2017 | A Year of Digital Learning

The 2017 Year in Review – Education Highlights

At this time of year, we reflect on the major events that have influenced our lives and industry. Our news outlets will share their highlights of 2017 from weather to politics but there were also lesser known discoveries and events that should be remembered. NASA reported that there was a new planet that could support life and then there was the exciting finding of a new chamber inside the pyramids of Giza for example. There were also significant developments in the intersecting worlds of technology and education.

E-Learning Recap 2017

• The hottest development was the expansion of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) apps for the education marketplace. Students were transported to other worlds or dropped into the human body to explore its complex systems. There was also an increase in capacity for students to create in the AR and VR spaces with sites like Co.Spaces. Check out these 20 VR apps that had a big impact in 2017.

• Chromebook is now King and Queen! Cheap hardware with a suite of online, collaborative digital tools attracted schools to adopt Google as the #1 supplier of educational technology in 2017. This was not without critics who point to the fact that students are being shepherded into becoming lifelong Google customers as they transfer their school accounts to private ones upon graduation. Read More: “How Google Took Over the Classroom.”

• Siri, Alexa and “Ok Google” have become common ways of interacting with technology and much of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) that makes these on-command applications work also has the potential to improve teaching and learning. Follow this link to read about 5 examples of how AI is being used in grading and tutoring applications to free up valuable time for teachers and improve the speed of services for students. We are incorporating AI into our new educational applications platform.

• Blockchain (n0t to be confused with Bitcoins) made waves in 2017 with its use in the financial sector but it has great potential with credentialing and securing student records in academia. If you are not familiar with blockchain software, check out this great blog and video that IBM has created to explain it. While blockchain has not made its way into the K-12 classroom (yet), universities and online learning platforms are piloting its use and it has the potential to help bring digital badging and online diplomas to a universally recognized position in academia. Familiarize yourself with it now because it may have an impact on education very soon!

• Dig-It Games made waves by building a revolutionary platform for data reporting from digital learning games. The platform is called Game-Based Learning Experience API or GBLxAPI for short. This National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project aims to build a reporting language for all video games to use to report student data as well as create a protocol for collecting and reading the data. It aims to streamline all data from various online-learning games and platforms so that schools and teachers can analyze data in a single dashboard owned by the school district (not the edtech companies). We made great progress this year and partnered with other game companies to implement it in 2018. Stay tuned!

Game-Based Learning

In 2017, many students had a lot of energy around getting a Nintendo switch and their parents expended a lot of energy expressing disappointment that Nintendo stopped selling the classic NES system. There was also major gaming news in the classroom. Kahoot released a great year-end review of the trends that they witnessed with their customers such as a surge of search requests for Math content, an increase in adoption of Google Chromebooks and a rise in the use of BYOD (bring your own devices) in many classes. Increases in BYOD is exciting news because it opens new venues of interactivity such as incorporating social media and virtual reality into the classroom. But an important aspect of bringing more hardware into the classroom is finding high quality games to play!

We are proud to announce that Dig-iT! Games released 5 games in 2017 which will prove to be a valuable experience and resource for all World History classes. The Excavate! video game series extends our innovation approach to incorporating the STEM field of Archaeology into Social Studies and History courses by challenging students to dig up ancient artifacts and then analyze them for key concepts about ancient civilizations. We released Excavate! Mesopotamia, Excavate! Egypt, Excavate! Greece, Excavate! Rome, and Excavate! Mesoamerica. Each game is accompanied by high quality supporting curricular materials help facilitate each game’s use in the classroom. We also released ExoTrex 2 challenging students to search for a new planet like the one NASA found this year.

Game-based learning and Gamification are both listed as trends in education for 2017 and beyond.  We are proud to be a part of this exciting development by offering a high quality and engaging game series. Contact us today to review any of our newest games!

Have a great 2018!