Today paper textbooks seem destined to become just a memory in our school system. In 2014, big data is reshaping the way students receive their curriculum and learn. Furthermore tools of the new and digital classrooms are changing the dynamics for educators as well. Technology can be stated to change our whole school system.

In more recent times, students are not turning to their screens to learn some basic information or to play a round of a game, they are increasingly experiencing data-driven teaching as a fully integrated part of their academic process.

If you think about the impact of technology on our lives today, algorithms are analyzing our behavior, both on and offline, more or less all the time. Education has also entered a new ecosystem. In the data-driven classroom, the concept of digitally collecting and analyzing students’ work is already an essential part of how school systems track and report performance.

On the level of the individual classroom, digital curricula and data is changing the way teachers as well as learning work. Below are just a few examples of how digitalization is changing our education:

• Scoring and grading: In simple ways, applications allow teachers to either deliver multiple-choice tests via mobile devices or scan and score paper exams via mobile-device cameras. Tools like these typically allow instructors to export results to grade books and track progress along defined parameters.
• Personalized, adaptive learning: More than just streamlining assignments and the grading process, data-driven classrooms opened up the experience of what students learn, when they learn it and at what level.
• Problem management: For example digital solutions can assist teachers when it comes to issues where a student is handing in writing that might not be conducted by him-/herself.

There is a key factor at the core of all this functionality: The teacher, and the role he/she still plays at the center of data’s classroom transformation. As classrooms become more and more connected to data and its far-reaching potential, the human mind that is managing the process remains very much central to students’ experiences. Even companies that are promoting digital integration in the classroom remain keenly focused on the individual at the head of the class.

Originally posted by: Mashable