Teachers are increasingly embracing technology in the classroom, and one platform is helping them do this.

“When you hear that the average textbook in an under-funded school in the US dates back to 1989 and still refers to the USSR, it really drives home the importance of teacher-created resources in the classroom,” Says Tom Glover, Communications Director at TES Global.

Founded in 1910, TES can hardly lay claim to being the new kids on the education block, but they are nevertheless taking the lead in some important innovations in that space. They are home to the world’s largest online community of teachers, with 8 million registered users, who collectively downloaded over 200 million classroom resources in 2015.

The average textbook in an under-funded school in the US dates back to 1989 and still refers to the USSR
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This represents a significant shift, showing how teachers are embracing technology, specially when it comes to sourcing their lesson materials. TES conducted a survey amongst 3,000 teachers in 2015 found that 69% felt that those sort of community-curated resources were more relevant and useful than textbooks.

Teachers are embracing technology, specially when it comes to sourcing their lesson materials
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Global engagement and demand for shared classroom resources is soaring, with the platform currently attracting around a million downloads per day. TES are now launching new services such as a blended teacher training service in the UK which also supports recruitment.

Global engagement and demand for shared classroom resources is soaring
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The plan is to continue growing globally, specially in markets such as the US and Australia, where they already have about 75% of teachers signed up to the platform. As big as they are, however, Glover stresses that there is a lot of room left to grow, as there are around 70 million teachers worldwide that could benefit from access to such platforms.

there are around 70 million teachers worldwide that could benefit from access to platforms such as TES
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Embracing digital technology is therefore crucial in remaining relevant to teachers, and he marvels at how much the landscape has changed since his own time as a student:

 

“The technology I remember most clearly from my school days in the UK was the BBC Micro computer. It was built by Acorn for the BBC and was adopted by most schools in the UK during the 1980s which completely changed Acorn’s fortunes. Educational games like Granny’s Garden stick in the memory, and also Elite which had quite a cult following.”

Education applications for virtual reality will have an extremely positive impact on classroom engagement
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“I think the education applications for virtual reality are hugely exciting and will have an extremely positive impact on engagement of students in the classroom all over the world, creating real and exciting learning experiences. The costs of something like Google Expeditions (A Virtual Reality education initiative running off Google Cardboard) shows that this doesn’t have to be reserved for the rich. Fundamentally though, I think that education in the future and the technology we use, should be teacher-led. They are the real experts in education and we should be led by them.”

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Building a Global Teaching Community appeared first on Tech Trends.

London EdTech start-up Bibblio is curating digital content to create a 21st century learning experience

“I think education sometimes gets a bad rep, a lot of people seem to think it hasn’t changed much in the last hundred years or so, but that’s not true,” Says Mads Holmen as we chat next to the obligatory dinosaur at Bibblio’s trendy London office.

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Education gets a bad rep, people seem to think it hasn’t changed much in the last hundred years or so
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“At the same time, however, we have to recognize that people are now getting their information from a huge variety of sources, and that they’re bringing their expectations from the way they interact with content on platforms like YouTube to the classroom. That is a gap we need to bridge when it comes to knowledge discovery.”

We have to recognize that people are now getting their information from a huge variety of sources
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In 2014 Mads left a successful career in advertising to do precisely that, starting Bibblio with his Co-founder Rich Simmonds. After securing 175K in initial funding they’ve since partnered up with a host of prestigious institutions such as National Geographic Education, Open University and Oxford University Press.

Students bring their expectations from their interactions with content on platforms like YouTube to the classroom
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Mads Holmen, CEO and Co-Founder of Bibblio

“The fact that they trust us with their content is a huge vote of confidence, and it allowed us to quickly grow and improve our offer dramatically. In a world of too much information, your users need smarter discovery tools.

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Bibblio is essentially a digital librarian that digests and curates disparate information sources
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Bibblio is essentially a digital librarian, delivered as a service, that digests and curates all these disparate information sources out there and delivers what is relevant to each user.”

His own experience of technology in school and the early years of the Internet helped to inspire him:

“Most of all I remember the feeling of knowing more about computers than the teachers instructing us, and I suppose that is still true in today’s classrooms, where children are digital natives and adults are constantly catching up with the latest developments.

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Children are digital natives and adults are constantly catching up with the latest developments.
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I always loved watching the Discovery Channel, and very early on I started using the Internet to find out more about the subjects that interested me. This was the big revelation that opened up a whole new world of possibilities.”

That concept of the Internet as a 27/7 personal library is what he feels EdTech hasn’t quite cracked yet. Sure, search tools have never been better at finding specific information when you know what you’re looking for, but the missing link that Bibblio wants to provide is to replicate that in-depth, curated experience that you get when interacting with an actual librarian.

The missing link that Bibblio provides is the in-depth, curated experience you get with a librarian.
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“It’s that serendipitous sense of not knowing quite what you’re looking for until you find it. A librarian has such in-depth knowledge of the content they’re curating that they can make connections you’d never dream of. That broadening of horizons, being exposed to knowledge that you wouldn’t have sought out otherwise, is the key to the way digital learning environments need to support students in the future.”

It’s that serendipitous sense of not knowing quite what you’re looking for until you find it
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By bridging the gap between the dauntingly large volume of content that providers make available and the overwhelmed end-user fishing for relevant knowledge, Bibblio is staking an ambitious claim to a $5.6 billion eDiscovery market, which in turn sits within an Educational Publishing industry worth over $70 billion and a $200 billion Smart Content market.

Bibblio is staking an ambitious claim to a $5.6 billion eDiscovery market
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As they move forward with their expansion, the plan is to grow fast and become the go-to utility provider for that industry, helping millions of educators and learners discover better content, making recommendations that also help to broaden their horizons and make better sense of the vast quantity of information available.

“The key is to empower people to learn,” concludes Mads. “We don’t know exactly what the future will bring, so the best way to equip students to the challenges ahead is to future-proof their education.

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The key is to empower people to learn
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By that I mean that we need to focus on metacognition, or ‘learning to learn’. In a world of limited content it might have made sense to memorize a core canon of knowledge and to see education as a linear process with set beginning and end points. In a world of limitless content, however, the emphasis shifts to life-long learning and transferrable skills, and educators will need to embrace technology to help students achieve this.”

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Reinventing the Library appeared first on Tech Trends.