This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognizing you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
A national leader in the adult education space, World Education-US infuses digital equity into all areas of our work, enabling everyone to thrive as learners, workers, and family and community members in the digital world. Even prior to forming the EdTech Center to support the U.S. adult education field with digital transformation, World Education was a leading provider of technical assistance, professional development, research, and innovation on advancing digital learning, digital literacy, and digital inclusion for decades. World Education remains a go-to organization at the federal, state, and regional levels, working with various national organizations, employers, policymakers, and tech developers on issues and considerations around digital equity.
Our diverse work – from ensuring the needs of immigrants and refugees will be addressed in State Digital Equity Plans, to leading the Digital US digital equity coalition and designing inclusive technology tools and practices, to building the capacity of learners and workers to leverage AI – demonstrates World Education’s commitment to and expertise in developing an equitable ecosystem for advancing digital equity and digital resilience for all of us.
Featured Resources
To easily search through all available EdTech Center resources, visit the EdTech Center resources page. For additional World Education and partner resources, visit the Transforming Immigrant Digital Equity (TIDE) project’s Digital Equity Resources page.
Featured Projects
Digital US
World Education designed and coordinates the Digital US coalition, with over 25 members working nationally to ensure that all of US have technology skills and digital resilience to thrive in work and life. Digital US represents employers, service providers, policymakers, philanthropists and other stakeholders collaborating to close digital skills gaps. The coalition designed, named, piloted, and supported widespread adoption of 1) the Digital Navigator model for personalized digital inclusion supports, and 2) the term digital resilience for redefining the digital literacy required today with technology changing rapidly. Digital US has also supported and developed resources for the Employer Network Advancing Digital Skills and Equity, such as the Employer Roadmap.
Transforming Immigrant Digital Equity (TIDE)
To serve adult immigrant and refugee English language learners equitably and holistically, there is a pressing imperative to educate and engage service providers, policy makers, institutional decision-makers, and advocates for re-envisioning adult education, digital equity, and immigration at the national, state, and local levels. TIDE, which builds upon the findings of the Remote ESOL Project, will leverage the unprecedented opportunity provided by the Digital Equity Act to dramatically expand access to ESOL learning and related immigrant inclusion supports for immigrants and refugees through scalable, sustainable program models and services that optimize the use of technology.
Digital Navigators Connecting Communities
World Education, in partnership with AT&T, is enhancing community-based organizations at five locations across the nation through the implementation of co-designed digital navigation services. Through a thoughtful needs analysis and digital service integration, device distribution, and intentional staff training, this partnership will positively impact the digital inclusion needs of the community members who engage with these sites.
AI for Learning and Work
Through the AI for Learning and Work initiative, we advance digital equity and transformation by embedding AI literacy and inclusion in existing technical assistance, resources, and professional development. Building on our existing applied research, we critically examine the perceptions, applications, and impact of AI for lifelong learning. AI for Learning and Work is a cross-cutting initiative with outputs integrated into a range of projects, ensuring that ethical AI development and use is realized in edtech tool field testing, assistance provided to IDEAL Consortium member states, professional development for teachers in CampGPT, open educational resources from CrowdED Learning, and more.
Innovating Digital Education in Adult Learning (IDEAL) Consortium
The IDEAL Consortium helps member states establish quality innovative distance, blended, and digital learning programs by offering professional development, providing technical support, and facilitating a network of education leaders from across the country. We aim to ensure that all learners have access to quality learning opportunities within and beyond the classroom. IDEAL also sponsors the EdTech Center’s monthly EdTech Strategy Sessions, which convene leaders, practitioners, educators, and more to discuss distance learning.
Digital Resilience in the American Workforce (DRAW)
World Education co-leads DRAW with Jobs for the Future (JFF) and Safal Partners. DRAW is an initiative of the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE), aimed at better preparing adult education practitioners who support learners that struggle to fully engage in tasks that demand the use of digital technologies. Through DRAW, we will provide the field with flexible, evidence-based, and piloted strategies and materials that help teachers build the digital literacy skills and digital resilience of adult learners.
CrowdED Learning
CrowdED Learning serves as the EdTech Center’s core open education resources (OER initiative), with a mission of implementing and testing products and processes that make it easier for instructors, service providers and adult learners to create, locate, organize, and share free and open content relevant to their specific needs. In March 2020, CrowdED Learning also launched SkillBlox, a free, experimental platform that allows instructors and program staff to readily locate learning activities by skill and then select, organize, and share skill-aligned playlists of content with learners. To concurrently expand the volume of resource options within SkillBlox, CrowdED Learning supports a number of EdTech Maker Space events, aimed at providing service learning opportunities for educators to learn new skills while creating, curating, and adapting open content to be freely used by others.
Readability for All
The EdTech Center has partnered with Adobe, the University of Central Florida and Readability Matters to explore how text personalization can improve readability in digital texts and literacy for all ages and abilities. As remote work and remote learning become the new normal, being able to effectively engage with and read digital documents is now a necessity. World Education also participates in The Readability Consortium.