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.
Screening for Success: Resources to Inform Learner Support in Distance Education
By Jessica Wabler When I worked at the YWCA National Capital Area, we had a long history of using distance and blended learning opportunities to help our learners reach success. Thus, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we were lucky to already have a number of measures...
Enhancing Inclusion and Opportunity through Technology: A Conversation with Guilherme Braga
Interviewed by Annalisa Crowe We recently welcomed Guilherme Braga, CEO and co-founder of Brazil-based Egalite as a Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative fellow for entrepreneurs through the U.S. Department of State. Egalite specializes in the recruitment of...
Equity Journey to CRT
As education researchers and practitioners, we’ve long been committed to furthering adult education as a way to build toward a more just and equitable society. We believe that although education often is seen as a portal to success, it is not an individual journey of...
So, Why Persona?
In our last several blog posts, we’ve shared the personas that we generated using interview data analyzed through a qualitative coding process. While each working learner that we interviewed has their own unique story, we used persona development to find patterns...
Dani: Front-Line Supervisor Paid Hourly Seeking Certification for Advancement
In earlier blog posts, we talked about how we are using persona as a research tool and our process for creating personas. As noted in our earlier posts, working learners participate in employer-sponsored learning opportunities for a variety of reasons. We’ve...
Gamification and Supported Learner Progress: Arlington Heights’ Success with Learning Upgrade
By Jamie Kreil, PhD and Jen Vanek, Ph.D By connecting with program managers and instructors across the US, the EdTech Center crafts use scenarios that illustrate where different online comprehensive curricula fare well and how they are used. In this post, we describe...
EdTech Center’s Guide to COABE 2021
We’re looking forward to another great COABE conference this year filled with learning, networking and rich conversations on technology integration and adult learning. Having trouble deciding which sessions to attend? Our team created this curated list of sessions...
Maintaining Our Balance: Transferring Our Sustaining & High-Leverage Practices to the Virtual Learning Environment
By Jayme Adelson Goldstein of Lighthearted Learning Over the past 11 months, teachers’ experiences in the virtual learning environment have ranged from sublime to frustrating to exciting to decidedly unexciting. Just last week on a particularly frustrating day, I lost...
Elise: Juggling Work, Required Training, and Long-Term Goals
Lately, we have been focused on the creation of personas, where aspects of real people are captured and blended in order to create one story that illustrates a broader representation of an end user of a technology or participant in a course. In past posts we talked...
Enhancing Learning through Simulation: A conversation with Javier Chan
Interviewed by Annalisa Crowe This month we welcome Javier Chan, co-founder of Processim Labs as a Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative fellow for entrepreneurs through the U.S. Department of State. Javier will advise our tech development, UX/UI, and...
Neberu: Working to feel comfortable interacting with English speakers
Lately, we have been focused on the creation of personas, where aspects of real people are captured and blended in order to create one story that illustrates a broader representation of an end user of a technology or participant in a course. In past blogs we talked...
Online Platform Supporting Classroom Instruction: Rockingham’s Success with Learning Upgrade
By connecting with program managers and instructors across the US, the EdTech Center can craft use scenarios that illustrate where different online comprehensive curricula fare well and how they are used. In this post, we describe how a small adult basic skills...
Alimayu: College-educated retail worker learning English
Lately, we have been focused on the creation of personas, where aspects of real people are captured and blended in order to create one story that illustrates a broader representation of an end user of a technology or participant in a course. In past blogs we talked...
Tutors and App-Based Remote Learning: Siena Literacy Center’s Success with Learning Upgrade
By Jamie Kreil and Jen Vanek With the launch of the Adult Literacy XPRIZE Communities Competition in 2018, adult literacy programs across the US had unprecedented access to relevant and free mobile apps for learning. Among the apps used was Learning Upgrade, which...
Accessing Relevant Adult ESL and ABE Content Remotely!
By Cynthia Peters Looking for engaging, relevant content that you can teach in the remote classroom? The Change Agent publishes powerful writing authored by adult students, with learning activities to accompany each article. We now offer our content in media-rich...
Stronger Together: Applying Crowdsourcing to Create (Re)Usable OER
As adult education programs shift from emergency remote teaching to more intentional, strategic integration of technology to support instruction and learning, we’ve seen instructors experimenting with a range of different edtech tools. Typically this begins with...
Readability for All Launch Webinar & Resources
Readability for All The EdTech Center @ World Education has partnered with Adobe, Readability Matters and the University of Central Florida to explore how text personalization can improve readability in digital texts and literacy for all ages and abilities. As remote...
ProLiteracy & the EdTech Center @ World Education Collaborate on Professional Development Series
By Jen Vanek, Todd Evans, Michele Diecuch, Victoria Neff For years, the EdTech Center @ World Education and ProLiteracy have partnered together on a wide array of initiatives. Most recently, we’ve worked together on COVID-19 Rapid Response Research, as partners on...
Seven Elements of Digital Literacy for Adult Learners
by Jamie Harris, Adult Education Program Specialist at the Maryland Department of Labor There are terms we often hear, buzzwords, that are used everywhere, and we know those words are of importance. These terms are so frequent that we may even pepper them into our...
Persona Development: Unpacking the Process
In our last post, we introduced the concept of personas and discussed how we are using personas to create a compelling and approachable representation of our aggregated interview data with working learners. Our hope is that the personas we develop will help...
Closing the Digital Divide & Transforming Distance Education
The EdTech Center @ World Education rapidly mobilized resources to safeguard education, mitigate disruptions, and support programs during the COVID19 education crisis. Watch this video developed by ECMC Foundation to learn more about our global efforts to close...
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...