Why Early Learning is the Most Overlooked Opportunity in the EdTech Space

A child’s development during the first eight years can, in many ways, determine their future success. Throughout this critical early stage, children reach academic milestones while developing social-emotional and executive functioning skills. As a result, access to high-quality early childhood education is key not only to families, but to society as a whole. This social benefit impacts everything from lower crime rates to reduced health risks. Yet, many families, especially those in the low-income bracket, have limited resources to invest in high-quality early education. The resulting increase in education inequality has negative repercussions for society overall. 
Technology is a powerful tool that mitigates such disparities while improving learning outcomes. Despite its potential, technology is less accessible in early childhood settings compared with primary and secondary school settings. There is still a lot of room to expand edtech to equalize learning opportunities for the youngest learners.
Edtech helps students actively learn
Through interactive games and animated video lessons, the best edtech helps children reinforce a desire to learn while taking on a more active role in their own learning process, making it easier to grapple with difficult-to-understand concepts. The interactive and audio/visual elements of clever edtech encourage children’s creativity, as they make use of a range of technological media to express themselves. Beyond acquiring typical classroom concepts, technology allows students to expand their learning horizons and develop non-academic skill sets including those related to social-emotional learning and executive functioning.

Edtech can help improve the quality of instruction 
Through different tech tools, teachers can implement targeted, effective learning techniques personalized to each child’s needs to optimize learning outcomes. Additionally, edtech can help teachers have the resources to further professional development, so they can gain new insights that can improve their quality of instruction. Lastly, edtech can offer resources that streamline classroom management from taking attendance to assessment documentation, allowing teachers to focus their time and effort on teaching. In a Houghton Mifflin Harcourt survey, 44 percent of educators have experienced time savings because of technology, but 72 percent agree that there is still room for technology to improve workflow and make processes more efficient.

Edtech encourages parental involvement in children's learning processesEdtech can be used to form a bridge of communication between teachers and parents, by keeping parents updated on their child’s progress and fostering a sense of awareness of upcoming events and projects. Parental involvement is essential in empowering students success in the classroom, as research has proven that students with involved parents have better academic performance, fewer behavioural problems and are more likely to complete high school. Moreover, learning should not be limited to the classroom since edtech makes it more accessible for parents to reinforce learning and concept to their children at home. Edtech makes it easier for parents to find and manage trustworthy programs and resources for their children. For example, kidappolis is an app platform that uses assessments to curate a catalogue of learning apps customized to each child’s learning goals.
​There is promise in the early education technology sector as it offers unique solutions to challenges that traditional education often fails to address. With the support of edtech, education can minimize inequalities and change the destiny of millions of children. 

---