Workstreams
1EdTech's workstreams are where innovative technology and open standards become relevant by enabling a safe, responsive, mission-aligned architecture that creates the foundation of the open, trusted, and innovative digital learning ecosystem.
These collaborative initiatives and projects are driven by our member community to create a frictionless ecosystem that improves experiences for all learners. Read the member stories below to find out how.
TrustEd Apps Vetting
Guide institutions and edtech suppliers toward secure data use, collection, and sharing
Bibb County School District in Georgia empowers teachers and administrators to find effective tools that meet the district’s standards for data privacy, through 1EdTech’s TrustEd Apps program. The TrustEd Apps Product Directory vets privacy policies so districts and schools can see if the tool is worth investigating further before investing too much time into negotiations. The goal is to find the best tools while still protecting student information.
“As technology quickly infiltrated the schools, everyone did their own thing to find the best tools they could, but they were adding tools without any process. Now, we have more control, and TrustEd Apps is an incredible first step to check vetting, and then move onto other things including matching content to curriculum and other requirements specific to our district.”
—Kevin Adams, Chief Information Officer, Bibb County Schools
1EdTech provides support and product certification that serves as assurance that educational technology products will do what they say they’ll do for Central Piedmont Community College. The college is able to leverage its membership to not only confirm the capabilities and policies of potential vendors, but they can also collaborate with, learn from and offer advice to their colleagues at other institutions of higher education. With that additional support, the college can look toward future innovations, including guiding faculty on digital tool selections, as well as considering bigger projects to help students succeed.
“1EdTech gives us access to their network, providing us the opportunity to help drive the discussions of the future of educational technology. If you want to be innovative, it’s a great place to be.”
– Gary Ritter, Executive Director of Learning Technology Services, Central Piedmont Community College
Carnegie Learning can respond to market demands and innovate more efficiently by working within the 1EdTech community. Using the standards as a starting point, the company can create new solutions faster while also meeting customer demands of easily integrating into the various digital ecosystems they build for themselves. In addition, 1EdTech gives Carnegie Learning a seat at the table to help shape the future of those digital ecosystems, alongside K-12 and Higher Ed leaders, to create an edtech future that benefits all learners.
“Working within the community helps us go to market much more quickly, because we don’t have to do all the work ourselves. We can integrate and work with other excellent people and vendors to enhance the learning experience we create through our products and help us with adoption.”
– Jodi Rothstein, Senior Vice President of Product, Platform and Learning Applications, Carnegie Learning
Curriculum Innovation and Teaching Strategies
Deploy a wider set of best-in-class digital resources for more engaged learning
Gwinnett County Public Schools educators have access to high-quality resources that best fit the needs of their students and classrooms. Thanks to the district's digital ecosystem, supported by 1EdTech standards, educators can find resources that easily and safely assess student learning and connect information across platforms with one easy login for teachers and students. The ease of integrating standards-based tools also allows the district to efficiently and effectively bring new tools and resources to the district to meet the unique needs of every student.
“1EdTech is a community that comes together to try to improve the digital ecosystem, so we are all in the best position to have technology that meets every student's unique needs. That is exceptionally hard to do without standards, so this is a place and space where those conversations happen.”
—Dr. Debbie Durrence, Chief Data Officer, Division of Data Governance, Gwinnett County Public Schools
SURF, the collaborative organization for IT in Dutch education and research, sees a 1EdTech membership as a way to extend its work worldwide. Working with standards opens up access and clear communications between various digital ecosystems; whether research institutions across the Netherlands, Europe, or the world, the technology works together. Taking away that one barrier opens up new opportunities for putting learner needs at the center of their activities.
“Student mobility is growing as they look for opportunities to develop themselves in a more personalized way. Working with standards that share information across institutions, regardless of where in the world the institution is, gives those learners more opportunities to develop themselves, and we need to give them those opportunities.”
—Christien Bok, Education Innovation Manager, SURF
PowerSchool, a leading provider of cloud-based software in K-12 education, believes every student deserves the best opportunities in life. PowerSchool serves over 15,000 customers in more than 90 countries with the mission-critical technology they need to realize the promise of personalized learning. PowerSchool believes everyone benefits from the 1EdTech collaboration between suppliers and educational institutions working together and creating better digital learning ecosystems, including interoperability standards that open up more doors for data-informed, personalized learning for all learners.
“Now 1EdTech covers the full ecosystem, so we're not just solving the problem of user access and content integration. We focus on how learners can connect with engaging instructional content to develop their learning path and securely share data to provide educators with real-time insights. There's a standard to connect everything, which opens up many more doors for personalized learning.”
—Carrie Vail, Senior Director of Product Strategy, PowerSchool
Learning Data and Analytics
Inform decisions with data and powerful insights across your digital ecosystem
Forsyth County Schools in Georgia take pride in their educational technology leadership and prepare to take it further. By working with the1EdTech community, the district created an interoperable ecosystem that not only makes it easy for teachers and students to use but also gives insights into how students use digital resources and if the resources are useful. Thanks to everything working together, the district plans to take it a step further by tying all digital assessments to state educational standards, creating a roadmap toward success for each student.
“As a district, any insight that paints us a better picture of a student will help us make better decisions for that student's needs. We are excited about the possibility of these resources providing a more holistic view of our students.”
—Mike Evans, Chief Technology and Information Officer, Forsyth County Schools
Penn State University consistently works to evaluate and, when needed, improve courses to serve students better. The university's course improvement model asks faculty to assess and refresh courses regularly. To do that effectively, they need data, including data that tells them what content is being used and how. To get the data efficiently, they are able to leverage 1EdTech standards so all tools and systems, regardless of the supplier that provided them, can work and communicate together, making it easier to access and understand the data they provide.
Now, the university hopes to leverage other 1EdTech solutions to get even more out of their edtech products in the future.
“Having data that's easy to access and review is powerful when making decisions about tools and content to include in a course. We no longer have to rely solely on anecdotal evidence. Data also helps us better understand student behavior, so we can reach out and offer more timely help to students who may be struggling.”
—Jen Stedelin, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, Penn State
Infinite Campus is taking its 1EdTech membership to the next level by creating an SIS/LMS platform with a single database for teachers and students and getting a better understanding of what is happening in those classrooms. By leveraging what they already have, tools that work together in one system, they can collect trusted and secure data to help inform teachers, schools, and districts what is and isn't working for student learning.
“Every school uses multiple curriculum providers, and they're collecting information. With the help of 1EdTech, the ecosystem we created gets all of those providers working together. Without much more work, we can get a picture of what is happening in the classroom and how it's going.”
—Barry Brahier, Ph.D., Chief Product Officer for Teaching and Learning, Infinite Campus
Learning Platforms, Apps, and Tools
Achieve an innovative, agile, and scalable edtech ecosystem for teaching and learning excellence
Burke County Schools started building up their educational technology resources and quickly discovered that interoperability would make the tools easy to access and use in classrooms. Encouraged by its supplier partners, the district joined 1EdTech to help achieve its goals and make the work easier for everyone involved. Now, district leaders are engaged in forward-thinking conversations internally and with other 1EdTech member districts about where educational technology is headed and what challenges they need to be aware of as they continue to evolve and innovate teaching and learning resources for their schools.
“Most people don't realize how complicated it can be to integrate different platforms. As a result of 1EdTech interoperability standards, we can share and control our data more easily and securely, and students and teachers benefit from single sign-on to the tools and resources in the classroom.”
—Kenneth Wright, Technology Director, Burke County Public Schools
The University of Michigan says faculty can more freely experiment and assess the effectiveness of educational tools thanks to 1EdTech standards. Third-party tools that meet interoperable standards can easily be plugged into the university ecosystem and tested to determine their value before digging into more complex discussions necessary before full integration. It saves the university time and money without hindering instructional innovation.
“Supporting faculty innovation is a cornerstone of our work, which means we need to be able to support a wide variety of edtech tools while also creating our own tools that enable new possibilities. The connectivity provided by 1EdTech standards, as well as our ability to influence those standards, means that we can enable seamless, data-rich integrations of commercial products and our tools at a fraction of the time and cost while also trusting we can support a much larger collection of options for the faculty.”
—Sean DeMonner, Information Systems Executive Director of Teaching and Learning, University of Michigan
FeedbackFruits believes that an open and interoperable edtech ecosystem is an opportunity to focus more on teaching and learning innovation. When edtech tools work together without needing laborious manual configuration, developers and educators can put their energy into developing tools that meet the needs of educators and learners. Focusing on pedagogical needs allows FeedbackFruits to continue to create tools that improve teaching and learning for all.
“Competition is important, but it should focus on which tools are best of breed for teaching and learning, not technology. Technology should be a no-brainer, it should just work well in the background, and that's what open standards allow for.”
—Ewoud de Kok, FeedbackFruits Founder and CEO
Integrated Assessment
Deliver on redesigning equitable assessment to improve progress and personalization
Katy Independent School District's 1EdTech membership means being at the forefront of edtech innovation and finding new ways to support teaching and learning in the district. With digital tools that work together and speak the same language, the district can provide teachers and parents a simple overview of how individual schools, and the district as a whole, are doing regarding student learning. They can see what they're doing well and where they need to invest more time and resources to improve. Thanks to Katy's ability to tap into the 1EdTech member community, they are taking the data further to serve students better individually and chart new paths to success.
“With all of the digital content that we have, having a common language makes it easier to navigate, so technology doesn’t have to be the focus, the education we provide is the focus.”
– Darlene Rankin, Director of Instructional Technology, Katy ISD
Georgia Tech is home to the National AI Institute for Adult Learning. It is developing a new model of online adult learning that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make education more available, affordable, achievable, and equitable. To realize this potential, AI-ALOE and Georgia Tech work with 1EdTech to help standardize data across various tools and partners' systems. With data that can be easily shared and compared, the project hopes to realize the potential of next-generation instruction and assessment that supports lifelong learning.
“The Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) is a research and innovation arm of the Office of the Provost at Georgia Tech. If we think something will improve learning, we will test it out. To do that kind of research, we need data, but it can take months to identify one piece of data across different platforms, so being able to clean that data, manage, and standardize it is beneficial when working with various systems and partners.”
—Dr. Steve Harmon, Interim Executive Director, Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) and Associate Dean of Research, Georgia Tech Professional Education
VitalSource, a leading provider of digital course materials and e-textbooks, allows educators to understand better what their students understand and what material needs more explanation by leveraging 1EdTech standards. The company launched its Bookshelf CoachMe capability, which utilizes AI-generated practice questions to enhance the reader's experience within the context of a textbook. The tool presents formative assessments that help learners better understand their assigned content. Now educators can view practice and reading data to make real-time adjustments based on their students' needs. VitalSource plans to continue leveraging 1EdTech standards and enhance the capabilities of products like this now and into the future.
"Using the standards, we can securely share learner content engagement and performance information with educators. That information helps them assess how their students are doing in their classes, as well as understand where students haven't mastered the content.”
—Andrew Alfers, Vice President of Product Management, VitalSource
Digital Credentials
An open and trusted digital credentials ecosystem means better hiring for employers and better opportunities for every learner
North Dakota was the first to launch a digital credential publishing application for high schoolers. The state also empowers residents of all ages to share their skills with potential employers and learning institutions. Working within the 1EdTech community helped them create a digital wallet that gives learners access and control over their information so that they may share it with whomever and whenever they want. 1EdTech's vast community also gives the credentials credibility, tying them to meaningful standards across states and industries, and will continue to increase the value for all stakeholders.
“Working with 1EdTech gives us the advantage of an internationally accepted format, for open digital badges and comprehensive learner records, that earners.”
—Tracy Korsmo, Longitudinal Data System Program Manager , North Dakota Information Technology Department
Bowdoin College wants to give graduates every advantage when they enter the workforce. That's why the university is piloting a new digital badge program—using knowledge gained from experience and collaboration within 1EdTech—to help students capture, understand, and share all the knowledge and skills they gain while in college. The college's first badging program, the Digital Corps, helps IT department student workers showcase the technical skills acquired during their on-campus employment. Efforts are also underway to develop badging programs within other departments in the college.
"Students can't always articulate what skills come with their degree, including those gained in co-curricular activities. Badges are more transparent, easily accessed, and often complementary to the student's degree. Formalizing the skills our students gain while at Bowdoin will help them be more career ready, and badges capture their abilities in a way that is easier to present to future employers or other institutions of higher education.”
—Sherri N. Braxton, Sc.D., Senior Director for Digital Innovation, Bowdoin College
Territorium, an international edtech company, joined 1EdTech when it moved into the US market. It found a community of like-minded suppliers and educational institutions looking to help learners succeed based on their specific skills. Through 1EdTech's Comprehensive Learner Record (CLR) Standard, it's easier for Territorium to share data with various technologies to capture all a learner knows and can do, so they can go on to share it with potential employers. The company is excited to continue collaboration and innovation to discover new possibilities for learners in the future.
“Companies are not necessarily interested in the grade you received in a course, they are more interested in what you learned and what you can do. A CLR shows that. Through 1EdTech, our platform can easily and safely share information with other platforms, allowing learners to have that information in one place, and more easily move from education to work.”
– Guillermo Elizondo, CEO, Territorium