Introducing the Transforming Distance Education Course

We are launching a new course on Tuesday, Sept 29th at 1 PM EST. Transforming Distance Education offers learning modules developed by the EdTech Center @ World Education with support from the US Department of Education’s Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education (OCTAE) to provide timely, high-quality professional development on this topic. The Transforming Distance Education course draws on content based on over a decade of known practitioner expertise and past research as well as recent research on innovations unearthed since the COVID-19 pandemic. We designed the course with these considerations in mind: accessibility, relevance, flexibility, and portability. The course will be freely available on our site in a flexible format that allows practitioners to engage in self-directed professional development through badged micro-learning. The content is licensed under creative commons to allow for open use and customization. Join the launch webinar below to get a first look at the course and more!

Just launched! The Digital US Coalition has created the new Equity in Digital Learning Listserv with initial funding from OCTAE. It will enable diverse organizations that don’t regularly talk - from education and social service providers to employers and policymakers - to share learnings, innovative strategies and resources for providing instruction and services to adults with limited technology access and skills.

We invite you to check out the newly published 7th Edition of the IDEAL Distance Education and Blended Learning Handbook. The new edition features a flexible framing of distance education written to include the range of instructional approaches required because of the need for social distancing. The handbook includes examples of innovative resources and strategies and is published in a new digital format on EdTechBooks.com.

World Education and other partners are supporting this week’s National Adult Education and Family Literacy Week that raises public awareness about the need for and value of adult education and family literacy. The EdTech Center participated in a video to Digital US Coalition’s work advancing digital skills and inclusion as part of COABE’s National Partnerships series supporting the week.

Please join us and other partners at this free, online event on October 5-9, 2020. Digital Inclusion Week aims to raise awareness of solutions addressing home internet access, personal devices, and local technology training and support programs. DIW2020 is sponsored by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance representing more than 450 affiliated organizations in 44 states working toward digital equity.

Welcome New Staff!

The EdTech Center is excited to introduce two new staff members, Jeff Goumas and Annalisa Crowe, to our team to support initiatives that advance digital inclusion and equity in digital learning and adult education. Jeff Goumas, our new Digital Learning Lead, is the founder of CrowdED Learning and brings a strategic focus to expanding equity and access to learning by way of leveraging openly licensed, high-quality learning and professional development opportunities and resources for adult educators and learners.  Annalisa Crowe, Research and Program Support Associate, will help advance the work of the Digital US Coalition, Digital Navigators and Equity in mLearning projects, and broader research on adult basic education.

COVID-19 Rapid Research Response

As the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led to community-wide closures and a rapid pivot to emergency remote teaching and learning, an urgent need to build capacity produced a groundswell of effort across the diverse landscape of adult education providers. With funding from OCTAE, the EdTech Center @ World Education convened researchers who led studies on the field’s response to COVID-19 in a Technical Working Group, where they analyzed their collective research efforts. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supported production and dissemination of the resulting report, which serves as the first phase of research in a year-long landscape analysis of adult education, as part of their internal exploration regarding where opportunities and innovation exist in the field.

mEducation Alliance Play Every Day Symposia Event

Play Every Day was the largest virtual event of the mEducation Alliance Virtual Symposia series on Play and Technology for Lifelong Learning. This year, the event had 80+ presenters from more than 25 countries highlighting a range of tech and non-tech play-based interventions for formal and non-formal educational settings. Unable to attend this year’s mEducation Alliance Play Every Day Symposia? No worries! Over the next few weeks, the mEd Alliance team will be adding additional event resources to their event page, including session recordings, presentation materials, connected resources and more!