EDTECH AWARDS AMAZING 2020 FINALISTS

Congratulations to the finalists and winners from EdTech Digest’s EDTECH AWARDS!  And a special thanks to the great people at Ed Tech Digest for putting these awards together every year!  

EdTech is becoming an increasingly important component of the modern school system.  Over the past ten years, the usage and efficacy of Ed Tech in schools has been increasing every year.  Ed Tech has gone from being an early-adopter tool to a mainstream educational pillar.  In this year’s award winners, we can see many companies who have successfully been combining high quality content with personalized learning algorithms and improved content sequencing.

The results from the 2020 awards have been converted to a searchable table format to make it easier to sort.  There are some really impressive ed-tech products, ed-tech companies, and influential education industry leaders out there!  As these companies continue to improve learning outcomes and better meet learning objectives, it is worthwhile to recognize them for their contributions to ed tech and education.

Now, more than ever, we need quality remote learning solutions to help teachers and students overcome the challenges of not having a physical school environment.  Teachers understand with the end of the school shutdown, the classrooms will be different in the fall from what they were like in the spring.  It is great to see so many leaders supporting the global efforts to keep children learning!

Technology in education consists of dozens of categories of products, including learning content, teacher classroom management applications, learning and knowledge assessment, school district management technology, and a wide range of supporting technology and learning tools to support teachers and students inside and outside of the classroom.

In 2020, we are seeing an increase in A.I. integrations with content pieces, plus an increasing standardization of technology for school administrators and teachers to monitor student learning and better personalize assessments for students.  Absent from the 2020 education technology awards are the micro-content technology providers that we have seen in recent years. Education technology is steadily showing a convergence of quality content housed within a larger learning curriculum.  This is especially relevant for technology and learning tools in the STEM subjects.  Mathematics particularly is benefiting from technology meeting learning outcomes from a larger curriculum sequence.

The goals for education technology are increasingly falling into the role of developing and support meaningful instructional programs, which are enhanced by the technology, but not necessarily driven by the technology itself.  Technology is increasingly acting as an accelerator of learning, both inside and outside of the classroom.  This has become particularly relevant with the sudden crisis of the Coronavirus pandemic.  As schools closed at the local, state, national, and global levels, the school systems worldwide searched for tools and Ed Tech solutions that would help facilitate continued and increasingly decentralized learning.

Globally, Ed Tech providers saw a substantial increase in app and content downloads in 2020.  Most notable among these learning tools were the classroom management apps.  In particular, classroom management tools such as Google Classroom and Class Dojo saw dramatic increases in app downloads as they became primary resources for teachers and schools to migrate their curriculum online.  Globally, during the peak of the 2020 Coronavirus school shutdown period, app downloads for education products increased 90% compared to 2019’s average numbers.

Ed Tech will experience a significant impact from the school shutdowns resulting from Coronavirus.  Already, schools are beginning to prepare for sustained increases in the depth of exposure to digital education products.  While the initial surge in ed tech product downloads was concentrated in the classroom management and content apps, schools will be looking for solutions that help them not only manage classrooms, but also maintain efficiency during upcoming budget cuts.