Education technology

According to a new, nationally representative survey conducted by the Education Week Research Center, K-12 educators remain skeptical that new technologies will transform public schooling or dramatically improve teaching and learning. Fewer than one-third of America's teachers said ed-tech innovations have changed their beliefs about what school should look like. Less than half said such advances have changed their beliefs about how to improve students' academic outcomes. And just 29 percent felt strongly that ed-tech supports innovation in their own classrooms.

This report profiles six key trends, six significant challenges, and six developments in educational technology for higher education.

Almost 340,000 youths in Pennsylvania who do not have access to a reliable broadband connection. At Penns Valley Area High School (PA), where at least 8% of students have only dial-up internet access at home, many teachers don’t assign internet-based homework.

With enormous progress being made by the Federal Communications Commission’s 2014 E-Rate modernization, it became clear that some schools were nonetheless being left behind.  As a result, Benton commissioned Improving the Administration of E-Rate: Ensuring All Schoolchildren Get the High-Speed Broadband Connections They Need to help the FCC make good on the 2014 reforms -- and ensure that every student, regardless of income or geography, had access to the same digital learning opportunities.

A white paper written by Jonathan Sallet on behalf of Benton Foundation & EducationSuperHighway offering tangible steps that the Federal Communications Commission should take to instruct the Universal Service Administrative Company on how best to speed the approval of E-Rate projects that meet the legal requirements of the Telecommunications Act. The issues may seem arcane, bureaucratic, and/or legalistic. But they are important for two interlocking reasons.

In this series, the Benton Foundation and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) explore the origins, strategies, challenges and funding mechanisms for successful digital inclusion organizations. In this article, we examine E2D, also known as Eliminate the Digital Divide -- a nonprofit in Charlotte (NC) that began with a focus on closing the homework gap. The mission of E2D is to ensure that all students have affordable access to essential at-home technology and digital literacy training to support academic success and prepare students for college, careers, and beyond.

Sen Tom Udall (D-NM) and Reps Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) and Deb Haaland (D-NM) introduced a bill to make it easier to put wireless internet on school buses in order to help students without broadband access at home get online to study, learn, and complete homework. The legislation would require the Federal Communications Commission’s E-Rate Program to reimburse school districts that place Wi-Fi technology on school buses carrying students to school or school-related extracurricular activities.

The Benton Foundation and EducationSuperHighway met with Federal Communications Commission Wireline Competition Bureau staff and separately with legal advisors to Chairman Pai and Commissioners Rosenworcel and Starks on March 7, 2019, to discuss a white paper on E-rate.

Even as the 2019 E-rate season gets underway, hundreds of school and library applicants are still waiting to learn if they will receive the funding they requested in 2018, the result of an application-review process some observers deride as cumbersome despite years' worth of promised fixes. As of February 1, 752 E-rate applications from the 2018 funding year, seeking a total of $356 million, were still under review. The bulk of the pending requests (more than $115 million) were for "lit fiber" service, delivering high-speed broadband over fiber-optic cable. The delays are "woefully par for

One of the most disturbing aspects of the digital divide is the “homework gap.” The term – first coined by FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel – describes the situation faced by the estimated 12 million students that cannot complete their school assignments because they have no broadband access at home. As she notes, roughly 7 in 10 teachers assign homework that requires a broadband connection, which means that many students, especially in low-income communities, are missing out on the educational opportunities afforded to their connected peers.