Paper Title
CROWDSOURCING AND EDUCATION: USING TECHNOLOGY FOR BRIDGING THE EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY GAP

Abstract
Abstract - As a result of COVID-19, we have witnessed an unprecedented two-year field test in the field of educational technology, involving hundreds of millions of students. Unfortunately, reactions around the world have ranged from “COVID-19 remote education was not a success, despite the use of technology” to “It was a complete disaster; why did governments pour billions into developing the technology?” In this article, we describe the gap between education and technology, analyze its causes, and propose new models for dealing with it. One of the problems is that creation of valid and appropriate content is not always appliable for small or under-resourced languages, like Hebrew, and requires applying novel techniques and approaches. One of the approaches can be usage of crowd sourcing for content creation and approval. We describe the design principles and requirements of a real-life innovative software which we have successfully used to bridge the gap: the Crowd sourced Edutainment Environment (CREDE). The system uses crowd sourcing for creation and approval of educational content. The finding about the collected data set and the willingness of the crowd to contribute are presented. CREDE has already been used to create educational applications. In this article we describe a CREDE platform for the early stages of learning to read in Hebrew. We conclude that it is possible to improve complex relationships between communication technologies (ICT) and education by using crowd sourcing and development crowd sourced autonomous educational environments. Keywords – Crowd Sourcing, Game-Based Learning, Design Of Educational Environment, Language Learning, Autonomous System