Five Tech Tips for the New Year: Kickstart 2025 with these simple tech tips

The start of a new year with a fresh slate of blank calendar pages is a natural time to consider making changes in your life. Common themes are focusing on improving our health or simplifying some aspect of our life. Consider using the beginning of 2025 as an opportunity to simplify and secure your digital life. Below are a few suggestions for tuning up your tech in the new year.

Update your passwords

If you’ve been using the same password for a while, it’s time to change it up. Your passwords should be unique, hard to guess, at least eight characters long, and should include a blend of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and special characters. Employ a password manager to help generate and store your secure passwords. For extra security, consider enabling multi-factor authentication for any particularly sensitive accounts.

Declutter email

If your email inbox is overflowing, you’re not alone. According to Venngage, the average adult receives 121 emails a day. This number could be considerably higher for educators.

Taking some time to purge your old emails can be satisfying. Depending on your schedule and personal preference, you can choose to tackle your inbox in large chunks of time or just do a little bit every day. Some people find it easier to sort their inbox by sender when deleting emails, rather than by the date the emails were received.

As you’re cleaning out your inbox, you might also consider unsubscribing to any email lists you’re no longer interested in so that your inbox stays manageable.

Clear out old apps

Take a few minutes to sort through the apps you have on your devices. Chances are that you’ll find apps you no longer use collecting digital dust. Deleting those unused apps frees up storage while also cutting down on visual clutter.

Create a "maybe" folder

If decision-making slows down your tech clean-up process, consider creating a "maybe" folder for apps and documents you don’t use regularly but aren’t quite ready to delete. Set a calendar alert to remind you to go through your maybe file again in the spring.

Backup your data

Have you backed up your data lately? It’s easy to overlook this crucial part of technology management, but anyone who’s ever lost an important file or drive can tell you how important this step is. The 3-2-1 backup process is often hailed as a best-practice in making sure your data can survive anything from a severe weather event to a ransomware attack. This process suggests you:

• Make three copies of your data

• Store copies of your data on two different devices

• Store at least one copy of your data offsite, for instance on the cloud

Starting the new year off by taking these small steps to simplify and protect your tech might not be a flashy resolution, but it’s one that you’re likely to reap the benefits of on a daily basis. We’re wishing you a happy, simple and secure 2025!

The Worldview: How US Academic Technology Compares

One of the biggest international cross-section of comparative tests is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures reading ability, math and science literacy and other key skills among 15-year-olds throughout the world.

The test is taken every three years, the last of which was 2015. In it, the U.S. landed right in the middle, #38 out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science.

Given the push for more technology in the schools over the last decade, these scores can appear disheartening; school budgets have been increased to incorporate new, better, and more computers, platforms, accessibility, and resources. While the scores are deflating, it may not be an indication of a wasted effort; it may simply be too soon to tell.

Consider the following statistics gathered by StatisticBrain in 2015:

• 98% of schools that have one or more computers in the classroom

• 3% of schools that have high-speed internet

• 7% of schools have laptops available

• 81% of teachers think tablets can enrich classroom learning.

• 64% of high school seniors say a tablet helps study more efficiently

This doesn’t reflect one-to-one initiatives, which, on a grand scale are relatively low; students are more likely to share devices in a classroom than to have one at every desk. It’s one thing to compare the United States to China or India or Japan with math and science scores alone; quite another to understand the significance of the disparities in access, funding, and challenges the United States must address on a daily basis.

While there are hundreds of technological tools for available to increase the breadth and scope of learning, we are only just beginning to harness the information that will enable teachers to make more of an impact on their students with customized lesson plans. The important thing is to get the hardware and framework in place so that the data can start speaking for itself.

Access to technology will have a huge impact on how students in America engage and compete with the rest of the planet for jobs and opportunities. The sooner and more completely we use technology tools both in teaching and in learning, the bigger the difference we can make in how students understand what they are being taught, and how well they test on the material.

While developing countries are gaining on the West in terms of cell phone and smartphone usage, they, like the rest of us, have a ways to go in incorporating all of its possibilities into our educational experience.

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