At Mapleton Elementary, you will find the tech-savviest teachers in the United States. This is a public school that has around 100 students and is located in West Fargo. One of these teachers is a third-grade teacher known as Kayla Delzer. She says that she usually teaches her students how to post on Instagram and Twitter. Looking at her classroom, the arrangement and the remodeling resembles the one on Starbucks. She has embraced apps as she is currently using an app known as Seesaw. This is an app that allows the interaction of teachers and parents as they comment on the progress of student’s homework and their performance in school. Ms. Delzer mentions that she has another calling other than being a teacher. At the moment, she has managed to establish a brand of her own known as Top Doe Teaching. The technology oriented teacher says that Seesaw has allowed her to use their services for feedbacks. She has recommended their products to thousands of teachers most of whom follow her on various social media platforms. She says that beyond embedding the app with her brand, she gets to participate in making the app better. Ms. Delzer makes a list of numerous teachers who have embraced classroom technology.
To ensure that they remain relevant, these teachers get to attract traffic through conference talks, social media accounts as well as through blogs. This means that they have managed to cultivate the culture of small companies like Seesaw. Other than these small start-ups, big companies are also taking notes. These firms include Microsoft, Google, Apple and Amazon. This has led to a change in the tools that can be used in classrooms to teach. These technology companies get ranked in public schools as the schools begin adopting laptops, parent-teacher messaging apps, quiz apps as well as math teaching sites. However, despite the growing competition from these service providers, research is still scanty about the impact of these apps in school. Whether they improve performance is still unknown. Most of these brands use teachers as their brand ambassadors. On their part, these teachers get to receive simple gifts such as T-shirts and classroom technology. One such company is TenMarks that is a subsidiary of Amazon. The startup gave teachers gift cards for being the company’s ambassadors and advisors. Established brands like Apple and Google are known for pricier packs for the teachers. For instance, some teachers have reported that they received travel packages from these two companies for being their advisors.
Read More: https://www.usnews.com/education/technology-in-the-classroom
Dil Bole Oberoi
