Last week we had the opportunity of flying to San Francisco for the 2014 SIIA Education Industry Summit (formerly EdTech Industry Summit). To our delight, EDUonGo was selected as a finalist for the Innovator Incubator Program. To watch our CEO’s presentation, click here.

One of my favorite parts of the event was meeting new people, including longstanding SIIA members who were eager to talk about education technology (EdTech) back in the 1980s. Additionally, I enjoyed hearing discussions on how big data will be used to help every individual learn and even track students’ attention in front of computers.

Although I’ve worked in the technology industry for many years, I am new to EdTech and am learning about its rapid expansion. Having worked at EDUonGo for over six months, I now understand ideas such as flipped learning, blended learning, adoptive learning, MOOC, and so forth. It’s truly exciting to be part of a community that’s spearheading this transformation in education.

Smartphone and Internet connection have really make information available at our fingertips, teachers are going to have to change from being lecturers to becoming mentors in order to enhance student learning, promote analytic skills and cultivate creativity. This is why we encourage our customers to connect with and mentor their students. While EDUonGo provides a system that enables people to teach online, our goal is to help our customers create online communities where students can learn from and collaborate with each other.

EdTech is certainly a hot topic these days but using technology to improve education has been around for a long time. As educators continue to research and explore new strategies to help their students learn, technology will always be there to help. I am very happy to be part of the EdTech community to help make education better for students around the world.