Question

Identify three different standards related to reading and writing materials, including digital tools and resources, needed to customize and personalize learning activities to meet the various learning styles of students during implementation of the strategy

Answer 1

Technology can be a powerful tool for transforming learning. It can help affirm and advance relationships between educators and students, reinvent our approaches to learning and collaboration, shrink long-standing equity and accessibility gaps, and adapt learning experiences to meet the needs of all learners. Our schools, community colleges, adult learning centers and universities should be incubators of exploration and invention. Educators should be collaborators in learning, seeking new knowledge and constantly acquiring new skills alongside their students. Education leaders should set a vision for creating learning experiences that provide the right tools and supports for all learners to thrive.

Although these examples help provide understanding of the current state of educational technologies, it is also important to note the research being done on early stage educational technology and how this research might be applied more widely in the future to learning. As part of their work in cyberlearning, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is researching opportunities offered by integrating emerging technologies with advances in the learning sciences. Following are examples of the projects being funded by the NSF as part of this effort:

1. In K-12 classrooms across the United States, students are visiting far off places such as Machu Picchu, the Great Barrier Reef, and other locations without ever leaving the classroom. Educators can access programs such as the Google Expedition Pioneer Program for lessons and additional resources to create virtual field trip experiences. Students can then use Google Cardboard—an inexpensive pair of VR goggles made from a cardboard cutout, magnets, lens and a user-supplied smartphone—to move through an experience that their teacher controls from a tablet. The I-CorpsTM L project, a program within the National Science Foundation, is currently piloting a similar project for higher education settings. This Virtual Reality Field Experiences (VRFE) application uses an Android smartphone with an accompanying virtual reality viewer such as Google Cardboard.

2. Through the Virtual Learning Labs Research and Development Center awarded by IES in 2016, researchers at the University of Florida are studying how education technology systems can use large amounts of data to effectively adapt instruction for students. The Center is using data from prior students to personalize Algebra Nation, a free online learning platform for students and teachers. Goals for this effort include promoting mastery of basic algebra; developing indicators of engagement during learning; designing professional development to help teachers use learning analytics to differentiate instruction; and engaging in leadership and outreach around the design of personalization of virtual learning systems through the use of learning analytics and accompanying professional development for teachers.

3. Increased use of games and simulations to give students the experience of working together on a project without leaving their classrooms. Students are involved actively in a situation that feels urgent and must decide what to measure and how to analyze data in order to solve a challenging problem. Examples include RoomQuake, in which an entire classroom becomes a scaled-down simulation of an earthquake. As speakers play the sounds of an earthquake, the students can take readings on simulated seismographs at different locations in the room, inspect an emerging fault line, and stretch twine to identify the epicenter. Another example is Robot-Assisted Language Learning in Education (RALL-E), in which students learning Mandarin converse with a robot that exhibits a range of facial expressions and gestures, coupled with language dialogue software. Such robots will allow students to engage in a social role-playing experience with a new language without the usual anxieties of speaking a new language. The RALL-E also encourages cultural awareness while encouraging good use of language skills and building student confidence through practice.

4. New ways to connect physical and virtual interaction with learning technologies that bridge the tangible and the abstract. For example, the In Touch With Molecules project has students manipulate a physical ball-and-stick model of a molecule such as hemoglobin, while a camera senses the model and visualizes it with related scientific phenomena, such as the energy field around the molecule. Students’ tangible engagement with a physical model is connected to more abstract, conceptual models, supporting students’ growth of understanding. Toward a similar goal, elementary school students sketch pictures of mathematical situations by using a pen on a tablet surface with representational tools and freehand sketching, much as they would on paper. Unlike with paper, they easily copy, move, group, and transform their pictures and representations in ways that help them to express what they are learning about mathematics. These can be shared with the teacher, and, via artificial intelligence, the computer can help the teacher see patterns in the sketches and support the teacher’s using student expression as a powerful instructional resource.

5. Interactive three-dimensional imaging software, such as zSpace, is creating potentially transformational learning experiences. With three-dimensional glasses and a stylus, students are able to work with a wide range of images from the layers of the earth to the human heart. The zSpace program’s noble failure feature allows students constructing a motor or building a battery to make mistakes and retry, learning throughout the process. Although the content and curriculum are supplied, teachers can customize and tailor lesson plans to fit the needs of their classes. This type of versatile technology allows students to work with objects schools typically would not be able to afford, providing a richer, more engaging learning experience.

6. Augmented reality (AR) as a new way of investigating our context and history In the Cyberlearning: Transforming Education EXP project, researchers are addressing how and for what purposes AR technologies can be used to support the learning of critical inquiry strategies and processes. The question is being explored in the context of history education and the Summarizing, Contextualizing, Inferring, Monitoring, and Corroborating (SCIM-C) framework developed for historical inquiry education. A combined hardware and software platform is being built to support SCIM-C pedagogy. Students use a mobile device with AR to augment their “field” experience at a local historical site. In addition to experiencing the site as it exists, AR technology allows students to view and experience the site from several social perspectives and to view its structure and uses across several time periods. Research focuses on the potential of AR technology in inquiry-based fieldwork for disciplines in which analysis of change across time is important to promote understanding of how very small changes across long periods of time may add up to very large changes.

Across these examples, we see that learning is not contained within screens or classrooms and that technology can enrich how students engage in the world around them.