ClassConnect is a startup founded by teen entrepreneur Eric Simons (who spent months living on
AOL’s campus
while he worked on the project). Inspired by his own difficulties
finding interesting lessons in high school, Simons wanted to create a
place where teachers could more easily mix up their instruction.
ClassConnect does just that, making it easy for teachers to build,
store, and share lessons with colleagues, students, or parents, which
may just help teachers grab the interest of bright young minds like
Simons.
19Pencils is another great up-and-coming tool for
teachers that allows them to more easily manage and share class content.
Through the site, which is still in beta testing, teachers can build a
class website to which they can post lessons, links to other class
sites, quizzes, and even fun educational content for students.
Some laughed when Google announced it was working on
a pair of augmented reality smart glasses, hopefully for release in
2013. Yet the device is incredibly impressive and could eventually
become a common sight in classrooms, just like the once much maligned
iPad. The glasses have incredible potential as a learning tool, and it’s
only a matter of time before teachers are using the cutting-edge gadget
in classrooms around the nation.
Educational publisher Pearson is taking the future
of educational content development into their own hands, through amazing
resources like the Online Learning Exchange. The site is still in its
first stages but has already been part of pilot programs in states like
Texas, where teachers can use resources offered by Pearson to build,
share, and discuss their lesson plans. Even better, it’s easy for
teachers to enrich lessons with videos, documents, and even games.
Writing coach is another pilot program by Pearson, which is also
getting a lot of use in Texas classrooms. With writing being a skill
that many students need to hone, the timing couldn’t be better for an
educational tool like this to emerge. The PHWC is an online curriculum
that guides teachers and students through a series of activities and
projects designed to bolster writing skills in grades six through 12.
It’s flexible, personalizable, and will likely inspire many similar
programs in the coming years.
More and more modern classroom interactions are
taking place online, and programs like Three Ring can help to make that
process a whole lot more streamlined. Through Three Ring, teachers can
easily digitize student work, create online portfolios, and even assess
student progress. Even better, it can all be done right from a smart
phone.
Recently launched education startup ClassDojo is a
really great tool for teachers who need a little help with behavior
management. Through the site, teachers can offer students real-time
feedback on their behavior and can print out daily reports for students
and parents. It could quickly become a popular way for teachers to spend
less time on classroom management and more time on actually teaching
lessons.
While many of the tools on this list are already
pretty accessible to teachers, those like Virginia Tech’s CAVE facility
aren’t. CAVE, or Computer Augmented Virtual Environments, allows
students to strap on VR glasses and enter a 3-D, immersive, multi-person
environment, where students can quite literally become immersed in
their lessons. So far, the school has developed a virtual Jamestown,
entomology projects, and a virtual dandelion. While the technology isn’t
widespread now, with so many amazing and highly futuristic
applications, more schools, museums, and science centers could be
building their own CAVE tools in the future.
Another amazing high-tech tool for education being
developed by a top university is cognitive tutoring. Programmers and
educators at Carnegie Mellon have teamed to build customizable software
that adapts to student needs and abilities, increasing or decreasing
difficulty as the student needs it. This sort of AI-based educational
program offers some great possibilities for students who are struggling
or those who just want to test their skills, and could prove to be a
valuable educational tool for any school willing to develop their own
versions of the software.
One of the best benefits about future teaching tools is their ability
to help students who have learning disabilities. Fast ForWord is one
example of a new product, designed around neuroscience research on
dyslexia, that helps students with difficulty reading and writing
improve their skills and reach grade-level standards. Even better, the
new program is designed to mesh with No Child Left Behind mandates,
which can make it easier on teachers to incorporate it into the
classroom.
While you might think of EEGs as something you only
use in a hospital, in the future they might become a more common sight
in the classroom as well. EEG is short for electroencephalography, and
is a method of recording electrical activity along the scalp to measure
brain activity. Currently, there are only a few educational companies
working with EEGs for educational purposes, like NeuroSky, the company
we’ve linked to here. Yet EEG technology offers teachers unprecedented
insights into the minds of students, and as neuroscience research exerts
greater influence over classroom practices, teachers could find
themselves administering their own brain wave analysis to check student
learning.
Blackboard not working for you? Startup program Lore
makes it simple to manage your course, using a social media-like format
to help students turn in assignments, have discussions, and share
ideas. While it could work for any type of class, Lore and other sites
like it could be a big help for teachers working in distance learning.
GlobalScholar isn’t new, the company has been around
since 2006 and is a division of the education giant Scantron. But it is
part of a growing number of tools designed to help teachers meet
district standards, organize records, develop lessons, and even engage
in professional development. Used in 1,000 school districts nationwide,
GlobalScholar’s Pinnacle Suite and other similar software are fast
becoming requirements in the modern teacher’s repertoire, which may not
be a bad thing as districts tighten belts and demand bigger and better
increases in test scores from teachers.
Pearson isn’t the only educational publisher looking
to think outside the usual textbook box. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is
also working on their own high-tech educational tools, one of which is
the very impressive pilot program HMH Fuse. Fuse isn’t computer-based,
instead operating exclusively on the iPad. The platform offers Common
Core lessons in interactive form for Algebra and Geometry, though others
may be rolled out in the coming months. It’s designed to help keep
students motivated and to raise their test scores, boasting in-app
homework help for students and tracking capabilities for teachers as
well.
A pilot program in Arkansas that blends a custom-curriculum with iPad
applications is one among many such programs being developed in the
United States for use in the K-12 classroom. Educational applications
are increasingly playing a major role in teaching, and as new programs
are developed and refined, few teachers can expect to stay untouched by
the growing trend. Students in the Arkansas classroom got a chance to
read iPad based books, Skype with the author in class, and design and
built their own adventure stories, an experience that will undoubtedly
become more common in the future.
While many schools still ban YouTube, Facebook, and
Twitter, the reality is that social media offers so many opportunities
for learning that it will be increasingly difficult to justify
prohibiting students from using it for educational purposes. Already,
many students are using sites like Evernote, Skitch, Blogger, and
YouTube to develop amazing projects, even in early elementary school.
While many social media tools for learning already exist, there will
likely be an explosion of new sites in the coming years and new ways for
teachers to use existing sites that will make social media an
indispensable tool in the classroom.
K-12 classrooms aren’t the only places getting a
boost from educational startups. Top Hat Monocle is working to bring
disruptive technologies into the college classroom as well, bringing
polls, quizzes, and interactive features to students and professors on
their laptops and mobile devices. While the site first launched in 2009,
it hasn’t seen widespread use until fairly recently, as more teachers
look for ways to shake up the traditional university model of education.
Results are promising, as professors report an average increase of 3%
to 5% in grades.
These days, it isn’t enough to reach out to students
just over a laptop. Tools like Socrative understand that, engaging
students through educational games and exercises via smartphones,
laptops, and tablets. Teachers simply choose activities for students
that relate to their lessons, students interact with the content, and
teachers can then measure how much students are taking away from a
lesson. It’s simple and could be a quick and easy way for teachers to
gauge student progress.
With school districts around the nation fretting
about STEM education, tools like Late Nite Labs could become an ever
more important asset in a teacher’s arsenal. Schools that cannot afford
lab equipment or who just want to give students extra practice can use
the program to complete virtual labs, enhancing STEM education in
chemistry and biology without substantial increasing school budgets or
requiring a large amount of new resources.
From middle school frog dissections to medical
school surgical practice, simulation technology is helping to give
students at all levels a better biological education. While tools like
these have been in use for almost a decade, new, more advanced versions
of simulation software are being produced that more adequately replicate
real-life scenarios for learners. These kinds of programs can be useful
in teaching a wide range of subjects, from medicine, like we mentioned,
to driver’s ed to engineering.
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