Author: Emily Schu
Teachers, administrators, technologists, and EdTech industry experts gathered this past week at the annual SXSWedu conference in Austin, TX to discuss a variety of technology and innovation trends and issues within the education space. Here at Words from Propagate, we’ve outlined some of the top trends and exciting highlights that we’ve absorbed from the panels and discussions over the course of the week.
Student Data Privacy
With the increasing use of data to fuel personalized learning in emerging educational technologies, many of the SXSWedu panels and discussions focused on the issue of student privacy, security, and the safeguarding of personal information. Panelists and speakers have overwhelmingly called for clearer frameworks around student privacy.
In one panel, CoSN (Consortium for School Networking) CEO Keith Krueger stated that, “There has been more progress in data principles and pledges, and increasingly we’re going to need to focus on practice, and not just standards.” And the push on ed tech companies to adopt these frameworks will only increase over the coming years. According to Cameron Evans, US Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, “if privacy is not in your business by design, you should get out of this business.”
With the increasing use of data to fuel personalized learning in emerging educational technologies, many of the SXSWedu panels and discussions focused on the issue of student privacy, security, and the safeguarding of personal information. Panelists and speakers have overwhelmingly called for clearer frameworks around student privacy.
In one panel, CoSN (Consortium for School Networking) CEO Keith Krueger stated that, “There has been more progress in data principles and pledges, and increasingly we’re going to need to focus on practice, and not just standards.” And the push on ed tech companies to adopt these frameworks will only increase over the coming years. According to Cameron Evans, US Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, “if privacy is not in your business by design, you should get out of this business.”
Educational Accessibility in Higher Ed
At SXSWedu’s Getting to College Graduation Summit, Second Lady of the United States, Dr. Jill Biden, delivered a keynote on the importance of community colleges to America’s future. Biden highlighted the Obama administration's push to provide two free years of community college to qualifying students.
While there are still several unanswered questions regarding the program, what is known is that the administration has invested $2 billion to help, “community colleges and other institutions develop, improve, and provide education and training” under The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act. "We believe all students, new and returning, should be able to graduate, ready for the new economy without being burdened with debt," Biden said. The Summit was sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
EdTech Parties
Finally, as we learned, SXSWedu is the place to party and network with some of the most innovative minds in the education technology space as well as burgeoning, young entrepreneurs with hot new products poised to disrupt education. We attended a few, but our personal (and biased) opinion is that the Propagate Wordnerd Happy Hour was the hottest (and nerdiest) party of the week!
On Wednesday evening, we threw the first “Wordnerd” Happy Hour just around the corner from Austin’s “Dirty Six.” teachers, administrators and education technology entrepreneurs joined us for a fun night of lexiphanicism and vocabulary learning through a series of word games and activities. Hey, we even had the world’s largest crossword puzzle, but so much for solving all 28,000 clues!
We’re not sure who the “official” winners were for Scrabble or Bananagrams, but we can tell you that the term “Internet” is not an acceptable Scrabble word according to the Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary (who knew?). So don’t try using it next time, Austin :) Though, if you happen to be stuck with a “Z” and an “X,” go for some big points with the word “zax” (19 points), which is a term used for a hand tool employed for cutting, trimming, and punching nail holes in slate.
The festivities concluded with a raffle, and a few lucky winners walked away with Kindles and a Chromebook. We had a blast, and thank you all for coming and nerding out with us!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the Author:
A 2013 Fellow of the Harvard Innovation Lab, Emily Schu is currently co-founder and Director of Product at Propagate, an education technology startup that builds tools for personalized literacy instruction for K-12. Propagate allows teachers to turn any text into a personalized vocabulary learning experience and assessment, and provides teachers with rich analytics on student progress.
