It's Not Just About Ideas

Harnessing Online Technology and an Innovation Plan to Help Students Harness the Information Gap

Introduction

In today’s world the internet is a vast place. There are many inaccurate or unreliable websites providing false misleading information to students which cause frustration and confusion. In order to equip our students with the right information, we need to have a website or an online platform where they can easily access the resources they need. We can accomplish that through our online technology that has been given to us. By teaching students how to check online sources, and by providing access to reliable digital tools, we can ensure they are better prepared for higher education and their future. Today’s students have grown up with technology and that could be the key to unlocking their full potential when it comes to learning. 

This article will explore how we can use existing online technology such as AI and the internet, to help our students gain the right knowledge they must know for their future education. It will describe how we can help our students apply for colleges and universities using the correct information to help them succeed in their future and it will explain about an Innovation Plan that could potentially help students in the future.

I plan on putting everything that I have researched into this article so I can give the readers a better understanding of online technology and how we can utilize it for our students successfully. This information in this article, can benefit and help others by teaching them how they can find accurate and reliable sources and why it is important and necessary for future education. Some lessons I hope to pass along are how technology can be utilized to provide students with accurate and reliable information on colleges and some strategies on utilizing technology to implement into classrooms.

An Innovation Plan

Sometimes just talking about how we can provide our students with reliable information is not enough. I am creating an Innovation Plan (Lopez, 2024) because students need a plan that is geared towards providing them with accurate and reliable information when applying for colleges. Students and counselors will both have free access to this platform with some courses that will have fees.

 When I first started interacting with college students, I realized that many of them were stepping into a completely new world—full of opportunities, but also filled with uncertainty. I wanted to find a way to make their transition smoother, to not only guide them academically but to also give them tools that would help them feel confident and supported. That’s when I turned to technology as a bridge between where they were and where they aspired to go.

I began by creating an online platform where incoming students could access resources even before their first day of class.  Videos, lectures, online courses, resources and more will give them a chance to familiarize themselves with expectations and connect with peers. What used to feel overwhelming for many students suddenly became manageable—they weren’t walking into college alone, but with a digital community already in place.

On the online platform, I am using technology to create an environment that meets students where they are. Through live polls and interactive Q&A platforms, I plan on giving students the chance to ask questions anonymously, which will encourage honesty and participation from those who might have been too shy to ask questions. I hope to see students who were once hesitant suddenly engage, knowing they have a safe way to be heard.

I am also integrating multimedia tools into lessons, using videos, virtual simulations, and collaborative online documents. These will make learning more engaging but also give students practical, hands-on experience that builds their confidence. For incoming students, seeing real-world applications early on will remind them that their education isn’t just theoretical—it is preparing them for their future careers.

As I continue to develop my platform, I see how powerful technology will be transforming the experience for incoming college students. It breaks down barriers, gives them confidence, and creates a sense of belonging from the very beginning. For me, the greatest reward has been watching these students grow over the three years I have been in higher education—using technology not just as a tool, but as a foundation for learning, connecting, and succeeding in their new chapter of life. This online platform will take a couple more years to complete but once it is done I will be excited to share it with the world.

Utilizing online technology to teach

With AI and the internet universally available, there are many different ways we can teach our students how to access and find reliable information. Platforms such as Chat GPT can be dangerous because they pull from sources all over the internet and they have no accuracy filter, and they are known to hallucinate which means they

sometimes will make things up to answer a question. There are many different ways we as educators can help our students learn the correct forms of doing research. 

Google classroom is a great way for educators to utilize to create assignments and to provide resources for their students so they can learn about how to find reliable information. Kahoot is another platform that educators can utilize to teach their students about misinformation. Kahoot users can create their own quizzes for students which provides a fun way to learn and still includes essential information. 

One other platform that educators can use is Wakelet. It is an online platform that is used to curate online resources which offers endless possibilities. Teachers can find links, create portfolios and are able to tag websites and ideas for students to easily access. Even if some are not familiar with online technology, there are simple and easy ways to learn and utilize it for our students. Educators can always ask a colleague for help with learning about a platform or they can always do some research on the internet that helps them learn how to use these resources. There are also some online or in person trainings that educators can sign up for to learn more about the different types of AI technology and how to use it properly.

Why is reliable information necessary?

Providing students with accurate and reliable information is necessary because in the college world when students submit the wrong information or miss deadlines, they might not be admitted to the college of their choice. A lot of the time, students like to use Chat GPT to help them create an accurate outline for an essay or they use it to easily find information about different colleges. Using AI to find information is definitely easy and sometimes is reliable but most of the time, it does not provide accurate information from credible sources for students to utilize. As educators, teaching our students how to use AI properly and how to identify and validate the information that they have gathered is the right way to approach online technology. For example in Chat GPT, there is an option where the users requesting the help can see where the bot got their information from and the students can verify that the information they received is indeed reliable. Yes, it requires a little more work than they wanted, but it is necessary to provide students with accurate information. “Information Deficits Undermine College Access” by Siva Kumari (Kumari, 2024) states that “ Financial barriers aren’t the sole reason for persistent gaps in college access and completion for students from underinvested communities; significant information deficits also play a major role.” Students often assume they can just look anywhere on the internet or use AI to find information the easy way instead of doing a deep dive search into which information is accurate for their college admissions process. We, as educators, can minimize that problem by teaching our students how to accurately find and identify reliable and authoritative admissions information.

Final Statement

Overall, utilizing online technology to help our students find reliable and accurate information is necessary in this ever changing world. There are so many sites out there that provide misinformation or are just opinions on certain subjects and not fact. By providing our students with the right ways to prove that information is reliable and accurate through technology, we are setting them up for success when they decide to pursue higher education. We also are helping ourselves while teaching our students. Together with support, all of us can make a difference in a student’s life no matter how small.

Places I intend to publish:

• Inside Higher Ed: This is the main site that I tailored my article to for their submissions requirements and where I think that my article will make the most impact. Their submission requirements are in my outline. (Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs, 2019)
• Higher Ed Dive: This is another site that I am considering to publish my article in. It delivers accurate and reliable articles and keeps up to date about the current news cycles in higher education. (Higher Education News | Higher Ed Dive, n.d.)
• Edutopia: This is the third site that I am considering because it provides articles about K-12 education and mine is geared towards helping educators teach their students how to properly utilize online technology. (edutopia, 2019)

References:

• Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs. (2019). Inside Higher Ed | 

Higher Education News, Events and Jobs. https://www.insidehighered.com/

• Kumari, S. (2024). Information deficits undermine college access (opinion). Inside 

Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2024/07/22/information-deficits-undermine-college-access-opinion

• Lopez, F. (2024, May 3). My Innovation Plan. It’s Not Just about Ideas. 

My Innovation Plan

• Higher Education News | Higher Ed Dive. (n.d.). Www.highereddive.com. 

• edutopia. (2019). Edutopia. Edutopia.