Digital transformation has strongly affected the educational sector already and continues influencing it to a greater extent than ever. The lockdown in 2020 due to COVID-19 has forced digital transformation into K-12 schools, regardless of how ready they were. In early 2020, many educational institutions faced the reality and impact of the lack of EdTech knowledge, skills, and resources as experienced in planning remote education, necessary for adopting the modern technology.
Today, it is more important to have a strategic plan in place and make sure each school system or district is ready to embrace these changes, which we have seen can happen at any time. Strategic planning for digital transformation is the key to the new normal. The strategic goal of digital transformation is in creating a more engaging and effective education process.
There are several aspects of EdTech that are providing opportunities for educators:
Experimentation opportunity
There is an occasion for trying new resources and selecting those that fit the situation at your school, based on the overall technical skills and adaptability of new ways of teaching and learning.
Plenty of EdTech resources
For each of the different EdTech categories, there is a multitude of resources and suppliers available. This provides a lot of choices in determining the best partner for your school.
Efficiency and process automation
Currently, there are many companies that offer solutions for saving time, automating processes, collecting information, lesson preparation, and much more. Reducing the clerical burden on the teaching staff is allowing them greater focus on the teaching aspect of their job. The key is to find solutions that work for you and apply them to the curriculum.
Professional development
Educators are exposed to both free and paid CPD courses to acquire new skills and technologies, develop and grow professionally, and introduce new ways of teaching in the classroom.
Life skills
Regardless of perceptions and acceptance of EdTech and modern technology arising, it is here to stay. So, the continuous life changes and the necessity to adapt to new circumstances are mandatory considerations for the evolution of education and modern technology. EdTech plays a huge role in digital transformation at school. Exposure to technologies supports life skills development for the students, thus preparing them for future jobs, and introducing them to lifetime learning concepts.
The strategic areas of focus while transforming digitally are simple yet complex at the same time.
- Digital transformation trends must be kept in mind when choosing technology and/or updating EdTech you have already implemented. Current trends focus on affordable, accessible, and personalized learning. In this way, literally anytime or anywhere, the learner acquires information quickly and retains it for longer periods of time.
- The Internet of Things (IoT) and classroom devices gain importance. While some schools allow BYOD (bring your own device), this is not a sustainable solution for the long term. However, some schools still have a practice of no devices at all, and this significantly throws them back to the early stages of technology adoption. When the school owns hardware and software, then the solution for teaching and learning is fully owned and controlled by the school. The ease of maintaining and managing is one of the strategic goals of transforming digitally.
- Security and cybersecurity gain importance and attention to protecting the private data of vulnerable groups. The individual school typically bears this responsibility. This point derives from the previous one, citing the benefits of controlling, managing, and maintaining your own EdTech systems
- Personalization and gamification are the main trends in information acquisition. Education technology should be selected based on the principles that provide the opportunity to personalize learning based on the students’ and teachers’ needs, and to make it interactive, fun, and interesting.
- Communication internally and externally as the way to deliver information securely was and will remain vital. The system must protect data privacy and contribute to the goal of providing news and updates to all interested stakeholders in a timely and convenient manner. To ensure managing data within the school environment securely, all the management stakeholders must communicate effectively with each other.