Virtual, mixed, and augmented reality, termed “extended reality,” or XR, have great potential for classroom-based learning. Yet many questions about the use and widespread adoption of these emerging technologies remain. To share insights, opportunities, and challenges, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and the XR Association (XRA) hosted Immersive Media and Learning, a one-day forum in 2022, to explore the use of XR technologies in high school settings.

On this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast Tom Vander Ark is joined by Joseph South (@southjoseph), Founder of Learning Accelerant.

“By connecting purpose and expertise, schools become meaningful, connected, engaging, and relevant.” — Joseph South

Tom and Joseph discuss the importance of expertise and providing students with the chance to do work that matters to them and their community. Joseph calls this Purpose-Driven Expertise development.

The nation must act with urgency and purpose to ensure all students have access to high quality online learning opportunities. This begins with ensuring all students have the devices and connectivity they need to participate in online learning. As long as the digital divide remains, it stands as a failure of national will that translates into greater educational inequities.

We must also work to improve the quality of online learning itself. Students need – and deserve – courses and lessons that are rich with interactivity and engaging content. Teachers need – and deserve – more support structures to help them succeed in this new form of instruction. We must act with intention to ensure our most vulnerable students are positioned for success, given the challenges they face.

To ensure that upcoming generations can positively leverage online spaces and rise above the ever-present call to division, digital citizenship—encompassing the critical competencies to discern fact from fiction, navigate relationships, and use technology to champion change—must be fostered, beginning in our schools where students already engage with technology regularly. The work to develop digital citizens and future leaders is underway in several states and districts, and there exists numerous ways that the federal government can supply further momentum—setting a national vision around digital citizenship, building the capacity of educators, and strategically investing necessary funds.

Advancing teacher preparation to full adoption of technology infusion is no small undertaking. Written by 20 experts in the teacher prep field, Championing Technology Infusion in Teacher Preparation provides research- and practice-based direction for faculty, administrators, PK-12 school partners and other stakeholders who support programwide technology infusion in teacher education programs. This kind of change involves almost every individual and system involved in teacher preparation.

Chapter 5 explores the future of work and the types of skills workers need to have in order to be competitive in current and future labor markets, discusses the foundation for digital- age learning, and examines the logistics of implementing digital-age learning. It discusses applications of various educational technologies and provides recommendations for systemic change, such as building transformation plans on a framework (the ISTE Essential Conditions) that describe foundational elements of effective educational transformation. The last section examines the implications of computational thinking in an increasingly technological world.

When students are given voice and choice in their learning, when teachers are given flexibility to respond to these needs and interests, the school setting becomes more meaningful for both of them. This flexibility opens the door for teachers to better align school experiences with the students own sense of purpose.