Update 5/8/2014: The original article suggested that Amplify’s vocabulary usage features were specific to the company’s tablet. This has been updated to note that these features are a part of Amplify’s ELA Digital Curriculum.  There were some really good sessions during day three of TechCrunch Disrupt New York. However, the session entitled “Hacking the Classroom,” really stood out. The session featured Joel Klein, the CEO of Amplify, and Max Ventilla, the Founder and CEO of AltSchool. As the education industry stands today, there are tons of barriers to innovations. Perhaps the largest barrier is the fact that public schools are run and funded by governments – federal, state, and local. Governments are inherently inefficient. Therefore, to get any sort of real changes implemented takes time. Further, Ventilla and Klein argued that many schools are missing the bigger picture. There is this belief, within the education sector, that more technology equates to better teaching, and better students. This is missing the point, argued Klein. “There is nothing inherently good or bad about technology, its agnostic…If it [innovation in education] remains about gadgets, nothing will change.” It takes a broader, more holistic approach to enact change. Ventilla echoed a lot of Klein’s points about technology. Technology is not a panacea, Ventilla argued, an iPad for every student doesn’t solve problems alone. However, adding technology to teachers’ arsenals can be instrumental. The key is finding a balance, and optimizing the technology for learning and teaching. To this end, Klein brought up Amplify’s new tablet. Though this seems like a shameless plug, the tablet serves as a great example of what is possible when technology is created specifically for teaching and learning. Klein also pointed an incredibly successful feature within Amplify’s ELA digital curriculum. The ELA digital curriculum software has built in functionality that allows students to touch a word they don’t know and receive the definition. Further, when clicking on a word, it is added to the students vocabulary folder. Even further, the ELA software rewards the students for using these vocabulary words in composition assignments. Beyond student-facing features, the Amplify Tablet provides teachers with a robust analytics platform. Beyond basic engagement and usage stats, the analytics allows teachers to measure and track how effective their feedback is to the students. Personalization and customization, according to both panelists, are also key components to hacking the classroom. Understanding students and offering each student a personalized curriculum greatly improves the learning process. This is a major problem for the education sector. The key is to keep students engaged. If one student is was ahead, in terms of curriculum comprehension, it is difficult to keep him or her engaged. On the other side of that equation, if a student is far behind, it is detrimental to the class as a whole to go back and re-cover topics. Innovating the education sector takes a broad approach. Technology on its own will not bring about improvements. Rather, technology should be viewed as a tool to help teachers. The most important technology, Ventilla argued, does not diminish the role of teachers, but increases it.