-
Ipad Introduced
The iPad is unveiled, offering a powerful portable computational device that aims to revolutionize the learning environment. Even with it's high price point, some New York schools opt to spend millions incorporating the flagship product into their systems. The introduction of this product set the stage for the numerous tablets and tablet computers to be released in the years to follow. -
Period: to
Social Media Boom
The rise in popularity of social media continued through the introduction of Twitter in 2011. During this period, individuals begin to curate their own Personal Learning Environments (PLE's) by choosing the content that they engage with online. Research papers during this time show that users of Facebook opt not to use the platform for educational purposes, but some Twitter use is seen to have a positive impact on student engagement. -
Educators in Clintondale High School flip every classroom
“Flipped classrooms” are a style of blended learning that allows students to digest their curriculum readings or recorded lesson videos at home and engage with hands-on problem-solving during class time. Educators in Clintondale High School decided to flip the curriculum in every class in their school following the success of a soft rollout of the program. The school’s failure rate dropped from 30 percent to 10 percent following the flip. -
MOOC described as “the educational buzzword of 2012”
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are online courses that typically offer free enrollment. During this period, the average MOOC enrollment was 33,000 students. The MOOC movement began in 2011 when sparked by a handful of Stanford classes, but became a widely discussed idea upon the introduction of platforms like Coursera and Class Central. -
CodeAcademy reaches 24 Million active users
Code Academy is an online learning platform that allows its students free hands-on coding courses available within their web browser. As of January 2014, the site had over 24 million users who had completed over 100 million exercises. -
Period: to
At Home Devices
Students use at-home devices to complete coursework at an exponential rate. Computers, laptops, and smartphones see use in the classroom and at home. -
Google Classroom Initial Release
Google Classroom was created with the aim to streamline the process of sharing files between teachers and students. In 2014, Google added "Classroom" to their suite of collaborative cloud web applications alongside Google Docs, etc. -
Kahoot! Released
Kahoot! is an online game-based learning platform that offers user-generated multiple-choice quizzes available through a web browser. Upon its release, Kahoot! received an enthusiastic response in classrooms as an exciting new way to gamify course content in a group environment. Today, Kahoot! is used by approximately 8 million teachers globally. -
President Obama declares computer science education priority
President Obama offered “In the coming years, we should build on that progress, by … offering every student the hands-on computer science and math classes that make them job-ready on day one,” The Obama administration hoped to open the computer science environment to a more diverse audience. The initiative allowed $4 billion in funding for states and $100 million directly for school districts in the budget to expand K-12 CS by training teachers in the field. -
National Education Technology Plan (NETP) updated
The National Education Technology Plan is the flagship educational technology policy document for the United States. This 2017 update to the NETP is "the first yearly update in the history of the plan. Feedback from the field indicated that the previous five-year update cycle was not frequent enough to account for rapidly changing circumstances and the pace of technology advancement in our schools. It is our intention to continue yearly updates to the NETP." -
70% of mobile phone users are on smartphones
At the beginning of the decade, only around 20% of mobile phone users piloted one of these devices. As the decade closes out, the mass population has become increasingly more comfortable using their mobile phones as a social tool and a means for education, commerce, and art. -
Covid Pandemic Imposes Online Learning
The COVID-19 pandemic forces in-person schools into a state of closure, with many school systems opting to send their students into a fully online learning environment. Video conferencing applications like ZOOM see a sharp rise in popularity at this time as the technology infrastructure that the platforms offered met the needs of educators during this time.