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Guest Post | How Equipping Educators with Personalized Tools Can Help Democratize Education

1/22/2018

1 Comment

 
Author: Megan O'Connor, CEO of Clark 
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The education gap is growing. We have oversized classrooms, more and more standardized tests dictating where a child gets into school as early as elementary school, and an increase in students with learning disabilities who require personalized teaching. All these forces at play make it difficult for teachers to spend individual time with every child in the classroom. There is simply not enough time in the day—or at night to prep customized lesson plans. 

Teachers are superheroes, but even superheroes need help.

Technology has led to increased efficiencies and productivity for many industries. From workplace communication tools like Slack to team sales trackers and project management software, tools that can organize an abundance of information and open lines of communication lead to better company success. Teachers are often simply not equipped with the tools and time to assess each child’s learning strengths and challenges to create a learning plan based on what each child needs to progress. 

One of the best ways to democratize education is to put cutting-edge software and tools in the hands of all educators out there — in the classroom and not —and provide them with professional development to grow their abilities as an educator, tutor, learning specialist, and/or SAT prep course instructor. 

There are plenty of games and learning plans, like Reflex math or ABC Mouse, to help students learn. But there is not a centralized way to develop this extra curriculum for each child. It’s a nice to have, not a need to have. 

Educators crave credible resources and professional development shortcuts to be as efficient as possible so they can focus most on what matters: helping students. They need up-to-the-minute news on policy changes that affect the classroom, in order to understand needs outside of the classroom. They need access to new teaching techniques and research across a variety of subjects, as well as social emotional learning (SEL). 

For tutors who are building their businesses, they need advice and best practices for independent education to set themselves up for entrepreneurial success. What are average tutoring rates across the US? How do they market and advertise? What are the best tools and technology for both teaching and running a business? When tutors have access to this information, they can focus on their primary job: helping students. 

The future of education will be brighter when students from all backgrounds receive the attention and personalized learning that they need because there will be systems in place enabling educators to focus on student outcomes, as opposed to spending vital time on admin work and understanding policy changes.

About the Author:

Megan O'Connor is the CEO of Clark, a revolutionary mobile tool for tutors and administrative software solution for tutoring centers. Clark recently launched The Syllabus——a daily news digest with everything a learning specialist needs to know. For more information visit https://www.hiclark.com/blog.
1 Comment
Soledad Anglada
1/28/2018 03:44:02 pm

While I completely agree with the fact that it is becoming increasingly more difficult every year as a teacher to personalize each education plan for every single student and still be able to meet the needs of a classroom with up to 30 kids, I just don’t know how every single school with be able to provide these tools to their teachers with their current budgets. As an iPad user, I plan to take advantage of the world of possibilities with my technology once I enter the classroom. But most teachers can’t afford to purchase their own tools for the classroom with their salaries. So how do you think we could take steps towards a change in classrooms while working with the limited funding available?

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