Pearson Summer Tech Roundup

Among the many things Pearson gives to the education community, it launched a blog run by experts to provide educators with free tips and guides on using technology in the classroom. We've compiled what Pearson wants you to know about EdTech from recent posts this summer.

How Educational Games are Getting Better

Game play in education is one of the hottest topics right now as educators seek to find new, innovative ways to make education relatable for students while avoiding just making a distraction.

Kristen DiCerbo, the lead at Pearson's Center for Learning Science & Technology, discusses why games have become stronger learning tools thanks to the work of learning scientists over the past few years.

She says video games as learning tools have advanced because they have:

• tighter ties to research-based learning progressions,
• better links to elements of professionalization, and
• better design for assessment.

Read the full post here. 

Why Educational Games Should Have a Place in the Classroom

It's a good thing educational games are getting better, because many experts including those at Pearson think that educational games need a place in the classroom.

Some of the reasons are because educational play promotes fairness, provides immediate feedback, encourages repeat attempts and enhances understanding.

Read the full post here. 

Millennial Parents and Information Technology

In this post, Pearson discusses what educators might expect in communications with Millennial parents (parents born from 1982-2000).

Pearson consulted James Pedersen, Ph.D., author of the book The Rise of the Millennial Parents, who said that Millennial parents are typically well-informed individuals with a great amount of access to information technology and therefore helpful to the teacher outside the classroom.

On the other hand, Pedersen says, the influx of information from information tech can mean that Millennial parents are "not as willing to accept what educators say at face value and now have the resources to make better information choices about their children’s education. This, of course, poses new challenges as the parent-teacher dynamic is continuously morphing into a different kind of partnership."

The important thing here is for Millennial parents to know and understand a balance in order to maintain smooth parent-teacher relations.

Read the full post here. 

Pearson Shares the Future's Classroom With Global Educators

At Microsoft’s Global Education Forum in June, Pearson and several partners including Microsoft worked together to build an active classroom space where 400 educators from all over the Middle East along with students from surrounding schools learned more about EdTech.

Both the students and the teachers learned something from the experience.

"Unsurprisingly, the students loved the mobile furniture and cool technology, and being able to collaborate with other kids on the other side of the world proved very popular. They loved the potential of the space, which encouraged moving chairs around to create new groups and formations of people, passing devices around to share their work, and recording their thoughts on the mobile whiteboards."

The teachers, on the other hand, appreciated being able to learn to work with different devices and how to incorporate them into lessons.

Read the full post here.

What the Classroom of the Future Looks Like

Pearson discusses what the classroom of the future might look like in the coming years.

For one, the experts at Pearson think that the classroom of the future will be comprised of movable and well-designed forms of furniture with a lot of natural light and air flow.

Pearson also predicts one-to-one classrooms, or classrooms where every student and the teacher have their own devices. Future classrooms will be as high tech as they can be with rolling white board desks; classroom instruction will also divided into four to six-week "learning modules."

In order to adopt of these futuristic classrooms, schools may want to take Pearson recommendation to insightfully plan for changes by assessing staffing needs and managing expenses. 

Read the full post here.

Compiled by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

08/14/2015