Imagine a new day for education, a day where educators, districts, technology companies and researchers actually work together, defining and using agreed-upon terms, best practices, tools, and models to serve all students…an educational landscape populated with businesses working alongside educators, creating products that serve common purposes and really meet the needs of teachers and students.. Sounds too good to be true? Well, this idea is close to becoming a reality- and you can be a part of this movement!
Highlander Institute, along with SRI International, is kicking off 2014 with a project supporting the US Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology. This project, currently known as “Making Tools for Schools” will support the USDOE’s interest in supporting educators, schools and districts by creating and distributing a EdTech Toolkit. This toolkit is being designed a an easily digestible guide, a how-to that showcases the intersections between education, research and software.
Richard Culatta, Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the USDOE, envisions this project to help startups learn what schools REALLY care about, comply with and compete against. Edtech businesses, and those interested in entering that field, will be able to quickly and efficiently understand the needs of educators in a no-nonsense, straight-talk approach that is user-friendly and student-centered.
The Highlander Institute has been asked to support the USDOE with this endeavour. But in order to produce the most accurate depiction of the current educational landscape for this project, we are recruiting the best educators we know to help us. Over the next few weeks, we will be reaching out to some of you to support these efforts. So whether you are interested in providing us with written pieces (to be included in our vignettes), participating in focus groups or interviews on defining terms, editing components of the written product, or testing the final product when in its beta phase, let us know.
