Analytical Technologies in Education

The best lesson that I learned from my graduate classes is to just  dive in . You will never know what works or doesn't work with your specific group of students until you try it. Today I am going to explain two ways  that I use analytical technology in my classroom. What the heck is analytical technology again? The eLearning Industry defines analytical technology as "methods and tools for analyzing large sets of data from diverse sources aiming to support and improve decision making." Simply put, it is any tech resource that you use to help you collect data to drive your classroom instruction. But Mrs. Fogiel, there are so many resources out there, which do you choose? I wish I had the magic answer for you, but it really comes down to trial and error. Ask your teaching partners, ask your colleagues, ask your administrators. Which ones have worked for them and which ones have flopped? I find that different subjects and different grades all use different things. I k

Believe it or not, many tech savvy teachers are already using many different analytical technologies in their classrooms. To put it simply, analytics  is when you collect data, and technology is well, technology; websites, software, hardware, etc. This emerging trend is all about the best and more efficient ways to collect data via different tech resources so that a teacher can make the most out of each student's learning.  There are many different software companies and websites on the market for schools to use to collect this data. Some of those examples are  INTUITEL ,  Chalk ,  Triumph Learning  (formerly Waggle),  Khan Academy , and  moodle .  The purpose of analytical technology is the hopes of making learning individualized for each student. The goal is that a teacher can gear their lesson towards the progress that each student is making and even though teachers have always used data to drive their instruction, this is creating faster and more efficient on the spot d