Tech Tips Blog
Welcome to Tech Tips! This blog covers topics related to technology use in adult education in the United States. Posts include simple lesson ideas that teachers can use to integrate technology into instruction, updates on what’s happening in the field, new opportunities and resources, and news from our EdTech Center projects.
We welcome guest contributors. See our contact page for more information.
Strategies for Classroom Interaction in Remote Face-to-Face Classes
By Rachel Riggs, Family Literacy Instructor, Frederick Community College When I moved all of my classes online in the wake of COVID-19, I found that I missed classroom interaction the most. I missed seeing my students get to know each other, share their personalities,...
Riding the Wakelet Wave Into Adult Education
By Ashly Winkle, PD Coordinator & Director of Distance Learning, Literacy Council of Tyler Picture this: You want to try something new with your students, and you decide that you want to do a virtual science lab in class, but you don’t know where to start. So, you...
COVID-19 Exposes the Need for Family Literacy Programming
By Elisabeth Grinder McLean, Assistant Teaching Professor and Carol Clymer, Co-director Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy The COVID-19 pandemic affected our nation in many ways as stay-at-home orders from states were announced with startling speed....
Persona Development as a Research Tool
Our project has covered a lot of territory in a short time. The early stages were spent forming relationships, conducting interviews, and learning about the context of employer-supported educational opportunities. More recently, our work has shifted to analyzing...
Northstar Responds to Digital Literacy Needs Related to COVID-19
By Tom Cytron-Hysom The challenges resulting from the COVID 19 pandemic are profound, affecting all areas of education, work, personal and national economics, family and daily life, and health. Complicating these difficulties for many is the dramatic increase in the...
Twelve Steps to Teaching SLIFE with WhatsApp
By Nan Frydland, MEd TESOL, Literacy/ESL Instructor, Mercy Learning Center, Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, Frydland & Co., LLC As a practitioner of culturally responsive teaching who works with adult Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal...
Digital Navigators: Lynchpin in Equitable Reskilling & Recovery Efforts
Accelerated digital transformation of our schools, workplaces, and social services during the COVID-19 pandemic has helped raise public awareness around persistent digital divides and the inequities they exacerbate. Less known is that only 10% of the 32 million adults...
Readability Features & Technology for Better Reading (Part II)
Note: This is the second part of a two-part series on readability in digital texts and literacy. The first post defines readability and why it matters. The second post elaborates on recent research done to better understand readability preferences, as well as...
Readability Features & Technology for Better Reading (Part I)
Note: This is the first part of a two-part series on readability in digital texts and literacy. The first post defines readability and why it matters. The second post elaborates on recent research done to better understand readability preferences, as well as...
Is Your State Planning for an Equitable Digital Future?
by Judy Mortrude The future of work is digital — and it’s already arriving. American workers in industries as diverse as agriculture and hospitality are increasingly required to use mobile apps, virtual reality headsets, and other digital tools to carry out their...
EdTech Panel @ NCTN: Envisioning an Ecosystem that Supports Digital Skills and Lifelong Learning for Adults
By Karisa Tashjian With a new decade upon us, it’s an ideal time to take stock of the remarkable changes in the ways that technology has affected our lives over the past ten years. The iPad debuted, mobile devices are widespread, more time is spent using social media,...
Special Issue on Online Learning, Technology Integration, and Digital Literacy: Call for Papers
The EdTech Center is proud to support ProLiteracy and the Adult Literacy Education: The International Journal of Literacy, Language, and Numeracy on a special issue that highlights promising strategies for classroom technology integration, use of online learning, and...
21CLEO: First Year Recap
A year has passed since we kicked off the 21CLEO project. The 21CLEO research project responds to the need for employers, educators and policy makers to better understand the characteristics of an effective learning ecosystem that engages frontline service workers in...
Enriching Distance Learning through TVM
by Kate Redmon, Instructional Specialist and Curriculum Developer at Yavapai College ABE/ASE Let me tell you, I’m all about free and open educational resources. For years I was a private contractor, tutoring adults with disabilities through Vocational Rehabilitation,...
What Is a Learning Ecosystem?
During the past year, we’ve come to realize that the term learning ecosystem is widely used, but not usually defined or widely understood. Rather than taking the term for granted, we crafted this blog post to explore the origins of the term, discuss what it has come...
Team WorldEd Awarded Achievement Winner in the Adult Literacy XPRIZE Communities Competition
Team WorldEd, a diverse, virtual community of adult education providers, today announced that it has been named the Tier 1 Achievement Winner in the Barbara Bush Adult Literacy XPRIZE Communities Competition presented by Dollar General Literacy Foundation. This...
The Triple E Framework for More Effective Technology Integration in Adult Education
By Susan Gaer, World Education Partner, OTAN Subject Matter Expert, and Kristi Reyes, ESL Faculty at MiraCosta College, OTAN Trainer Have you ever wondered how well you were integrating technology into your lessons? The Triple E Framework, developed by Dr. Liz Kolb in...
Barriers to Learning, Part 2
By Crystal Dixson and Naila Bairamova In a previous post, we presented findings from our landscape scan that discussed barriers to participate in learning opportunities. The framework we have chosen to organize our thinking is Margaret Becker Patterson’s...
The EdTech Center’s Guide to the 2019 ProLiteracy Conference
Big conferences are hard to navigate! We don’t want to miss you, so we created this list of our sessions. At the 2019 ProLiteracy Conference, the EdTech Center @ World Education will share new research and practical classroom ideas on new technologies, digital...
8 Tips for Implementing Learning Circles in Any Program
Maryann Peterson with EdTech Center Staff A version of this article first appeared in PROGRESS, Virginia's adult education and literacy newsletter published quarterly by the Virginia Adult Learning Resource Center. Learning Circles shape more than just the...
Vote For Digital US & EdTech Center @ SXSW EDU!
Digital literacy is rapidly becoming the new literacy. Like it or not, technology has come to stay. Everything we do -- from accessing healthcare, handling financial transactions, engaging with our community, and even accessing learning and job opportunities --...
Barriers to Learning, Part 1
By Naila Bairamova and Crystal Dixson This blog post is the first in a two-part series that focuses on barriers to learner participation and persistence in employer-supported educational opportunities. In this framing of past research and reports, the 21 CLEO Research...
Leveraging Digital Literacy Skill Attainment as a Program Outcome
By Tom Cytron-Hysom Adult Basic Education programs across the US are working to integrate more digital literacy instruction into their educational programming. Knowing exactly how that programming fits within reporting and outcomes requirements that frame federally...
Making Good Use of Free Apps in Support of New Mobile Learning Initiative
The Adult Literacy XPRIZE Communities Competition is about uniting a very wide circle of people who care about empowering others through literacy; my home state of New Hampshire is part of Team WorldEd’s Adult Literacy XPRIZE work, and I feel privileged to...
Digital Divide: Gaps & Opportunities
By Jennifer Maddrell and Victoria Neff Access to reliable and fast internet is vital in today’s modern, digital world. As described by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, digital equity exists when everyone has the information technology needed for full...
Considerations for Effective Distance and Blended Instruction and Assessment
The IDEAL Consortium is dedicated to helping member states across the US establish quality, innovative distance and blended learning programs; IDEAL has served as a facilitator of collaboration and sharing of effective practice since its inception in 2002. IDEAL’s...
Defining Employer Supported Learning Opportunities
The 21st Century Learning Ecosystem Opportunities (21Cleo) research team has been hard at work! In our last two blog posts, we reported on a field review of learning opportunities from a process perspective (how we chose the literature we reviewed) and from a product...
International Profiles on EdTech: The Ayedi Project
Uganda, like other East African nations, has made impressive advancements in mobile phone usage and penetration in recent years through the widespread distribution of cellular signals. During the past 10 years, mobile phone access in Uganda grew by 50%. Today, nearly...
Innovative Approaches to Mobile Learning Integration in Low-Resource Areas
Across Asia, World Education is leading the mobile learning revolution and working with educators, learners, administrators, policymakers and tech developers to make digital tools and apps relevant and accessible. Whether the programs you support serve low-resource...
CareAcademy: Mobile Learning to Prepare Adults for In-Demand Caregiver Profession
Senior care is one of the fastest-growing areas of work of the US, and certified home health aides (HHA) are especially in high demand given the shortage of paid caregivers. With the population of people over the age of 65 expected to double over the next two decades,...