"Armed with laptops, smartphones, and tablets and connecting through Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, a media savvy generation of students is driving unprecedented change in teaching and learning. With the explosion of social media and its effect on communication, there is growing evidence that video and multimedia content, tools, and streaming capabilities are successfully engaging students in new forms of learning." This is how Cisco begins their white paper entitled, "How Interactivity and Rich Media Change Teaching and Learning," and Twin Engine Labs couldn't agree more. At Twin Engine Labs, we have to deal daily with the changes taking place in the digital realm and their impact on different market verticals. This helps us better support our clients by helping them create ecstatic customers with interactive, engaging, and multimedia digital experiences. One of the first projects Twin Engine Labs ever worked on was an interactive storybook app experience with Moonbot Studios that took William Joyce's The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and turned it into an interactive app to accompany the Oscar-Winning Animated Short Film produced by Moonbot Studios. This passion for interactive experiences that inspire and encourage creativity in new forms for processing information has stayed with +Twin Engine Labs throughout the years, especially as it relates to the education vertical; encouraging student learning and teaching methods to keep up with digital technologies is an important mission for Twin Engine Labs because the education of our youth is incredibly important to our community's future. That is why Twin Engine Labs has decided to partner with Steven Winkelstein on his latest project Brisko: a True Tale of Survival in order to bring another interactive story book experience to life.
We see interactivity becoming an increasingly important part of educational learning methods and apps are already beginning to play a big role in that. Here are some ways we feel learning and teaching methods in education will change over the next few years:
1. Tablets and mobile devices' role in the classroom will become an integral part of the teaching experience: We have never believed that technology should be used for technology's sake. However, we think educational opportunities that take advantage of the unique properties of tablets (mobile, interactive, "always on," individual and social at the same time), will be incredibly successful at allowing students to process information and learn in ways they have never been able to before. So having a digital strategy that carefully sets out the objectives one wants to accomplish with tablets will be important to teachers' success with tablets. Tablets will also become a primary way textbooks are consumed.
2. Individual learning plans: It has become common in recent years for educators to feel pressure to "teach to the test." This is partly because legislation and funding are tied to standardized tests students are mandated to take. However, the downside to this and other forms of standardized curriculums is that it is hard to take into account the multitude of ways different students learn and process information. Interactive apps allow students to work through the curriculum at their own pace and skill level and allow teachers to provide additional instruction or material where needed. eSpark is one of the many companies in this space that is working on providing teachers with the ability to teach a standard curriculum that is simultaneously tailored to each individual student's learning habits. The second advantage of individual learning plans in the classroom, according to Judy Willis MD, is that it fits students at their achievable challenge level. The achievable challenge level is when a problem presented to the student is one that is between the two poles of: hard enough to not be automatic and not so challenging that they feel there is no chance for success. It is at this level that a students’ feedback and positive reinforcement mechanisms are activated via the dopamine response. Judy Willis writes about the achievable challenge level, “When learners have opportunities to participate in learning challenges at their individualized achievable challenge level, their brains invest more effort to the task and are more responsive to feedback. Students working toward clear, desirable goals within their range of perceived achievable challenge, reach levels of engagement much like the focus and perseverance we see when they play their video games.”
3. Gamification: At Kaplan University, a pilot program in the online classrooms of the College of Business and Technology is putting gamification theory to the test. “Initial results from the pilot indicate that students rewarded by badges are spending up to 155 percent more time actively engaged within the classroom than their counterparts in the non-gamified classroom.” Students are becoming increasingly inundated with the concept of gamification of digital technologies. Most applications today have some sort of leader board or way of comparing yourself with your friends. Also, they get dopamine response described above from games because the gamification of learning also situates children at their achievable challenge level. Judy Willis MD, a neurologist and teacher, makes the following argument about the gamification of education, “The popularity of video games is not the enemy of education, but rather a model for best teaching strategies. Games insert players at their achievable challenge level and reward player effort and practice with acknowledgement of incremental goal progress, not just final product.”
4. Funding is Readily Available for the Transition to Digital Learning: All of the past 4 SBIR (Small Business Innovation and Research) grants from the Department of Education were dedicated towards developing better technology programs used by students and teachers in different educational settings. The funding structure is 150K for 6 months and then up to a follow on 900K for 2 years. It could be a way to refine and enhance educational products for wide-scale, white label use. And these are just government-directed programs, there are plenty of others. However, this data shows that it is a major policy focus on the national level.
We hope that we have been able to provide you with some context for the rapidly changing landscape of technology and education. What has been your favorite use of technology in the classroom? Do you have an education app you would like to get built? Or are you a teacher that just needs advice on how to best a digital strategy in the classroom? No matter what your situation, we would love for you to contact us on our landing page to discuss the importance of technology in educational settings.
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