Developer Toolkit

Creating Educational Technology for

English Learners
ii

This toolkit was produced under U.S. Department of Education Contract No. ED-PEP-11-O-0088/TO27. 

Contracting officer’s representatives were Julie Warner, Lena Shi, Ivan Metzger, and Erica Lee, with 

additional contribution from Victoria Hammer, all of the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy 

Development, Policy and Program Studies Service. The views expressed herein do not necessarily 

represent the positions or policies of the Department of Education. No official endorsement by the U.S. 

Department of Education of any product, commodity, service, or enterprise mentioned in this publication 

is intended or should be inferred. For the reader’s convenience, this publication contains information 

about and from outside organizations, including hyperlinks and URLs. Inclusion of such information does 

not constitute an endorsement by the Department. 

U.S. Department of Education

Betsy DeVos

Secretary

Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development

James Blew

Assistant Secretary

Policy and Program Studies Service

Gregory Fortelny 

Director

October 2018

This toolkit is in the public domain. Authorization to reproduce it in whole or in part is granted. While 

permission to reprint this publication is not necessary, the citation should be: U.S. Department of 

Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, Policy and Program Studies Service, 

National Study of English Learners and Digital Learning Resources, Developer Toolkit: Creating Educational 

Technology for English Learners, Washington, D.C., 2018. 

This toolkit is available on the Department’s website at: 

http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html. 

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Requests for documents in alternate formats such as Braille or large print should be submitted to the 

Alternate Format Center by calling 202-260-0852 or by contacting the 504 coordinator via email at 

om_eeos@ed.gov. 

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Avenue SW, Washington, D.C. 20202.

Content Contact: 

Erica Lee

Phone: 202-260-1463 

Email: erica.lee@ed.gov
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Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 

Guiding Principles for Developers .......................................................................... 2 

Principle 1. Understand what English learners and their educators need ......... 3 

Principle 2. Design by leveraging research and best practices ........................... 9 

Principle 3. Include support features for English learners................................. 12 

Principle 4. Communicate with educators to increase product adoption to 

support the instruction of English learners ..................................... 15 

Principle 5. Offer instruction-focused professional development ..................... 18 

Learn About the Study .......................................................................................... 20 

Disclaimer .............................................................................................................. 21 

Matrix 1: Digital Learning Resources ................................................................... 22 

Matrix 2: Digital Support Features ....................................................................... 23 

1 

Introduction 

The Department of Education encourages educational technology developers 

to take the needs of English learners and their educators into consideration in 

their technology design. As of the 2015–16 school year, there were over five 

million English learners, about 10 percent of all K–12 students. Many 

teachers, including those in small and rural districts, instruct one or more 

English learners—or soon will. Teachers often use technology designed for 

general education students when instructing their students who are English 

learners, so any educational technology you design will likely be used by 

English learners. 

This toolkit provides guidance for educational technology developers on: 

o The needs of English learners and their educators; 

o Supports to consider including with your product that may be especially 

useful for English learners; 

o Ways to communicate about products with districts and educators of 

English learners to facilitate adoption of your products; and 

o The types of professional development and training activities that 

educators find most valuable.

This toolkit and a companion Educator’s Toolkit are based on insights from the 

findings of the National Study of English Learners and Digital Learning 

Resources conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, Policy and 

Program Studies Service, on behalf of the Office of English Language 

Acquisition and the Office of Educational Technology. Both toolkits focus on 

software or “digital learning resources,” that is, the apps, programs, or 

websites that engage students in learning activities and support students’ 

learning goals. The toolkits do not focus on hardware (e.g., laptops, computers, 

tablets, or other devices), although you may find that some insights are 

applicable to the design and use of hardware devices. 

The study provides the first national data on how educators across the country 

are using educational technology in instructing English learners. The study 

conducted surveys, case studies, and meetings with experts in the field, 

including educational technology publishers, researchers, and educators. To 

learn more about the study and the toolkits, you can read a brief description 

on page 20. 

The study’s final report describes how districts and teachers identify and use 

technology in instructing English learners, as well as related supports and 

barriers. This toolkit builds awareness of the role technology can play for 

English learners and notes areas where technology developers can improve 

their offerings for English learners, based on needs suggested by the study. 
2 

GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR DEVELOPERS 

1. Understand what English learners and their 

educators need 

2. Design by leveraging research and best practices

3. Include support features for English learners

4. Communicate with educators to increase product 

adoption to support the instruction of English 

learners

5. Offer instruction-focused professional 

development 
3 

PRINCIPLE 1

Understand what English learners 

and their educators need 

The design of educational technology, especially for students 

who are English learners, requires designing for a diversity of 

educators, students, and instructional needs. Educators have 

differing roles but share responsibility for their students’ 

success in learning both language and academic content. 

English learners have a wide range of backgrounds and use 

educational technology for a variety of instructional tasks. By 

identifying the needs of educators and students, you will be 

able to develop and design more effective products. 

What to know

A variety of educators use and evaluate the usefulness of educational 

technologies, including: 

o English learner specialists, such as English as a Second Language or 

bilingual classroom teachers;

o Classroom teachers who instruct English learners together with Englishproficient students; and 

o District administrators and/or school technology coordinators who 

recommend and support educational technology use.

English learners from kindergarten through grade 12 (K–12) come from a 

variety of language and cultural backgrounds and have a wide range of needs 

related to academic readiness. For example, English learners who will use 

educational technology may: 

o Have had very different experiences before coming into their K–12 

classrooms. Many will have been born in the United States, but others will 

have just entered the United States for the first time, perhaps after difficult 

experiences as refugees; 

o Have grade-level skills and knowledge based on a high-quality education in 

their country of origin but not yet have proficiency in English; 
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o Have had little or no formal education, or some years of interrupted

education, prior to entering schools in the United States;

o Appear proficient in English based on their fluency in everyday 

conversations but not yet have the level of academic English proficiency 

they will need to succeed in learning academic content; 

o Differ in their level of acquisition and use of their home language, and 

some may not be literate in that language. This has implications for their 

path to English literacy; 

o Have had little or no experience using technology and so may not 

understand many of the basics about using computers or navigating in a 

website or software program; 

o Come from cultures with very different norms and expectations around 

education. For example, some may expect collaboration to be the norm, 

while others may expect that students work alone; and

o Have disabilities, and some may require the use of assistive technology, 

including software to support their accessibility needs. 

Educators have identified gaps in the educational technology available to 

address the needs of English learners and their teachers. For example, they 

see gaps in: 

o Support for learning all academic content—currently much of the 

educational technology for English learners focuses on English language 

acquisition;

o Resources that reflect students’ different languages, cultures, and 

experiences; 

o Support for students in communicating and collaborating with their 

teachers and fellow students as active participants in learning activities; 

o Support in allowing parents to communicate with teachers to become more 

involved in their child’s education; and 

o Materials that fit the needs of older beginner English learners while 

providing grade-level content and design that is appropriate for them as 

middle and high school students (i.e., not childish or simplistic in their 

activities and images). 

Different forms of educational technology address different needs, and 

supports should be tailored to the specific educational technology being 

designed. A categorization of educational technology that may be useful is 
5 

found in the Digital Learning Resources Matrix (page 22). It shows three 

categories: 

o Digital Academic Content Tools, which offer academic content resources 

and/or engage students in activities to learn academic content or skills. 

o Digital Productivity Tools, which offer resources to plan, document, 

organize, and analyze content. They do not contain academic content. 

o Digital Communication Tools, which offer resources to communicate, 

collaborate, network, or share information. They do not contain academic 

content. 

What to do

□ Identify your customers. Who are the educators and English learners who 

will use and evaluate your product? What are their characteristics and 

needs? 

□ Partner with teachers, schools, or districts to find design partners. Involve 

target users in design to better understand their needs in serving English 

learners and possible solutions to meet those needs. These partners 

should be chosen carefully, as different feedback may be provided by 

teachers who actively integrate new forms of technology into their 

instruction as compared with teachers who are less comfortable with using 

technology in instruction. 

□ Develop a set of scenarios (or “personas” or “use cases”) to describe your 

users and their needs. The scenarios below describe common situations 

for English learners and their teachers, highlighting their needs. An 

understanding of customer needs can be used as the basis for developing

products. You can take these as a starting point but should develop your 

own based on the specifics of your technology and customer. By creating

partnerships with districts or schools, you can create your own scenarios

and learn how your materials can be improved to better meet the needs of 

your customers. 
6 

SCENARIOS

1 

Maria is a middle school English learner who excelled in 

school in her country of origin and is at grade level in math 

and science achievement. She needs to learn new 

mathematics concepts, such as the relationship between 

slope and unit rate, while learning how to speak, read, and 

write English. Her math teacher is working with her English

learner specialist, Mr. Kenny, to find ways to help Maria keep 

pace in her math learning as a beginning level English 

learner. 

Mr. Kenny noted that Maria may benefit from interactive 

visual representations such as a mathematics-specific, digital 

academic content tool that offers dynamic graphs and 

motion simulations. These can help Maria learn the 

concepts, and the needed vocabulary can be introduced 

through features directly related to the visual 

representations. In addition, Maria can manipulate the 

representations to communicate her own ideas, allowing a 

richer form of communication than possible when using 

spoken or written English.

2 

Malika is a high school student in Mr. Reilly’s social studies 

class. She is a long-term English learner who is reading 

several levels below her grade. The class has been assigned 

a reading on the emergence of the industrial society, and Mr. 

Reilly has identified an alternate digital academic content 

resource for Malika that offers sets of texts on the topics they 

are studying, written at her fourth-grade reading level. Malika 

finds the resource child-like, both in content and in visual 

format, and is embarrassed to be using it. Mr. Reilly is 

frustrated that the resource does not address grade-level 

standards about this topic.

Malika may benefit from tools that offer simpler versions of 

the English language text on the same grade-level content 

and include multimodal support features such as visual 
7 

representations for understanding the academic terms and 

vocabulary. A resource that maintains a high school look-andfeel, while addressing high school standards, can better meet 

the needs of Malika and Mr. Reilly. This resource can also 

provide markup tools that allow Malika to make notes and 

possibly even submit assignments in a way that allows 

Malika to build academic English skills while learning the 

content.

3 

Josef is an elementary school student in Ms. Lee’s class, 

where they are studying plant structures. He is learning 

English and has missed two years of formal education due to 

years spent in a refugee camp, but he is eager to learn and 

work with others. Ms. Lee wants to be sure that Josef can 

collaborate with his peers as they learn about plant 

structures for reproduction and how these structures 

function. She also wants Josef to be able to contribute as the 

students put together group presentations to show what 

they’ve learned.

Josef may benefit from working with a digital storytelling or 

other template provided by a productivity tool as he learns 

about plant structures and contributes to the group project. 

This template can include ways for Josef to pull in images to 

convey key information. Josef may also benefit from a videocreation productivity tool that will allow him to review and 

revise his statements to the group (e.g., recording, replaying, 

and revising his statements before sharing them with others). 

These tools can allow Josef to engage with others and 

contribute to the group presentation. 
8 

What to ask

o How do my current and target customers describe their roles and needs? 

o What do my customers report as the current contexts of use for my tool, 

how can they be supported in these different contexts, and what other 

contexts would they like to see supported?

o What educator roles, student roles, and instructional context should I use 

to create a set of scenarios that can help me better understand my 

customers and how to support them?

Resources

o For general advice on developing educational technology, see the Ed Tech 

Developer’s Guide.

o For an outline of educational technology categories and types, see the Digital 

Learning Resources Matrix (page 22). This matrix was used in the study as a 

summary overview of the types of resources available to educators.
9 

PRINCIPLE 2

Design by leveraging research and

best practices

When designing and refining educational technology, decisions 

should be consistent with best practices relevant to your 

specific educational technology product. The Department of 

Education encourages developers to familiarize themselves 

with the research on instructional practices that help English 

learners gain proficiency in English and build understanding in 

the different content areas. 

What to know

o Understand what is known about promising and effective practices for 

instructing English learners. A recent summary of what we know from the 

research, Promoting the Educational Success of Children and Youth 

Learning English: Promising Futures, was developed by a committee of 

experts in the field. It includes an overview of instructional practices for 

English learners in grades Pre-K to 12, and is a free resource as a pdf. 

o The National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition (NCELA) is 

another resource. NCELA collects, coordinates, and shares a broad range 

of research and resources in support of high-quality education for English 

learners and includes a resource library. 

o The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework provides guidelines to 

improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on 

scientific insights into how humans learn. The guidelines were initially 

developed as a way to design technology for students with a wide variety of 

learning needs, including needs related to a student’s disability, and many 

of the guidelines may be particularly effective for English learners, including 

English learners with disabilities. UDL is based on the premise that all 

students benefit when provided flexible learning environments that can 
10

accommodate individual learning differences. These guidelines 

recommend providing: 

o Multiple means of engagement; 

o Multiple means of representation; and 

o Multiple means of action and expression. 

For example, technology that enables students to engage with content 

through auditory modes as well as visual modes can help many to learn 

new content. English learners can benefit from hearing text read to them 

when they are not yet fluent readers, and students with impaired vision can 

also benefit from a text-to-speech option in learning new material.

What to do

□ Base decisions on research. Use the research on effective and promising 

practices for English learners to guide the design of your specific 

educational technology resource so that it can engage and support the 

English learners who work with your product. 

□ Use existing guidelines relevant to your educational technology design. 

Refer to frameworks such as UDL and others so that your product design is 

informed by what is currently known about research and best practices 

relevant to educational materials design generally and to technology 

solutions specifically.

□ Create designs that specifically address the users you have identified and 

their needs. For example, ensure that the product design elements reflect 

promising practices that are appropriate to your targeted English learner 

students’ age, accessibility and/or disability related needs, and/or grade 

level. 

□ Inform sales and marketing of the research you are integrating into your 

product. When you leverage research, let others in your product group 

know. Educators often will want to know the research basis of the 

resources they are considering. Make sure that your sales and marketing 

teams are aware of how your product is based on research, and how it 

meets the needs of your target customers.
11

What to ask

o What is the research on promising and effective practices that most aligns 

with my product and will my product lead to strong solutions for the specific 

English learners and contexts we’re targeting? 

o What are the changes I can make to my product that can better align it with 

best practices according to existing research and design guidelines? 

Resources 

o The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework is widely used, and districts 

may request or require that technology providers show how UDL was used in the 

design of their product. 

o For more on the design and development of educational technology resources 

generally, see the U.S. Department of Education, Reimagining the Role of 

Technology in Education: 2017 National Education Technology Plan Update. Note 

the discussion of Universal Design to meet the needs of all students including 

students with disabilities on pages 21-23. 

o The website for the Promoting the Educational Success of Children and Youth 

Learning English: Promising Futures includes additional resources, such as

blogposts and webinars on several key topics. Scroll down to the list of 

“Resources at a Glance” to view the offerings. There is also an Online Toolkit - 

Promoting the Educational Success of Children and Youth Learning English. In 

this resource, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 

provide additional information related to the committee’s report, including short 

videos from experts. 

o The National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition (NCELA), publishes 

NCELA Nexus, a semimonthly e-newsletter, to share new resources, upcoming 

events, and other announcements. It provides links to opportunities for jobs, 

education, and funding related to the education of English learners. Nexus 

subscribers may also receive occasional, time-sensitive announcements from the 

U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition and 

NCELA.
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PRINCIPLE 3

Include support features for English 

learners 

Educational technologies can support learners in ways that go 

well beyond digitizing textbooks and worksheets. By embedding 

well-considered supports for English learners, your educational 

technology may stand out in the marketplace. 

What to know

o The field has identified several types of embedded supports that are 

applicable to different technologies and use cases. See a list of categories 

and types of supports identified thus far in the Digital Support Features 

Matrix (page 23). 

o The list of digital support features is meant to provide inspiration. As you 

dive deeply into your own technology, users, and product design 

framework, you may identify new innovative features that can better serve 

all English learners, including those with disabilities, and other students. 

o Developing software with text embedded in the code or with text embedded

in images will make it very hard to provide many of the supports that are 

known to be effective for English learners. All user-facing text (including text 

associated with controls and images) should be in external resources that 

can be modified without modifying your code base. This will make it easier 

to add new languages to support a broader range of English learners. 

What to do

□ Provide visual supports. Visual support can take many forms, from 

providing simple images to sophisticated interactive visual displays.

Different levels of visual support can be used depending on student needs, 

and traditional text can be faded in as students become more fluent. Visual 

supports can also be used to aid students in expressing themselves, for 

instance, by allowing them to use visualizations in addition to, or instead of, 

using text.

□ Increase access to content through interactive representations. Interactive 

graphics can engage students in scientific experimentation and 
13

simulations. Dynamic mathematics environments can allow students to 

interact directly with mathematical objects without the need for textual 

mediation. Social studies timelines and graphic displays can provide 

insights without the need for extensive text interpretation. By tracking

student interaction with these representations, technology developers can 

better capture what students know and also provide students with a mode 

of communication other than traditional text.

□ Provide audio supports. Text-to-speech or “read-aloud” supports are

valuable because many English learners can comprehend the spoken word 

better than the written word. For many students, the combination of 

spoken and written words is particularly useful. In addition, technology can 

allow students to modify the speed at which speech plays, allowing for 

students to play text at a speed comfortable to them. Audio can also 

provide spoken translation or an audio clip of a sound that helps explain a 

vocabulary word or a phrase. Developers should be aware of the 

capabilities built into the hardware or operating system they are running. 

They should ensure that their technology can take advantage of these 

capabilities and/or be interoperable with supports enabled by assistive 

hardware a student might use. 

□ Provide written text support. Text support can include the ability for 

students to highlight, mark up, and annotate text. This can be used to 

scaffold understanding, as well as to allow students to demonstrate what

they know. 

□ Expand the languages your product supports. While a wide variety of 

materials is available in Spanish, English learners come from many 

language backgrounds other than Spanish and can benefit from supports 

in their home language. For example, Arabic, Chinese, and Vietnamese are 

the next most common language backgrounds of English learners in public 

schools in the United States. The major English learner groups can be very 

different within an individual state or school district, so developers should 

determine the language backgrounds of English learners in their target 

schools and districts. Supporting languages beyond Spanish can open the 

marketplace to new schools and districts. Teachers and students can 

benefit from the broader range of supports for classroom instruction, and 

students may be able to receive additional support at home. 

□ Allow students of all reading levels access to grade-level content.

Educational technology can provide simpler text in reading passages and 

introduce grade-level vocabulary just-in-time and in a way that relates to 

the specific content and context of the passages. This can provide English 
14

learners who are not reading at grade level access to grade-level social 

studies, science, or math content. 

□ Allow students multiple modes of expression. To communicate in the 

different content areas, students must not only experience language 

generated by others but also have opportunities to produce language. The 

ability for students to record and play back their voices, possibly with 

guidance on how they could improve their language or pronunciation, is a 

common teacher request. Recording and playing back the sound gives 

English learners opportunities to practice and listen to their own speaking 

while being supported in a nonjudgmental manner. 

□ Provide support for collaboration. Providing opportunities for joint student 

work and discussion is an increasingly important part of academic content 

standards. For English learners, peer interactions also are opportunities to 

use language in meaningful ways and to make gains in English language 

proficiency. Teachers are looking to educational technology to provide 

supports for student-student and student-teacher collaboration. 

□ Ensure that all supports are also accessible to and usable by students with 

disabilities. Also, keep in mind that your supports should be interoperable 

with any assistive technology that students with disabilities may be using. 

What to ask

o How is my product used, and what supports can enhance that use for 

English learners? 

o Are there supports listed in the Digital Support Features Matrix that I can 

directly apply to my product?

o Have I considered the need for general accessibility features in the design 

of the product?

o How can I go beyond the digital support features listed in this toolkit when 

creating supports for English learners? 

Resources 

o For a matrix that identifies an initial set of categories and types of support 

features, see the Digital Support Features Matrix (page 23).
15

PRINCIPLE 4

Communicate with educators to 

increase product adoption to support 

the instruction of English learners

Developers should communicate how the use of their 

technology can have a positive impact on instruction, how the 

features found in their educational technology are beneficial to

the instruction of English learners, how the educational 

technology is based on research, and what appropriate 

implementation looks like.

What to know

o When determining what educational technology to use, many educators 

look for independent evidence of effectiveness, as well as an indication 

that specific features are based on the research literature. 

o Educators typically find recommendations for technology use from a wide 

variety of sources, and they oftentimes value the opinions of other 

educators in making decisions about educational technology. 

o Districts use a variety of ways to make decisions about purchases of 

educational technology, and some may have funding sources dedicated to

purchasing resources primarily for use by English learners. 

o Many teachers are too busy to fully analyze all the software they use, and 

so they often don’t know what support features are available in their 

technology resources. They may occasionally ask for a feature to support 

their English learners that is already present in a resource (a clear 

indication that you are not appropriately communicating your feature set to 

your customers). 

o While educators want to monitor individual student progress, they also 

have privacy concerns and want a better understanding of how student 

information is being protected. 
16

What to do

□ Communicate the evidence base for your technology. If evidence for the 

effectiveness of your technology exists, make it clear to educators and 

administrators. If it does not exist, consider options for generating such 

evidence, such as partnering with school districts, a university, or an 

independent research organization. 

□ Ensure that you understand and support the district review and purchasing 

process. Districts have different purchasing requirements, and some have 

funding sources specifically for technology or for resources for English 

learners or students with disabilities. Investigate the different sources that 

schools and districts can use to purchase your resources, understand the 

approval process, and make it as easy as possible for educators to prepare 

required documentation. 

□ Listen to what educators are saying. Talk directly to a sample of educators, 

and look for product reviews written by educators. Authentic, honest input 

is invaluable in the product development and improvement process. 

□ Review current or previous district requests for proposals. Districts, 

especially large districts, often make clear what their current English 

language support requirements are in formal requests for proposals (RFPs). 

Even if you are not responding to a district RFP, reviewing a set of recent 

RFPs can provide insight into current district expectations and terminology.

□ Ensure that educators and students can readily find and use your 

embedded support features. If your product’s feature set is not easily 

discoverable or easy to use, educators may turn to alternative products 

whose features are more obvious and accessible. User tests with educators 

can provide information about how they find and describe your features. 

□ Make your embedded support features publicly known. Ensure that your 

website and other materials clearly describe the accessibility and support

features you’ve included in your product, and inform your sales and 

marketing team of these support features. Administrators and teachers will 

look for these when considering what technology to use. 

□ Ensure that your product adequately protects student data. Review your 

product’s operation to make sure that you only collect data that are 

required to achieve the sought-after benefits, and that there are strong 

protections in place for these data. The Future of Privacy Forum and the 

Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) have introduced a 

student privacy pledge that is a good starting place for thinking about 
17

student privacy. The U.S. Department of Education has a website

describing best practices for protecting student privacy, has a site that 

includes confidentiality provisions for children with disabilities under the 

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and has created the 

Privacy Technical Assistance Center (PTAC). 

What to ask

o Does my product information clearly communicate the evidence that 

demonstrates its effectiveness with particular groups of students and 

particularly English learners? 

o Do I know the purchasing requirements and processes of my target 

customers? Is there publicly available information, such as RFPs, that I can 

review to gain insight into current purchasing requirements? 

o Are there common sets of feature descriptions that I (and other developers 

or publishers) can provide to educators to simplify the district review 

processes for them? Before naming a feature or type of support, have I 

looked at other products to determine if there is already a name that is 

commonly in use? 

o How can I work with others in the field, such as education technology 

associations, to provide a common language for the embedded supports 

provided in products? Could we communicate these more clearly with 

educators and other stakeholders that are looking to support English 

learners? 

o Do I provide clear and simple explanations of the student data the product 

collects, and of how these data are protected? 

o If my product is collecting student data, is the student data privacy policy 

clear and easy to find? Are there ways my product marketing and feature 

design can help educators and districts understand the benefits they gain 

from these data being collected? 

 
18

PRINCIPLE 5

Offer instruction-focused professional 

development 

Teachers reported that vendor-provided professional 

development often did not meet their needs. Existing 

professional development often focuses on how to use 

technology features, but many teachers want to know how the 

features and content can improve their classroom instruction in 

meeting the needs of their English learners. 

What to know

o Many technology providers have a training model in which they train 

teachers how to use product features. However, teachers want to use 

educational technology to improve their classroom practice, and they do 

not want a “how to” guide that only describes product features. 

o To truly improve teacher practice, ongoing professional development is 

required. However, teachers have limited time and budget, and so they may 

be looking for non-traditional forms of professional development. These 

may include embedded video clips showing classroom examples of 

effective technology use to support English learners, short online modules,

or online communities where they can share their successes and 

difficulties. 

What to do

□ Gather teacher input on your professional development and training.

Teachers are the best judge of the usefulness of professional development 

sessions. 

□ Have teachers help design and deliver your professional development 

whenever possible. Teachers find professional development sessions run 

by educators to be most effective, especially when the sessions focus on 

ways that technology can improve their practice. 
19

□ Have varied forms of professional development materials available, 

including embedded professional development. Teachers are looking for 

video and other embedded resources to give them a better understanding 

of how classroom use of the technology can support their English learners. 

□ Provide opportunities for teachers to learn from each other. Teachers want 

to learn from other teachers, so consider structuring community forums or 

other collaborative spaces that enable teachers to share successes and 

difficulties with one another.

What to ask

o Once teachers have completed our professional development courses, can 

they immediately apply what they have learned to their classroom 

instruction? 

o Does the professional development associated with my product make clear 

the improvement in instruction for English learners that will come from its 

use? 

o Do I provide follow-up professional development that allows teachers to 

come back and ask questions about their classroom experiences in using 

my technology with English learners?
20

Learn About the Study 

The National Study of English Learners and Digital Learning Resources is a national 

descriptive study conducted in the 2016–17 school year by the U.S. Department of 

Education, Policy and Program Studies Service, on behalf of the Office of English 

Language Acquisition and the Office of Educational Technology under contract 

number ED-PEP-11-O-0088/TO27. The study included a nationally representative 

survey of districts, a survey of teachers, and six case studies, and meetings with 

experts to examine what digital learning resources are used in instructing English 

learners and how they are used. The study provided findings that describe the use of 

digital learning resources in instructing English learners in grades K–12 in U.S. 

public schools. 

The study provided descriptive data to identify current uses of digital learning 

resources, needs for additional information and/or supports in their uses, 

professional development on use of technology in instructing English learners, and 

areas in which educators wished to see improvements in the digital learning 

resources available to them for instructing English learners. 

The full study report will be posted to the Department’s website at: 

http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html.
21

Disclaimer

Examples Are Not Endorsements 

This document contains examples and resource materials that are provided for the 

user’s convenience. The inclusion of any material is not intended to reflect its 

importance, nor is it intended to endorse any views expressed, or products or 

services offered. These materials may contain the views and recommendations of 

various subject matter experts as well as hypertext links, contact addresses, and 

websites to information created and maintained by other public and private 

organizations. The opinions expressed in any of these materials do not necessarily 

reflect the positions or policies of the U.S. Department of Education. The 

U.S. Department of Education does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, 

timeliness, or completeness of any outside information included in these materials. 

Mentions of specific programs or products in these examples are designed to 

provide clearer understanding and are not meant as endorsements.
22

MATRIX 1: Digital Learning Resources 

The term Digital Learning Resources (DLRs) refers to digital resources such as applications (apps), software, programs, or websites that engage students in learning activities and 

support students’ learning goals. There are three categories of DLRs: digital academic content tools, digital productivity tools, and digital communication tools. DLRs as defined 

here do not include the hardware or infrastructure needed to use the digital resources.

DLR Category Definition Category Types and Examples

Digital

Academic

Content

Tools

Software, applications 

(apps), programs, or 

websites that offer 

academic content 

resources and/or engage 

students in activities to 

learn academic content or 

skills, including, but not 

limited to, language and 

literacy content or skills.

Designed 

learning activities

•Interactive tutorials or lessons (adaptive and other) that guide students in learning and demonstrating new content or skills,

such as an interactive lesson on the life cycle of a butterfly or a math tutorial on fractions. 

•Practice and assessment tools that provide activities to review concepts and skills, such as a math app that provides multiple 

opportunities to practice addition skills.

•Dynamic modeling or simulation tools, such as a physics simulation that lets students manipulate virtual equipment, change 

parameters, and see the results.

•Virtual worlds that immerse a student in a fully interactive environment, such as one that allows a student to roam in a period of 

past history or explore a desert environment.

References/

resources

•Dictionaries, encyclopedias, e-books, topic blogs, and/or topic-focused websites that serve as information resources, such as an 

online encyclopedia that offers students pictures, facts, and videos about mammals or a digital dictionary. 

•Visual and auditory topic-related resources such as a YouTube video on earthquakes and plate tectonics. 

Language resource 

tools

•Translation tools that assist students by providing a translation to another language. 

•Articulation tools that assist a student to accurate production of a language, such as by showing images of how a sound should 

be produced and/or by letting a student record and listen to his/her own voice to compare with the model. 

Digital

Productivity

Tools

Software, applications 

(apps), programs, or 

websites that students use 

to plan, document, 

organize, and analyze 

content. They do not 

contain academic content. 

Presentation tools •Presentation and publication tools that allow students to demonstrate what they have learned about a topic or to publish a 

digital story about a memorable day. These may include music, images, and/or video.

Word processing tools •Word or text processing tools that enable students to create, edit, and print documents such as in creating a newspaper based 

on topics from history class or reporting on a field trip.

Information 

analysis tools

•Spreadsheet and data analysis tools that allow students to organize and analyze information, such as tracking local rainfall over 

time or analyzing and summarizing factors that led to the migration from the American Dust Bowl to the West in the 1930s. 

Information 

organization tools

•Concept-mapping tools that let students visually represent relationships among sets of information, such as creating a mindmap 

of the American Revolution or a concept map for the causes of the Civil War. 

•Story templates that assist students to communicate a narrative using text and/or images, as in retelling a story they have heard.

Digital 

Communication 

Tools

Software, applications 

(apps), programs, or 

websites that students use 

to communicate, 

collaborate, network, or 

present information. They 

do not contain academic 

content.

Asynchronous/ 

synchronous

text communications

•Discussion boards or forums that provide platforms for students to post reactions and/or comments and share perspectives, 

such as in providing analyses of a novel they have read and sharing feedback on their peers’ analyses. 

•Emails, text messaging, chats, for example, using a chat function to share peer feedback on a report.

Reflection 

tools

•Blogs or student journals that allow students opportunities to share and/or reflect on their learning experiences, such as a 

student who uses a journal entry to reflect on her understanding of particular math concepts.

Videoconferencing/ 

meeting tools

•Videoconferencing or meeting tools that provide a remote means of seeing and speaking with others in real time, such as in 

enabling a science class to see and talk with NASA experts, or allowing students in a Spanish dual-language class to see and share 

a geography game with Spanish-speaking peers in Mexico.

Project collaboration 

tools

•Document or project-sharing tools that provide an online platform where students can work on products together, as in jointly 

editing a shared book report.

Multiple individual DLRs can be combined in an Integrated DLR Set

Integrated

DLR 

Sets

A structured combination of individual 

DLRs to provide a complete core or 

supplemental curriculum. Often, DLR 

sets are licensed as a package by a 

school district.

Core Curriculum Integrated DLR Set For example, a math program for grades 6–8 that combines visual lessons with embedded 

assessments, productivity tools, and flexible class management tools into one package. 

Supplemental Integrated DLR Set For example, a math intervention for at-risk students in grades 6–12 that provides tutorials, 

practice activities, and progress monitoring tools to inform instruction. 

Note: This summary matrix was adapted from Zehler, Annette M., Yilmazel-Sahin, Yesim, Massoud, Lindsey, Moore, Sarah C., Yin, Chengbin, and Kramer, Kat. (2012, April). Technology-based resources in instruction of 

English learner students. Poster presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Vancouver, British Columbia. 

Source: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, Policy and Program Studies Service. (2018). National Study of English Learners and Digital Learning Resources. Washington, DC: 

Author.
23

MATRIX 2: Digital Support Features 

Digital Support Features are specific embedded features in digital learning resources (DLRs) that assist students in understanding or communicating the content and/or activities 

provided in the DLR. This is a preliminary list to prompt further discussion among developers and educators.

Support Feature 

Category Definition Category Examples

Visual

Support 

Features

Provide visual images or other 

visual supports to assist a 

student in understanding 

and/or communicating a 

concept or idea.

Visual definition Links to a video or image(s) providing a visual definition of a concept or word. 

Interactive visual features Manipulable visual representation of a concept, such as a graphing calculator feature integrated into a DLR, providing 

representations of concepts based upon information that a student enters.

Closed captioning Text shown on the video screen provides print as well as audio that is useful for English learners still developing their 

ability to understand spoken English. 

Auditory

Support 

Features 

Provide speech or other use of 

sound to assist a student in 

understanding and/or 

communicating a concept or 

idea. 

Auditory definition Allows students to click on a word to hear a definition of a concept or word. 

Text-to-speech for text

selection

Reads aloud text such as a selection on academic content, a story, directions for a lab experiment, or math questions; 

might include options to play, pause, adjust the volume, and/or control the speed at which the text is read. The language 

used may be English or another language, depending on the materials used. 

Text-to-speech for

highlighted word Allows readers to hear an individual word or phrase. 

Record and replay voice 

Enables students to record their voice; replay it so that they can hear their own voice, perhaps make adjustments to 

and/or practice pronunciation, practice their part in a presentation, or save for sharing with others.

Translation 

Support

Features

Provide embedded functions to 

translate from one language to 

the other, in either speech or 

print, and for either a word or 

limited text. 

Spoken word translation Enables a student to hear a spoken translation in his/her home language of an unfamiliar English word.

Printed word translation Enables a student to view a written translation in his/her home language of an unfamiliar English word.

Spoken text translation Enables a student to hear spoken statements in one language as spoken in another language. 

Printed text translation Enables a student to view a section of text in one language as written in another language. 

Collaboration 

Support 

Features

Embedded functions that 

students use to communicate, 

collaborate, work, or share 

information about academic 

content. 

Document sharing Allows multiple students to share a digital document and use annotation tools to add notes or comments. 

Collaboration based on 

proficiency level 

Allows students to collaborate with peers according to their proficiency levels (e.g., peers at the same Lexile reading 

comprehension level).

Note: This matrix is a preliminary summary of supports created for the toolkits based on insights gained through the NSELD research.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, Policy and Program Studies Service. (2018). National Study of English Learners and Digital Learning Resources. Washington, DC: 

Author.