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Trends in Educational Technology

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) evaluates topics and trends in classrooms. On their website you can compare year-to-year to see how the tools have changed over time. In order of popularity, the top 8 most common topics in 2024 were:

        1. Artificial intelligence
        2. Online tools, apps, and resources
        3. Creativity and curation tools
        4. Equity and inclusion
        5. Innovative learning environments
        6. Augmented reality, virtual reality, and extended reality
        7. Computer science and computational thinking
        8. Project-based learning

       

        I had not really thought about this before, but it does make sense that the topics and types of technology we use in the classroom would change with the times. Obviously my own experience as a child learning in technology looks drastically different than the modern classroom. When I was in elementary school we had a physical computer lab that was housed in the library. We would use different games that involved typing and navigating with a mouse to learn how to use the computer. In modern day classrooms each student typically has their own computer and completes much of their work on the computer.

Online Tool Recommendation

        There are endless resources that you can use as a teacher online now. In fact there are so many options that it can be overwhelming! As a current grad student, I have used many of the familiar favorites: Blackboard, Padlet, Kahoot, Quizlet. This summer one of my professors used a new resource for online instruction; Formative.

        Here is a video of me giving a little information about Formative.

    


        I actually only have experience using this app as a student. Each lesson my professor recorded a lecture with a slideshow and she could insert different types of interactive elements throughout. She was able to embed whatever element she wanted us to use and it would pause the video to give you time to think and then answer questions. Sometimes it would be a short answer field so that we could make a prediction. There was also multiple choice questions, fill in the blanks, arrange in order, true false and organizing into categories. You were still able to continue playing the video before answering the questions so that you could watch the lecture through and then go back to review the questions. I found that this was such a cool way to be able to watch the lecture and do the "formative check" (see what they did there?) at the same time. You also had the capability to be able to start the lesson and it would save your answers if you needed to come back to it later.

        Once you submitted the lesson you would get immediate feedback and be able to go in to correct any questions you missed. (I would imagine as the teacher you could choose to not have students be able correct their work but I'm sure that she could still see the "first attempt" after we corrected it.) She would also "hand grade" some of the short answer questions that she wanted. Sometimes she would have certain short answer questions automatically graded if she just wanted a general response, like a prediction or "any more questions" type of deal.

        Another part of Formative that I really appreciated was that she was able to see our progress. So if we had started a lesson and we needed to come back to later, she could see that you were halfway through. She was also able to see that in one of the lessons that no one was able to successfully access an embedded video so she added another slide with the link that opened in a new tab.

Final Thoughts

        I really enjoyed using Formative as a student. I felt like it was such an efficient way to be able to learn, get instant feedback and not feel like I had to use 20 different tech tools to get my work to my professor. It was all housed with a very easy to use interface. I imagine that using it as a teacher would also be extremely rewarding. I'm excited with the possibilities that I could use Formative in my own future library classroom!

Additional Resources for Technology and Formative

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