Google for Education provides global reports and country-by-country data trends about the evolving classroom. Google collaborated with research partner, Canvas8, to conduct expert interviews, academic literature reviews and surveys. I have attached a link to the trends they found about Canada in the link below:
https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/canada_future_of_the_classroom_country_report.pdf
I think the resource is valuable for helping educators understand trends in their current country as well as juxtapose that with other places. Importantly, this action of compare and contrast could help ELL teachers make connections with new students that may have potentially been learning in different ways back in their home country.
I personally found the statistics were easy to read and appreciated how clearly they cited both the individuals and organizations that they obtained data from. Key quotations are interspersed throughout the text as nuggets of inspiration. Predictions and opinions help guide educators on potential future practices. The Global Edition of the report also provides insights across 8 emerging trends in education:
- Digital Responsibility
- Computational Thinking
- Collaborative Classrooms
- Innovating Pedagogy
- Life Skills & Workforce Preparation
- Student-led Learning
- Connecting Guardians & Schools
- Emerging Technologies
Future of the Classroom | Google for Education
Hi Jackson, thanks for sharing such a thorough and meaningful resource; I will definitely be making use of this for our group assignment on classrooms of the future! I have structured my review according to the suggested criteria below:
Q: how, and how much, is this Market Projection useful and valuable to the the broader community of educators, as well as learning technologies specialists and venturers?
A: First off, I deinitely think this is useful to K-12 educators, but less so to post-secondary institutions. The report focus mostly on how Candada is investing in its education system and what emerging trends are in technology prevelance and curriculum design. I think that understanding the prevelance of learning technologies in student homes is useful for technology specialists and venturers alike, as these families are true customers and the tech they buy is based on their user experience. However, changes in curriculum seem potentially less important to these parties, as obviously developing matching curriculum content is useful, but then we run into the consumer vs customer problem, where the student using the platform is more disconnected from the school district purchasing it.
Q: do you expect to seek out future versions of this report to help drive your own professional success, and also to recommend it to others in this regard?
A: I am a K-12 educator, so I definitely see a utility in regularly reviewing this report; it can help my cvolleagues and I to be aware of what changes we might need to make in our practice to be better prepared for teaching students in the future, and we can get insight as to what kinds of technologies we might be able to leverage to accomplish these goals.
Hi Jackson,
There are many attributes to appreciate in this resource. I liked the design in that it was easy to navigate and very concise. I found some of the other market projection sources to be overwhelming; and finding relevant reports difficult, or costly. I appreciated not having to create an account to access the information, or only being able to access a sample/trial report. The cite first directs visitors to a video overview, and then 8 emerging trends. This source facilitates both getting a world wide overview or drilling down to trends by country. Also, unlike some of the other market projection webpages this one is specifically related to education and tailored to educators. I believe future versions of this report will be available and useful, and I would recommend this source to fellow colleagues. The report focuses on what the predicted movements in educations are and what technologies will be utilized to aid in helping students and teachers become “future ready.”
I appreciate that Google has a report focused exclusively on Canadian education, as well as looking at the global picture. It would have been easy for Google to use the report to showcase how to use their apps to achieve the goals of the report. I feel that my job as a high school teacher is to prepare students to be productive citizens and successful in whatever they choose to do in the future. The report identifies emerging trends that are important for educators to consider. They can be used as a guide to transform our classrooms into learning spaces that prepare our learners for the world. Even though the report is recent, I am curious to see a revised report, particularly given the changes in education over the past couple of years.
I really enjoyed looking through the report that Jackson posted and I personally feel that this market projection (or a more up-to-date one) should be a required read for educations in elementary and secondary schools. I feel like this is incredibly valuable to the education community because it provides excellent details on where the system is heading and the importance of technology in education. I think the report’s strength is focusing on what parents expect and what industries need of the education system in relation to technology. From a ventures point-of-view, it shows that the demand for educational technologies will only increase in time as we shift to the classrooms of the future.
This report provides a strong argument for investing more into educational technologies, which I believe has happened since the report was published (along with the need for more educational technologies during the pandemic). I would be very interested in an updated version of this Google report now that we have gone through a long period of relying on technologies to work and learn.
I would highly recommend others to continue to look for new projections from Google in this regard. I took a look and had a bit of trouble finding the original report as Google made reports for many different countries to provide relevant data applicable to each region.
I appreciated looking through this report about emerging trends in the classroom. I found it easy to read and informative about what trends are being seen across the country. Having data that is specifically based on Canadian trends is helpful for educators and administrations when making decisions about next steps. Some of the information provided seems to focus heavily on Ontario and some changes have already been made since this report was released. Since the pandemic, a significant shift has been seen in classrooms about how technology is used and the connection between home and school through various LMS. I would be curious to see how the past three years with online learning becoming more prominent have changed the data seen in this report.
I agree with Kelby, this does seem to be very Ontario focused, but I suppose they thought it would be easier to compile data and information from the most populated province. Maybe Ontario provides a nice balance of metropolitan regions as well as rural ones. Had they focused on the territories for example, the information would have been very specific and would have focused on more complex elements such as socio-economic divides and challenges.
What stood out for me in the report was the emphasis put on school systems needing to be responsible for educating children on how to use technology responsibly. Under the section “Digital Responsibility” there are mentions of pros and cons of technology as well as this quote: “close to two-thirds of Canadian parents think their child benefits from digital technology, over 50% agree that the less time their child spends online, the better off they are.” This highlight a JOINT responsibility between parents and teachers as well as adding another challenging layer the the job description of the 21st Century educator.
Future versions of this report will be helpful as this edtech is constantly changing and as the report mentions “research suggest[s] that more than 25% of Canadian jobs will
be heavily disrupted by technology in the coming decade…” Society, not just the education system has to continue to forecast and predict shifts and changes.