In Spring 2018, I conducted a pilot study of a robot teaching sign language to children with autism. This blog post reflects on the results of the study, and our team’s process of designing the robot.

Robotics, Sign Language, and Children with Autism

To start with, let’s answer the first big question: Why use a robot in autism therapy? People with autism have an attention preference to objects over people, and children with autism have shown more interest toward therapy when it involves technological or robotic components. Additionally, a robot’s operation can be strictly controlled, which can make therapy less overwhelming for autistic people.

Then, the second big question: Why teach sign language to children with autism? People with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience problems with communication: 40–50% of people with ASD are functionally mute in adulthood. To mitigate this, they use Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) methods. Assistive sign language — a simplified form of sign language — is the most common form of AAC. Other common AAC forms are symbolic pictures and photographs.

An example of a symbolic picture communication system used by children with autism: “We do assignments.”

The idea to combine these two domains — robotics for children with ASD, and sign language for children with ASD — originally came from Satakunta health care district. Satakunta is a small region in South-Western Finland, with a population of 225 000 people. The quality manager at the district had read about a robot being used to teach sign language to neurotypical children, and wanted to investigate the same method with autistic children.

Satakunta found out that the company I work for (Futurice) had built a humanoid robot. They reached out, and we assembled a cross-disciplinary team that would re-design and modify Futurice’s humanoid robot to fit this purpose. Our team had three roboticists from Futurice, and three experts of autism treatment from Satakunta: a neuropsychologist, a speech therapist, and the quality manager.

How Should We Design the Robot?

The humanoid robot Futurice had built was an InMoov robot. The InMoov is designed by French sculptor Gaël Langevin. He has made the schematics and software of the robot open source and available to anyone online.

Using these, Futurice built its own InMoov. Satakunta wanted to use the InMoov due to its nimble hands that enable it to sign. Its human-like appearance was also an advantage: one of Satakunta’s neuropsychologists thought that a human-resembling robot would be best for this solution.

The original form of the open source humanoid robot InMoov, designed by Gaël Langevin. Image Wikimedia Commons.

However, the InMoov was not ready as it was. To make the robot be suitable for children with autism, we needed to modify its form, behaviour, interactions and environment.

My job was to design these four dimensions of the robot. I also needed to design the human-robot interaction study where children would meet and sign with the robot. Luckily, the open source nature of the robot’s software and hardware would make it relatively easy to make the necessary modifications.

We wanted to take the characteristics of ASD into account while designing the robot. ASD is characterized by problems with communication and language, problems with social behaviour, inflexibility of routines, and problems forming a holistic perception of surroundings. However, autism is a spectrum, so these characteristics present differently in different people. Due to different presentations, we knew we couldn’t design a robot that would benefit everyone. Nevertheless, we wanted to find the best solution that would serve the most children with ASD.

During the project, the team created five design guidelines for the robot, which would tailor its design for autistic children. For example, the concern that a child might get distracted during the experiment was brought up by the autism specialists. The team agreed that to avoid confusing the child, the robot’s behaviour should be consistent and structured. This was defined as the guideline: “consistent, structured, simple behaviour”. To follow the guideline, the speech therapist and I created strict script of the robot’s and child’s interaction. All five guidelines were formulated in a similar manner in co-design discussions.

Design guidelines for a robot to be used with autistic children:

1. Simple form
2. Consistent, structured, simple behaviour
3. Positive, supportive, rewarding experience and environment
4. Modular complexity
5. Modularity specific to child’s preferences

The design guidelines helped the team maintain a logical and uniform design for the robot, and formed a baseline for all decisions made during the design process.

Embedded Ethics

While the team was discussing the design of the robot and the experiments, several ethical considerations were raised. These ethical considerations were embedded into the finalized robot.

Physical safety — Users can be potentially pinched or crushed by a robot. To mitigate this concern, we decided to stop the children from touching the robot during interactions. To accomplish this, we decided to have the speech therapist in the room with the child to stop them from approaching the robot, if need be.

Data security — It is paramount that the user’s data stay secure, especially in health care applications. Here, we decided to keep all data of the children attending the study encrypted. We also did not record any unnecessary data.

Appropriate behaviour enforcement — People can learn bad manners from robots. For example, children have forgotten to use polite language such as “please” and “thank you” after interacting with the voice agent Alexa. Alexa does not explicitly ask for polite language, causing people to behave badly toward it. In this case, we didn’t want children to learn to treat the robot badly, and potentially generalize that bad behaviour to people. We decided that the therapist would intervene in all bad behaviour toward the robot.

Equality across users — Artificial intelligence algorithms have been shown to be racist or sexist in the past (e.g. COMPAS, a recidivism rate prediction algorithm used in USA, was biased toward African-Americans). If a robot uses algorithms to function, designers of the algorithm need to be careful. Another thing to consider is the robot’s form. Robot designs have been shown to reinforce gender stereotypes, with “genius” robots often labeled as male, and “service” robots as female. In our case, we wanted to design a robot that was gender neutral, so that each child participating in the study could feel welcome. To do this, the robot was given no gender signifiers.

Transparency — If the user understands how the robot operates and makes decisions, they can calibrate their trust level in it. In our case, we decided to inform the children and their companions of the robot’s teleoperated nature at the end of the study. This way they could avoid forming false assumptions about the state of robotics today, and how it can be applied to autism therapy.

Emotional consideration — Research has shown that humans treat robots as is they were alive, even when they clearly aren’t. People form emotional bonds with robots. This should be taken into account in the design: how strong a bond is desirable for this use case? In this case, we didn’t want the child or their companions to think that the robot was replacing the bond between the child and the therapist. To ensure this, the speech therapist would stay in the room with the child the entire time.

A Balancing Act

Building complex technology (robotics) for a complex domain (autism therapy) is difficult. The problem space was unintuitive to both sides of the team: the autism specialists weren’t familiar with technical limitations, and the roboticists had no knowledge of the user group.

Designing was a balancing act: a seemingly small tweak in the design could result in a high amount of technical work. And vice versa, some changes that were significant design-wise could be easy to implement technically.

This is where I spent most of my time — harmonizing the team’s different viewpoints into a good design that would be realistic to execute in our time frame of 6 months. Together we made a series of decisions balancing user experience and technical complexity.

The final InMoov with modifications: new Ada hands, lights attached to its right hand, and a screen on its chest.

When designing a social robot, there are a lot of moving parts (both literally and figuratively). The robot’s features all affect each other. The robot’s operation context affects how it behaves, which affects how it interacts with the user, which affects what its form is like. Prying these design considerations apart and crystallizing them into distinct and implementable technical tasks was challenging.

Modifying the robot from its original form took 4.5 months (the original build had been assembled in 9 months). All our modifications followed the design guidelines: for example, we changed the robot’s human-like voice to robotic, to give it a “simple form” (guideline 1).

To make the InMoov a better sign language teacher, we made a few big adjustments. We gave it new Ada hands, designed by Open Bionics, and built by Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. We also embedded a screen into its chest, and lights onto its arms. The screen was added to provide another mode of communication (photographs are often used in AAC), and lights were added to capture the child’s attention.

10 Children and a Robot

10 children took part in the experiments. Some came with their parents, some came with other support people. Two roboticists (me included) were in the room adjacent to the experiment room, operating the robot and observing the experiment through a camera feed. A third roboticist was present to solve any problems that might emerge. The speech therapist was in the experiment room with each child, facilitating the interaction between the child and the robot, and intervening when needed.

The 9 words the robot signed, and the corresponding images on its screen.

The robot performed 9 signs. With ⅓ of the signs, it also flashed the lights on its arm. With another ⅓ of the signs, it displayed an image corresponding to the sign on its screen. These 3 different design conditions were examined to see which was most effective.

I was surprised by how differently each child interacted with the robot. A few of the children signed with near-perfect accuracy throughout the entire experiment, imitating all the robot’s signs in a mere 6 minutes. Some took as long as 28 minutes, struggling with each sign. One particular child — who was not too keen on signing — could not stop laughing at the robot. The child kept attempting to either hug or lunge at the robot throughout the experiment, with the speech therapist and neuropsychologist lunging after him to stop him in time.

A child signs with the robot (picture with permission).

The speech therapist signals to the robot operators that the child signed correctly (picture with permission).

Children Imitated and Paid Attention to the Robot

I measured the children’s signing accuracy and attention focus. Children and their companions also completed surveys where they gave their opinions on the robot.

What we learned:

1. Children could imitate the robot, and paid attention to it

7 out of 10 children successfully imitated the robot at least once. 70% of the time, they kept their gaze on the robot, indicating attention focus. 8 out of 8 companions who filled the survey also noted that the children had a connection with the robot.

2. The image on the robot’s screen was good

The robot displayed an image on its screen simultaneously to signing 1/3 of the time. Children’s companions found the images useful, and thought they could help the children learn.

3. The robot was seen as good, but a bit scary

Both children and their companions rated the children’s experiences with the robot as good. However, some children and their companions noted that the children felt the robot was scary. Factors that create scariness should be identified and reduced in future designs.

4. Performance of the signs needs to be better

Both the speech therapist and children’s companions noted that the robot did not sign all words well, which might affect the children’s understanding of them.

Things still to learn:

1. Are children understanding the signs?

For this experiment, I only measured whether children imitated the signs. Future experiments are needed to verify if children are understanding them.

2. Who best benefits from the robot?

Not all children responded similarly to the robot. It is unlikely that this type of robot-based sign language therapy is useful to all children with autism. Future experiments should examine who this therapy is suitable for. This varying benefit is supported by companions’ survey results: 6 out of 8 companions thought the robot could potentially be beneficial as a sign language tutor.

3. How to input speech therapist’s commands?

To use the robot in the future, the therapist needs to be able to independently control the robot. For future implementations, a remote control or UI for programming the robot’s behaviour and interactions may be useful.

4. How will guidelines 4 and 5 affect the design?

For this experiment, I used a static design of the robot. Only its interactions changed (using its screen and lights at different points). Future research is needed to examine the design guidelines “modularity of complexity” (guideline 4) and “modularity specific to children’s preferences” (guideline 5). These could help adapt the robot to different users.

The Future of Robotic Sign Language Tutors

People interacting closely with robots can induce criticism. The most prominent concern is that of robots replacing humans. In this case, the robot is not intended to replace human care — rather augment and support human care.

Therapy sessions are demanding for therapists. They need to plan and conduct the session, while dealing with a potentially uncooperative participant. In the future, technological tools could be used to reduce the cognitive load of the therapist. The robot perform the signs, while the therapist could focus on encouraging, tutoring and managing the child. With reduced cognitive load, sessions could be longer and thus more in-depth.

The same effect could potentially be achieved if the robot were situated in the child’s home: the child would get a consistent tool to practice signs with, and the robot would not be bored or frustrated by repetitive practice.

To my knowledge, this was the first instance of using a robot to teach sign language to children with autism. I hope this research is continued further. I hope our pilot can shed some light onto how to develop this application in the future.

Science — especially pilot studies — sometimes requires improvisation: lights from the robot’s back were reflected on a window behind it, which might have distracted the children. We fashioned a light-reflection-blocker for the robot’s back, out of a towel stolen from our hotel (we did pay for it).

The entire study is available as:

Axelsson, M., Racca, M., Weir, D., Kyrki, V. (2019). A Participatory Design Process of a Robotic Tutor of Assistive Sign Language for Children with Autism. In 2019 28th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN). IEEE. Accepted.

The study is based on my master’s thesis at Aalto University, available here.

The project was funded by Prizztech’s Robocoast and ERDF-fund, and Futurice.

And how it boosts our growth opportunities as self-taught coders

Image description: Man and woman sitting next to each other, using a tablet and a laptop, respectively.

Whether or not you know it, if you’ve been teaching yourself to code… you’ve had exposure to Educational Technology (or “EdTech” for short) in some way or another.

It can be a challenge to understand what exactly educational technology is, and what it isn’t, since it’s a relatively new conjoiner area in both education and computing technology.

Allow me to shine some light on what Educational Technology actually is, and how it can or probably has already benefited you in your web development education. Then, we’ll talk about some of the great careers EdTech has to offer.

What is Educational Technology?

EdTech is an area of the technology sector dedicated to the development and application of tools with the purpose of promoting education and new learning experiences.

So basically, EdTech is using technology to promote education.

Even books are a product of educational technology. However, an important distinction: books are not so much the educational technology itself as are the means of creating the book. Rather than the book as a product, we focus on the tools used to create that product when describing education technology.

Whether by ink and quill or printing press, the written information is being shared via a non-verbal means, and is able to reach more people as a result to communicate the ideas of the author. I used to think it was the book itself, but this consideration makes sense.

Computing-wise, if you learned to code using an online service like freeCodeCamp, Treehouse, Coursera, or even something like Udemy courses… you have used Educational Technology to build your own education.

Think about it: these are web applications, which use web development technologies.

They have back-end frameworks that render information on the front-end, in the form perhaps of lessons or quizzes, or even a video for the student to watch. It’s really kind of meta when you think about it: we use technology, to learn about technology.

Even though the field of Educational Technology might seem to be super niched-down, it’s really not. The implications of education, and by extraction, educational technology spread into virtually every industry in existence today.

Caleb Clark, educator and EdTech expert, summarized the importance of EdTech this way in his video “What is EdTech?”: “Geeks can’t teach, and teachers can’t geek.”

What does this mean exactly?

Well, the best web developers and more generally, programmers, in the world are often not the best teachers. Often, we expect that the people teaching a particular industry’s skills should be the people working in that very industry.

However, what happens when someone doesn’t learn best by doing, or following suit? What happens when the expert is too far removed from the beginner’s perspective to understand their struggles?

This is where the educators step in.

By combining the superpowers of both technologists and educators, the newly created potential is endless. And it certainly doesn’t stop at just teaching technology, though that’s at least one thing we’ve all seen or used EdTech for.

If you work a full-time job, have you ever had to go through on-the-job training that was web-based, or even paper-based? That’s EdTech at work.

EdTech is on a fast track to being everywhere, and that’s exactly where we need it to be.

My personal experience with EdTech

So, my personal experience with EdTech began even before I first started learning to code in 2015. But, like my coding journey… it started with Treehouse. I had used tools like W3Schools, which is totally EdTech in its own form.

However, that issue I mentioned before of students learning differently… that one affected me deeply.

Most of my followers and podcast listeners know by this point that I had a really tough time with traditional educational systems.

At the end of the day, I was still a great student—but it was an intensely stressful and anxiety-inducing process for me. I didn’t figure out most of the details of how I learned until I was 29 years old, and already established in the field of Customer Service.

I didn’t have much upward movement to make, so I started looking at opportunities to teach myself new skills. Just based off of curiosity.

I wasn’t a fixed mindset, exactly… but I wasn’t working with a total growth mindset either. My anxiety told me that I was going to at the very least play hell trying to change careers and learn technology.

But, once I found Treehouse, all of that changed.

The high quality videos, speed controls, closed captioning, ability to pause and restart whenever needed… those are key features of video used across the internet. In EdTech, functionality like this gives power and control to the student, in a way that students traditionally do not have control.

And with that control, plus the added benefit of visual teaching… I was off to the races.

It was incredible. Like, EdTech gave me my life back, and I feel like in so many ways, I owe EdTech my life.

Since then, I’ve really been focusing my entrepreneurial energy, combined with the web development skills I’ve learned with the help of EdTech, back onto EdTech.

30 Days to Web Development, my flagship course + coaching program for coding career changers, was developed with a particular approach: to provide fundamental knowledge that is commonly overlooked by the programming industry as a whole, such as problem solving, research, and learning skills.

I’ll be talking briefly about EdTech and entrepreneurship toward the end of this post in the Careers in EdTech section, but generally speaking — you have lots of options here.

Mostly, you can pave your own way, and for someone with an entrepreneurial streak, being given creative license to play with tech and help others is like… my dream job!

What does EdTech look like?

EdTech can look like a lot of different things, which is why it may be hiding in plain sight.

One of the best definitions of EdTech that I’ve come across was by Hap Aziz in his 2010 article, “The 5 Keys to Educational Technology”.

He defines EdTech as:

the considered implementation of appropriate tools, techniques, or processes that facilitate the application of senses, memory, and cognition to enhance teaching practices and improve learning outcomes.

While virtually anything using technology to promote education could be considered “educational technology”, further investigation into what truly constitutes EdTech taught me that this is still a widely and openly discussed topic.

I mean, did you know prior to me telling you that writing instruments were one of the earliest forms of educational engineering—and by connection, technology?

And the printing press, which we more identify with as “technology” as we know it, was perhaps the greatest innovation to educational technology in modern history. Early technologies like these are often overlooked, because compared to today’s perception of “technology”, the origins of EdTech can indeed seem primitive.

In 2019, EdTech can look like web-based learning platforms we know and love. There are far too many to name at this point, which is… quite frankly, amazing. It wasn’t like that even a decade ago.

EdTech can be in the form of mobile or console games, that teach children and adults alike critical skills they need in life. I ran into an amazing example just recently, when I discovered the game Human Resource Machine—available on many platforms—which teaches programming principles.

You’re effectively given tasks to filter and sort output based on criteria you’re given in a particular challenge. I loved it, it was challenging, and I learned a lot while playing.

That is the power of Educational Technology — learning so immersive, and occasionally so wildly different from the traditional methods of teaching in schools — that you’re not even cognizant of the fact that you’re actively learning.

EdTech can be in the form of hardware, as well. There are many potential implementations being explored for use of VR and AR in EdTech. We’ll dig into that some more shortly.

In general, just know that EdTech is still a nebulous and largely uncharted frontier. It is truly education at the speed of technology.

I still have lots of questions about regulations and standards, especially after speaking with Treehouse CEO Ryan Carson in our July interview, “At The Intersection of Technology & Education with Ryan Carson”, which was Episode 11.

Ryan talked about how Treehouse initially sought accreditation, but were unable to secure it due to requirements that they freeze their curriculum for two years. In a fast-moving industry like web development… that wouldn’t make for a very relevant curriculum.

And that definitely kind of limits the opportunities that EdTech companies have to validate and certify their products through traditional routes of doing so — accreditation, namely.

I want to help us get to the point where EdTech is looked upon as a different and unique iteration of education, and for bureaucracy to stop trying to shoehorn it into the limitations of archaic educational standards.

The beauty of EdTech is that it can take so many different shapes, and be so closely tailored to a particular field or niche. And the cost of exploring all it has to offer is so much less than with traditional K-12, post-secondary, and vocational routes.

By embracing that uniqueness, and keeping students and learners at the center of everything we create in EdTech, we stand a chance of disrupting education as we know it, and changing those limiting rules and outdated regulations for the greater good.

EdTech creates powerful education opportunities

Now, we’ve been talking about EdTech as a facilitator for learning to code, and building skills to do your job to the best of your ability. But what about EdTech for kids, in the classroom? From what I’ve both seen and heard, classrooms have changed a lot since I graduated from high school back in the early 2000s.

Of course, this depends on the accessibility of technology to the school or school district, of course. And in a lot of ways, that’s a topic for an entirely different article.

But with the cost of technology dropping tremendously, the expansion of broadband internet access, and the advent of micro-computers like the Raspberry Pi… that accessibility gap is shrinking.

The biggest obstacle is appropriating funding to technology, and understanding the massive improvements it can bring to education overall.

Education should be centered around the needs of the student.

However, students are limited in their educations by factors that shouldn’t be factors at all, like where they live and their school district’s funding, their family’s socio-economic status, the relevance of the material available to them, their differences in learning, and the availability of teachers to attend to those differences… just to name a few.

With the advent of internet-connected technology, there’s no reason for these to be factors any longer.

Children can have access to the information and books they need, in the most relevant editions required, without being required to ship expensive books at exorbitant rates to less populous regions.

EdTech makes the classroom infinitely larger

I mentioned differences in learning as a factor, as well, and this is an enormous benefit that EdTech can offer.

Special education teachers, and teachers skilled in delivering information via particular teaching styles, are all over the world. However, they may not be available in a particular school district.

Can you imagine a classroom where there were multiple teachers for each learning style? One drawing images on the whiteboard, and another connecting ideas to help associative learners. Another working through a book for textual learners.

What if we could have the teachers pause whenever needed so students could take the breaks they need to absorb information without overwhelm?

In the case of home schooling, EdTech not only delivers options for parents who aren’t teachers and don’t know everything, but also has great potential to provide that same accessibility to special education teachers for their own children, without depending on their school district or paying someone to teach their child 1:1, in-person.

Can you think of some applications on your own? Perhaps a teaching assistant even be replaced by an AI chat bot that’s available at all hours?

Or, AR/VR technology could allow children in remote areas to virtually “visit” important world landmarks they may not otherwise have a chance to visit.

You can see — I’m so excited just talking about these topics. Because the potential benefit is so. damn. big.

EdTech and OpenEd

Let’s talk a little about EdTech and privatization, versus open source education, or “OpenEd” for short.

For the newbies out there, privatization in this context basically means educators working for companies to create proprietary, for-profit products — as opposed to open source — to promote education.

Conversely, open source education communities would provide this information and associated learning tools for free, for educators worldwide to build a global, living repository of knowledge.

In many ways, we’re already there. Wikipedia is, in fact, a great example. However, while the future of education requires more than the opinions of an average Wikipedia contribution, there are definitely options for being “verified” to join these communities.

Now, there’s nothing wrong at all with privatization.

With privatization often comes the funding required to bring in the best talent from both the educational and technology sides, and create better products, sooner, than the Open Source communities could.

Personally, I would love to see OpenEd welcome professionals and specialists from all walks of life, not just educators, to freely provide information that technologists can adapt into usable EdTech software and web applications.

Input can always be filtered and validated, but it needs to be contributed first.

It’s my personal dream to be an Open Source contributor on the technologist side, which is why I’ve begun flexing my entrepreneur muscle to open up my schedule in order to do so.

While I’m sure working in EdTech would be an absolute blast, it would have to be a really forward-thinking, cutting-edge company with a hefty mission to pull me away from Open Source in order to build proprietary apps.

We need those perspectives of really dedicated educators and technologists to show us how important the world of EdTech is, and the incredible things we can build in it.

Careers in EdTech

Excited about EdTech? You should be!

This is huge, and it’s an area so many people don’t even know about. Like, we use these tools all the time, but we have no idea about the very industry behind it.

It’s also an extremely fulfilling career to work in, and you know that you’re making a big difference every step of the way. If you want to work in EdTech, fortunately, EdTech brings in ALL areas of technology, particularly design and UX.

Every aspect that is required in the building of native mobile, desktop software and web applications, as well as hardware design and development, is desperately needed to make EdTech the world-changing field it is going to be, but with the help of talented professionals you all will become, even sooner.

A lot of job seekers out there want to find work that is both fulfilling and profitable, and it was actually just recently that I found out that I was completely wrong about what I thought about EdTech.

While the Open Source world may not offer many opportunities to get paid for your work, there has been a dramatic increase in venture capital investment in Educational Technology startups in the past 10 years.

In a 2013 Forbes article by Elli Sharef called “EdTech Dream Jobs: Doing Good While Getting Paid”, included in the show notes, she remarked on the topic, “Whereas teachers generally top out at around $80,000 a year, and only if they get masters/doctoral degrees, educational entrepreneurs have shown that making money and doing good are not always misaligned.”

If you’re interested in getting a job in Educational Technology, though, here are some places to start:

First off, see if there are any local events for EdTech. They’ll likely be open to everyone, but with a special focus on building connections between entrepreneurs, technologists, and educators.

There’s a particular reason that I’m suggesting in-person Meetups first.

These kinds of conversations are really incredible to have in-person. It’s an opportunity to make a truly deep connection with someone over a passionate topic.

Sometimes you get that when talking tech alone, sometimes not.

Typically, I find the most passionate and interesting people in tech are the ones doing something meaningful with their tech skills. And I’m super bored by most conversations about pure tech unless it’s based on a question I asked.

My best advice is to let yourself be interested in asking questions, and finding people who have great answers embedded in their experience and perspectives.

It’s also worth noting that even if you’re not naturally curious, that’s a pretty good indicator that EdTech might not be for you, and that’s perfectly fine! That’s really valuable information to have, so you can pivot and find something you really love.

You can also join some EdTech communities online, and introduce yourself as someone who’s interested in the field.

See if forums have pinned posts with useful information for newcomers looking to network or build their skills. For a good hack I’ve been using, you can also search the entire forum’s domain in Google for terms like “new” or “first time” to read feedback others have gotten.

Doing this also shows others in the community that you know how to utilize information that is already available to you, which will make any community at least a bit kinder in response to a newcomer.

Networking is STILL the best way to get a job — far more effective than applying to jobs online.

Plus, you get to establish some wonderful connections with forward-thinking, creative people.

It’s important to note that EdTech needs even more diversity than tech in general, both as educators and technologists. Every product created to promote education stands the potential to be a game-changer, and reach millions of people.

Many of them are children, who are still learning the world. This is not just an important — but a critical responsibility — of educators and technologists alike, that often goes overlooked.

EdTech is also an amazing field for entrepreneurship opportunities. If you create a solution that solves the pain points of the education world, you could be on the path to a very successful (and lucrative) entrepreneurial career.

Grants are often available to individuals and organizations looking to solve problems with their tech skills.

The Office of Educational Technology is dedicated to helping anyone interested in contributing to EdTech get informed, and make the connections they need to get started.

My current career has pivoted from freelancing in front-end web development, to building web development courses using a web-based Learning Management System (LMS).

Rather than recreate the wheel and build my own LMS at this point, I’m using Teachable. Learning Management Systems are an amazing example of a successful business idea, and one that fosters individuals’ abilities to share information they possess — thus promoting education.

Personally, I blazed my own entrepreneurship trail. For the past year, I have been gradually making progress after committing myself to closing the information gap between self-educated students and traditionally-educated, 4-year CS degree students.

In summary

Educational Technology is an exciting, relevant field for developers and engineers to explore. The capacity for massive worldwide change begins with increased access to education. And the rewards are worth it.

Nicole Archambault is the creator of La Vie en Code, and host of the La Vie en Code podcast.

She is also the instructor of 30 Days to Web Development, an online course + coaching program to guide and support self-taught web development career changers to their first paid opportunities.

She has built her business around the intersection of technology, education, psychology, and the ways they affect self-educated web developers.