Education

Federal Program Puts Focus on Learning Technologies

By Sean Cavanagh — January 08, 2013 1 min read
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The National Science Foundation is seeking to promote bold ideas in educational technology through a cyberlearning program, an effort I explored in the current issue of Education Week.

The idea is to merge some of the most promising ideas in ed tech with scientific research on how students learn. Though the Cyberlearning: Transforming Education program is only about two years old, it’s already funded about 50 projects, addressing a broad array of concepts and technologies. Among them: whether students can use “embodied cognition,” in this case touching and manipulating images on mobile apps, to learn fractions; exploring 3-D technologies’ potential to help English-learners pick up language skill outside traditional settings; and determining whether informal science environments called “maker spaces,” can be structured in a way that promotes learning.

An overview of the projects funded so far through the program can be found here.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Digital Education blog.