Using technology to amplify great teaching is the mission of this education-based content platform.

New isn’t always better - there isn’t just one right way and training teachers to use technology doesn’t guarantee student achievement
Share on X

Being a teacher isn’t easy. If, like me, you have friends and family who have selflessly chosen to dedicate their lives to this noble pursuit, you probably also have a lot of respect and admiration for the profession, together with some residual guilt about the stuff you used to put them through as a child.

Talking about education technology can often be challenging for teachers, as they sometimes feel that disruptive innovations will do just that, disrupt the fragile balance upon which their enormous workloads rest
Share on X

Talking about education technology can often be challenging for teachers, as they sometimes feel that disruptive innovations will do just that, disrupt the fragile balance upon which their enormous workloads rest. But if done right, then EdTech can truly be a teacher’s best friend, not only in helping teach students, but in their own professional development.

If leveraged correctly, EdTech can truly be a teacher’s best friend, not only in helping teach students, but in their own professional development
Share on X

That is the premise that prompted Angela Ney and Colin Rutherford to start Teachers Media in 2010, a blended learning platform targeted specifically at the teaching profession.

“When I was in school, we had floppy disks and an Apple Computer,” recalls Ney. “Things have got slightly more complicated since then, however, and there is so much out there that makes it extremely challenging for teachers to keep up with their professional development, on top of all the other demands on their time.”

By ‘blended learning’ they mean an approach which brings together the face-to-face and online communities relevant to teachers, together with formal accreditation processes and materials. It covers the mandatory Professional Development aspects while building in incentivisation and support that encourages deeper, long-term changes in behavior.

Blended learning is an approach which brings together the face-to-face and online communities relevant to teachers with formal accreditation processes and materials
Share on X

After obtaining teacher accreditation for all of Kenya, they have set their sights on further global expansion, and are planning to establish in places like Myanmar, Cameroon , Paraguay , Pakistan this year. Teachers Media is supported by various governments, bilateral agreements and partnerships, working with ministries of education to help them reach their specific goals. “our market is teachers all around the world, and our model is to collaborate rather than compete with existing systems and providers. Universities, content providers, non-profits such as British Council and all manner of institutions bring important resources to the table, and it makes sense for these all to be available to teachers in one place.

“New isn’t always better, and there isn’t just one right way of doing things. Simply training teachers to use technology doesn’t guarantee student achievement. Technology is a tool to enable and amplify great teaching, it is in no way a substitute for teachers. What we’re probably looking at in future is a building up of global teaching standards that will enable us to educate better global citizens. Teachers remain the key influencers in kids lives and we need to support them towards that.”

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 Teaching Teachers with EdTech appeared first on Tech Trends.

Content is still catching up with technology when it comes to education. While classrooms are increasingly integrated with digital learning platforms and tools such as computers, tablets and smartboards, they still lack the appropriate content to fill those screens.

Students are getting increasingly used to accessing information through video in their day-to-day lives, so are naturally eager to use similar resources in the classroom
Share on X

That is the problem that Knowledgemotion, a cloud-based video aggregation platform for education, is looking to solve.

“In terms of video, this deficiency seems to stem from a lack of understand between the worlds of education publishing and video production, where the former is unable to search through many different content providers and the latter is accustomed to pricing and marketing video for the advertising industry rather than for education,” Says Knowledgemotion CEO David Bainbridge. “We’re seeking to knit together these two industries by making video acquisition easy for education providers.”

 

Those sorts of technologies were just emerging as he moved into middle school, Bainbridge recalls: “Much of this technology was not put to the best use, partly due to the lack of good-quality content to use on these new digital platforms. Certainly, as far as video is concerned, documentaries were used to fill space or to entertain at the end of term, and were often too long-winded and unengaging to hold everyone’s attention.”

Students are getting increasingly used to accessing information through video in their day-to-day lives, so are naturally eager to use similar resources in the classroom. A recent Kaltura report The State of Video in Education 2015, reflects this trend, suggesting that video usage in the classroom is growing year on year (from 76% in 2014 to 84% last year).

Knowledgemotion targets the entire education market from primary through to Secondary, Higher Education, Corporate learning, English Language learning and lifelong learning
Share on X

Knowledgemotion targets the entire education market from primary through to Secondary, Higher Education, Corporate learning, English Language learning and lifelong learning. OECD research suggests that the global educational video market will be worth over $1 billion in the next decade, and by 2010 Knowledgemotion is looking to grab a 10% share of that market. Their main competitors in that space are Getty and ITN source, but these are generalist resources not geared specifically towards education, and this is where Knowledgemotion believes it holds the edge, as over $30 billion is pent annually on instructional materials in primary, secondary and higher education, and 43% of teachers now report using video regularly in lessons, with 70% of US higher education institutions including videos in the classroom and supplementary course materials.

Though arguably a few years behind the entertainment world in tech innovation, teachers and learners alike understand the significant educational value of rich, relevant and engaging content
Share on X

“We have an established in-house team with several decades of combined experience in the media industry and the world of education publishing,” says Bainbridge. “We’re aiming to become teacher’s one-stop shop for video resources by providing a simplified licensing agreement and pricing structure together with the most comprehensive library of videos where they can easily and quickly find relevant materials for their lessons.”

Knowledgemotion is now looking to build more relationships with various content providers, and to build up their search algorithm that allows users to refine clip searches by curriculum, topic, and source. Having already raised £790,000 from Angel investors, they are gearing up for a Series A round of around £2 million later in the year and working on significantly expanding their library, which currently has over 1.8 million videos

“Though arguably a few years behind the entertainment world in tech innovation, teachers and learners alike understand the significant educational value of rich, relevant and engaging content. The digital re-architecture of the classroom experienced over the past five years has transformed whiteboards into smartboards, textbooks into tablets. All that is left, it seems, is the content on the screen.”

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 Content is King in EdTech Too appeared first on Tech Trends.