Here’s how digital content and teachers align

As digital content becomes more commonplace in districts across the nation, some school leaders and educators wonder: what’s involved in a digital content transition?

Creating accessibility and digital opportunity in districts is crucial, said Wanda Creel, superintendent of Barrow County Schools in Georgia. Using videoconferencing technology, Barrow County students connect with Georgia Tech professors throughout the school year to work through labs and have conversations. Those same professors work collaboratively with district teachers to create and deliver digital instructional material. While 60 percent of students met or exceeded standards in a middle school science class, now 100 percent of students meet or exceed state standards. And while 12 percent met the “exceed” standard on a state test in years past, now 85 percent meet that same standard.

Digital content is driving the creation of repositories where educators can locate resources tied to standards, content areas, and grade levels -- because wading through online content to find one perfect resource is time-consuming and exhausting.

“When the Internet first appeared, we treated it like a content system,” Joseph South, deputy director of the US Department of Education’s (ED) Office of Educational Technology, said. “When the Internet exploded, it became a communication system. We’re seeing the same thing in our schools -- as we get more comfortable with digital, it moves from a content system to a communication system.”

To that end, learningregistry.org and free.ed.gov are two places educators can turn to when they need to locate free, searchable resources. “Once you unbundle things from the textbook, you’ve done some really challenging things and some really great things,” South said.

The idea of open educational resources (OERs) is appealing, South said, “but unless they come in some sort of a package, some sort of organizational structure,” they aren’t necessarily useful to teachers. School districts, too, are organizing digital content into free and searchable repositories -- for instance, South said, Arizona’s Sunnyside School District maintains a Google Doc which teachers use to search and upload their own digital standards-aligned resources.

District educators also recognize that not every student will have a device, despite questions pertaining to how the district addresses such a dilemma. “Our greatest advantage has been not only collaboration among teachers, but also collaboration among students,” Creel said. “Students share devices, and it does not become an issue.”

Above all, digital content is the goal, and devices are simply the tool to deliver such content -- teacher support and instructional plans must be in place.