Smithsonian Office of Educational Technology

The Smithsonian established a Smithsonian Office of Education in 1976 to serve public education by bringing Smithsonian collections and expertise into the nation's classrooms. It has published educational materials for more than 40 years and provided one access point to Smithsonian educational resources. In June of 2021, the current version of the Office of Education, the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access, transformed to become the Smithsonian Office of Educational Technology (OET), established to lead PreK–12 digital education strategy for the Smithsonian.

To understand the needs of teachers, students, and museum educators, the Smithsonian spent more than a decade in active experimentation and research, culminating in the launch of this new online platform—the Smithsonian Learning Lab. Since its launch in 2016, museum and classroom educators have used the Lab's tools to create tens of thousands of new examples—ranging from experiments to models—for using Smithsonian resources for learning.

The challenge now facing the Smithsonian is to connect digital museum resources with deeper learning, to offer the best outcomes for students, and to ensure that the Smithsonian is recognized as a trusted and preferred source for digital education content and curriculum development. OET acknowledges the importance of its role as a catalyst for deeper learning and its responsibility to provide accessible digital museum resources for curriculum development.

In pursuit of those ends, the mission of the Smithsonian Office of Educational Technology is to deepen, enrich, and personalize learning by encouraging and supporting the creative use of museum resources through research and collaboration with education partners.