full of students fitted with headsets and holding controllers can be difficult for teachers (not to mention expensive to obtain all that gear). But if smart glasses become cheap enough for a cart to be wheeled in with enough pairs for each student, so they can all do some activity together that blends the virtual world with in-person interactions, they could be a better fit.

“Augmented reality allows for more sharing and collaborative work than VR,” says Maya Georgieva, who runs an innovation center for VR and AR at The New School in New York City. “Lots of these augmented reality applications build on the notion of active learning and experiential learning naturally.”

And there is some initial research that has found that augmented reality experiences in education can lead to improvements in learning outcomes since, as one recent research paper put it, “they transform the learning process into a full-body experience.”

Cheating Glasses?

The Orion glasses that Zuckerberg previewed last week are not ready for prime time — in fact the Meta CEO said they won’t be released to the general public until 2027.

(EdSurge receives philanthropic support from the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, which is co-owned by Meta’s CEO. Learn more about EdSurge ethics and policies here and supporters here.)

But the company already sells smart eyeglasses through a partnership with sunglass-maker Ray-Ban, which are now retailing for around $300. And other companies make similar products as well.

These gadgets, which have been on the market for a couple of years in some form, don’t have a display. But they do have a small built-in computer, a camera, a microphone and speakers. And recent advances in AI mean that newer models can serve as a talking version of a chatbot that users can access when they’re away from their computer or smartphone.

While so far the number of students who own smart glasses appears low, there have already been some reports of students using smart glasses to try to cheat.

This year in Tokyo, for instance, an 18-year-old allegedly used smart glasses to try to cheat on a university entrance exam. He apparently took pictures of his exam questions, posted them online during the test, and users on X, formerly Twitter, gave him the answers (which he could presumably hear read to him on his smart glasses). He was detected and his test scores were invalidated.

Meanwhile, students are sharing videos on TikTok where they explain how to use smart glasses to cheat, even low-end models that have few “smart” features.

“Using these blue light smart glasses on a test would be absolutely diabolical,” says one TikTok user’s video, describing a pair of glasses that can simply pair with a smartphone by bluetooth and cost only about $30. “They look like regular glasses, but they have speakers and microphones in them so you can cheat on a test. So just prerecord your test or your answers or watch a video while you're at the test and just listen to it and no one can tell that you’re looking or listening to anything.”

On Reddit discussions, professors have been wondering whether this technology will make it even harder to know whether the work students are doing is their own, compounding the problems caused by ChatGPT and other new AI tools that have given students new ways to cheat on homework that are difficult to detect.

One commenter even suggested just giving up on doing tests and assignments and trying to find new ways of assessing student knowledge. “I think we have too many assessments that have limited benefit and no one here wants to run a police state to check if students actually did what they say they did,” the user wrote. “I would appreciate if anyone has a functional viable alternative to the current standard. The old way will benefit the well off and dishonest, while the underprivileged and moral will suffer (not that this is new either).”

Some of the school and state policies that ban smartphones might also apply to these new smart glasses. A state law in Florida, for instance, restricts the use of “wireless communication devices,” which could include glasses, watches, or any new gadget that gets invented that connects electronically.

“I would compare it very much to when smartphones really came on the scene and became a regular part of our everyday lives,” says Kyle Bowen, a longtime edtech expert who is now deputy chief information officer at Arizona State University, noting that these glasses might impact a range of activities if they catch on, including education.

There could be upsides in college classrooms, he predicts.

The benefit he sees for smart glasses is the pairing of AI and the devices, so that students might be able to get real-time feedback about, say a lab exercise, by asking the chatbot to weigh in on what it sees through the camera of the glasses as students go about the task.

© Screenshot from Meta video

There’s a push among AI developers to create an AI tutor, and some see that as a key use case for tools like ChatGPT. But one longtime edtech expert sees an even better fit for new AI chatbots in education: helping educators design course materials for their students.

So all year Michael Feldstein has been leading a project to build an AI assistant that’s focused on learning design.

After all, these days colleges and other education institutions are hiring a growing number of human instructional designers to help create or improve teaching materials — especially as colleges have developed more online classes and programs. And people in those roles follow a playbook for helping subject-matter experts (the teachers they work with) organize their material into a series of compelling learning activities that will get students the required knowledge and skills on a given subject. Feldstein thinks new AI chatbots might be uniquely suited to guiding instructors through the early stages of that learning-design process.

He calls his system the AI Learning Design Assistant, or ALDA. And for months he has been leading a series of workshops through which more than 70 educators have tried versions of the tool and given feedback. He says he’s built a new version of the system about every month for the past five months incorporating the input he’s received. He argues that if AI could serve as an effective instructional design assistant, it could help colleges significantly reduce the time it takes to create courses.

Feldstein is not completely convinced it will work, though, so he says he has invited plenty of people to test it who are skeptical of the idea.

“The question is, can AI do that?” he says. “Can we create an AI learning design assistant that interviews the human educator, asks the questions and gathers the information that the educator has in their heads about the important elements of the teaching interaction and then generates a first draft?”

EdSurge has been checking in with Feldstein over the past few months as he’s gone through this design process. And he’s shared what has gone well — and where early ideas fell flat. You can hear highlights of those conversations on this week’s EdSurge Podcast.

Even if it turns out that AI isn’t a fit to help build courses, Feldstein says the project is yielding lessons about where generative AI tools can help educators do their jobs better.

Check it out on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or on the player below.

© Nichcha / Shutterstock

Each fall, every teacher must wage a few key wars with a new class of students. In my classroom, one battle is around bathroom usage. Another is assigned seats. A third is side conversations—especially during our first few weeks of class community building. Increasingly, though, the biggest fight that never seems to end is around phone usage.
This year, the Pew Research Center reported that 9 in 10 American adults own a smartphone. While most of us can recall what life was like before our national smartphone addiction, most of today’s adolescents are too young to remember such a time; however, smartphone ownership among 13 to 17-year-olds almost mirrors adults. Furthermore, smartphone use among teenagers has been a growing obstacle to learning.

My colleague and I teach the same group of 11th grade students in our Title I high school in Oakland; she teaches history, and I teach them science. Given the size of this group, we are able to build strong relationships with these 60 students during our 40 weeks together.
Early in the year, we noticed most students were extremely attached to their phones. So, about halfway through last year, we decided to investigate how much screen time our students consumed. While not unexpected, the results of our investigation baffled us. Kids were reading off figures like “8 hours and 43 minutes daily” with no shame. The highest across the group? Just under 12 hours per day. The lowest? An admirable 2 hours and 50 minutes. Weekly? The vast majority totaled over 40 hours — more than an entire workweek spent staring at a screen.

As teachers, this is not only exhausting but demoralizing. While 77% of public schools have some type of cellphone regulation during classroom time, our high school does not. This is an extremely controversial issue at my school site and in other schools across the country. As school safety concerns rise with campus shootings, parents are also worried about not being able to contact their children. However, while this is a valid concern for many parents, teachers are also battling signs of poor mental health, decreased engagement and overall general lack of socialization with peers in our students.

As a teacher standing in front of an audience who simply cannot put their phones down, the diminishing attention span of my students takes a toll. When I talk to other staff at my school, the majority of people want a phone usage policy across the school. Many academic cohorts in my school have their own policies with varying degrees of success, but some teachers are adamant about policy implementation. Teachers who don’t want policies often cite lack of support as a major reason; this could be due to unresponsive or unsupportive administration, lack of clear consequences on a school-wide basis or lack of consistency across classrooms.

Each of these factors leads to teachers having to fight the same battles every day. Not only does it take away from our overall teaching time, but it impacts our relationships with students—the only thing keeping many of us in the classroom in one of the lowest-paying but most difficult-to-teach districts in the Bay Area.

Even if you uphold clear structures in your classroom, they must be retaught each day because your students enter seven different spaces throughout the day with varying policies and expectations before you see them again. Without a school-wide policy, it’s not only confusing for students but there’s no real buy-in without a chain of consequences that reaches outside one specific classroom.

Shifted Landscape

In my experience as a teacher, the classroom landscape was distinctly different before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the notorious Zoom Year, phones were a minor issue; students were generally receptive to being redirected and there was an overall culture of understanding of how to act in a classroom. Often, when students were finished with their work or needed a break, they’d chat with me about their weekends, telling me about events in their lives such as a morning spent fishing with their dad or their little sister’s upcoming quinceañera. Sometimes, they’d pull out a book or talk to their classmates. These moments were priceless to me as their teacher, and these small check-ins made going to work a joy.

Now, the entire landscape has shifted. I’ve noticed that students generally lack the mental fortitude and self-regulation to put their phones down. Each day, I battle against social media, online gambling, sports games, texting friends and everything else that the internet provides, and for the most part, it’s me versus my group of 28 students. Most of them seem to understand that it’s an expectation I have in my classroom, but the same general understanding of smartphone etiquette is no longer ingrained in the school culture or this generation of students.

Instead, kids see phone usage as a non-issue; it’s simply something that everyone does. This creates a barrier between my students and me and highlights so many factors that are pushing teachers out of the field, such as increased workload and mental health. Additionally, because of the controversy around smartphones, we feel unappreciated and invalidated in our efforts to encourage kids to engage in our classrooms and create a positive learning community.

Managing Expectations

Because of the combined inconsistency in school policy and significant overuse of smartphones among my students, navigating this issue has made my teaching experience incredibly difficult — especially since I often go hours on campus without interacting with another adult. When an issue plagues the way you teach and has become an accepted norm among students, it can be hard to continue pouring energy into the effort when you feel alone in a losing battle.

Though there is clear progress in policy around smartphone regulation in states like California, there is not yet clarity on how these policies will look in schools with varying access to resources. Current political movements, like All4Ed, raise questions about funding provided to Title I schools to uphold such policies.

As I settle into this school year, I’m hopeful that my school will make some progress in developing a sound, consistent policy that applies to every classroom. However, as our budget has been cut significantly, further reducing resources and staff available to address phone use in classrooms and around the school, I’ve adjusted my expectations in hopes of future movement on this issue.

Yet again, teachers are tasked with solving society’s issues without resources or support. Smartphone use is an issue that needs to be addressed sooner than later in schools so that this generation of kids can build and focus on the skills they need to succeed in the world.

© Drazen Zigic / Shutterstock

A technology trendsetter in search of the next way he can help students succeed. 

INTERVIEW | by Victor Rivero

Kyle Berger is an accomplished Chief Technology Officer with over 23 years of K-12 technology leadership experience in Texas’ public education system. He has served various districts of diverse sizes and demographics, successfully leading one-to-one deployment, district revitalization, and bond programs.

Kyle is a recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Technology Director of the Year for Texas, 2020 National Edtech Leadership Winner, Institutional Leadership Award for Interoperability, and Top 100 Influencers in Edtech by EdTech Digest. In 2023, Kyle was named one of 16 nationwide by the COSN Impact 30 Award as a leader impacting educational technology and leading change into the future. Kyle also has been invited to the White House to discuss K-12 cyber security at the national level.

Kyle’s transformative work has been recognized in educational technology magazines, industry case studies, and published books on Educational Technology. He is a highly respected and sought-after speaker, frequently presenting on educational technology transformation to corporations and school systems around the country. Kyle currently serves as a member of several corporate advisory boards and as Chief Technology Officer for Grapevine-Colleyville ISD, a school district of 14,000 students located in North Texas. Under his leadership, the district has overseen the top virtual school in Texas and ranked fifth in the country for the past decade, while also developing State Championship Esports programs for high school competitions.

For these reasons and more, Kyle Berger is The EdTech Trendsetter Awards Winner for School Leader Setting a Trend as part of The EdTech Awards 2024 from EdTech Digest. 

As part of his quest to expand his horizons and continually learn and challenge himself to bring back innovative applications into his schools, Kyle is headed to Japan this fall to visit schools there to collaborate on how they are integrating technology and finding the balance that continues their educational success. He’ll meet with, among others, executives from Japan-based Epson to review growing trends in education in Japan and the US. Before he heads out, he sat down with EdTech Digest to talk about purpose in education, AI in education, thoughtful integration of technology—and what’s just ahead. 

What does it mean to be honored as part of The EdTech Awards 2024 in the context of now even further acceleration of technology with AI in education? 

As an educational technology leader with over two decades of experience, I am both humbled and energized to be recognized among the visionaries in The EdTech Awards 2024. This honor comes at a pivotal moment in education, as we navigate the transformative integration of AI into our learning ecosystems. The rapid advancements in AI are not just changing how we teach and learn; they’re revolutionizing our ability to understand and support student growth on an unprecedented scale.

‘The rapid advancements in AI are not just changing how we teach and learn; they’re revolutionizing our ability to understand and support student growth on an unprecedented scale.’

From your unique vantage point as someone with a long record of bringing innovation with technology for learning into your school district, what really is the transformative potential of AI in education?

The post Kyle Berger: Driving Innovation in Our Field appeared first on EdTech Digest.

State Education Technology Directors Association (SETDA) just released The 2024 State EdTech Trends. The survey and report tracks insights on the top edtech priorities as identified in SETDA’s survey of state policy-makers including state edtech directors, state superintendents and commissioners of education and CIOs. “With every new report, it’s more evident that state education agencies are evolving to meet the demands of a digital, modern world while navigating the uncertainty created by emerging technologies like artificial intelligence,” says Julia Fallon, Executive Director of SETDA. Like its predecessors, the report catalogs ways state education agencies are adjusting to a world where technology is ubiquitous and where new and emerging innovations create never-before-seen opportunities and risks. Conducted in collaboration with Whiteboard Advisors, the report includes responses from 46 states and the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA). The report complements the survey data with state spotlights that showcase the work states are leading to support cybersecurity efforts, the effective and equitable use of edtech tools, and the development of policy to guide the use of AI in K-12 classrooms. Learn more.

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Two instructors at Vilnius University in Lithuania brought in some unusual teaching assistants earlier this year: AI chatbot versions of themselves.

The instructors — Paul Jurcys and Goda Strikaitė-Latušinskaja — created AI chatbots trained only on academic publications, PowerPoint slides and other teaching materials that they had created over the years. And they called these chatbots “AI Knowledge Twins,” dubbing one Paul AI and the other Goda AI.

They told their students to take any questions they had during class or while doing their homework to the bots first before approaching the human instructors. The idea wasn’t to discourage asking questions, but rather to nudge students to try out the chatbot doubles.

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Would you use an AI teaching assistant? Share your thoughts.

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“We introduced them as our assistants — as our research assistants that help people interact with our knowledge in a new and unique way,” says Jurcys.

Experts in artificial intelligence have for years experimented with the idea of creating chatbots that can fill this support role in classrooms. With the rise of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools, there’s a new push to try robot TAs.

“From a faculty perspective, especially someone who is overwhelmed with teaching and needs a teaching assistant, that's very attractive to them — then they can focus on research and not focus on teaching,” says Marc Watkins, a lecturer of writing and rhetoric at the University of Mississippi and director of the university’s AI Summer Institute for Teachers of Writing.

But just because Watkins thought some faculty would like it doesn’t mean he thinks it’s a good idea.

“That's exactly why it's so dangerous too, because it basically offloads this sort of human relationships that we're trying to develop with our students and between teachers and students to an algorithm,” he says.

On this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we hear from these professors about how the experiment went — how it changed classroom discussion but sometimes caused distraction. A student in the class, Maria Ignacia, also shares her view on what it was like to have chatbot TAs.

And we listen in as Jurcys asks his chatbot questions — and admits the bot puts things a bit differently than he would.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or on the player on this page.

Randi Economou is at the helm of Capstone at precisely the right moment of edtech’s evolution from providing technology for technology’s sake to vendors becoming true solution-oriented partners.

Whether at the beginning of her career teaching 9th grade or now as a leader of 200+ employees, Randi has been in schools every week for the past 23 years, and one thing is very clear: problems like closing the literacy gap are solved with collective action.

The message of collective impact guides her work. At Capstone, she champions customer-centric thinking and cross-departmental collaboration. She fosters employees’ sense of mission by asking employees to approach each other, their work, and their customers with empathy and a commitment to problem-solving.

In her evolution from teaching to CEO, impact has been central to her motivation: “I learned that I was impacting more kids across the nation by helping districts adopt just-right solutions and motivating teachers to use technology.” A recent example is entering into a partnership with ISTE to publish Sonia’s Digital World, the first in a series of children’s titles. The partnership teams ISTE’s subject-matter experts and research-based best practices on technology use in schools with Capstone’s delightful, engaging storytelling for young readers.

Randi’s core belief is that district/vendor partnerships are more than corporate-speak. They succeed by helping educators make a difference for students. Capstone’s customers are responding to the authenticity she inspires, setting both the trend and the pace for continued growth. For these reasons and more, Randi Economou is The EdTech Trendsetter Awards Winner for “Leader Setting a Trend” as part of The EdTech Awards 2024 from EdTech Digest. Learn more.

The post Randi Economou, An EdTech Leader Specializing in the Collective Impact appeared first on EdTech Digest.

This edtech consultant, presenter, attorney, author, and teacher is a familiar face at so many edtech conferences and events. She’s also a teacher: Rachelle Dené Poth teaches Spanish and STEAM: Emerging Technology. She has a Juris Doctor degree from Duquesne University School of Law and a Master’s in Instructional Technology. She is currently pursuing a second doctorate, focused on Educational Technology.

She is also an ISTE Certified Educator and Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert. She is past-president of ISTE Teacher Education and received the ISTE Making IT Happen Award in 2019 and Presidential gold and silver awards for volunteer service to education. Rachelle was named one of 150 Women Thought Leaders to Follow for 2022 and one of 30 K-12 IT Influencers for 2021.

In 2017, Rachelle was selected as the 2017 Outstanding Teacher of the Year by PAECT and one of ”20 to Watch” educators by NSBA. Rachelle has written seven books, which include more than 150 educators from around the world. She presents at state, national, and international conferences.

Rachelle started researching and presenting on AI and emerging technologies more than five years ago. She has presented more than 100 sessions, trainings for educators, written articles, spoken on panels and taught about AI as well as AR/VR, the metaverse and STEM. She has been called upon by media outlets, educational organizations, to provide insight into AI and is currently writing several publications about AI.

Rachelle is a columnist for various magazines and websites about the future of learning. She has a podcast ThriveinEDU, hosts ThriveinEDU Live and leads a community of educators on Facebook. For these reasons and more, Rachelle Dené Poth earned The EdTech Trendsetter Awards Winner status as part of The EdTech Awards 2024 from EdTech Digest. Learn more. 

The post Rachelle Dené Poth: Thriving in Edu appeared first on EdTech Digest.

The Learning Design Team at ClassLink is the power behind all things educational for internal and external stakeholders. They are the source of all Help Center documentation and ClassLink Academy courses.

ClassLink’s Help Center provides over 450 easy-to-use articles that allow users to find necessary information quickly. Articles are ADA compliant and feature light humor, use of emojis, graphics, videos, and GIFs to illustrate knowledge further.

ClassLink Academy is a comprehensive online training platform designed to provide technical administrators, educational leaders, instructors, and students with top-notch resources. With over 200 micro-courses, the primary goal is to elevate their proficiency and comprehension in utilizing ClassLink’s suite of products effectively.

ClassLink Academy features proven andragogy and pedagogy as well as gamification, multimedia content, certifications, CEUs, and badges.

Both ClassLink Academy and ClassLink’s Help Center have helped users to develop a higher level of proficiency in utilizing ClassLink products. By providing comprehensive training resources, users have gained a deeper understanding of the platform’s features and functionalities, enabling them to navigate and use them more effectively. ClassLink’s Help Desk has also experienced a decrease in help center tickets as users are familiar with how to navigate products on their own effectively.

Due to higher proficiency and confidence powered by knowledge, users have enjoyed improved productivity as they’ve optimized their workflows to streamline their tasks. The increased efficiency has led to more efficient ways to access resources, applications, and data, saving time and effort.

For these reasons and more, ClassLink Learning Design Team has been recognized as The EdTech Trendsetter Awards Winner for “EdTech Group Setting a Trend” as part of The EdTech Awards 2024 from EdTech Digest. Learn more. 

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