Microsoft and Google are the dual faces of education in my school district; each student gets free accounts for either ecosystem, and a variety of educational apps are made freely available for educators and students to explore and express their learning. After reviewing Jackson’s post on Google for Education and emerging trends in the classroom (and a few dead-end searches of “educational technology market projects”), I was curious what their primary competition in my school district sees for the future, and I was pleasantly surprised to come across an equally compelling, albeit more comprehensive, resource, called “The class of 2030 and life-ready learning: The technology imperative”
I actually found the resource from a course Microsoft set up called “Leading the Schools of 2030” geared towards teachers that could be completed over an afternoon as part of their professional development, which overviews why the skills of the future are going to be profoundly different than those we might consider important today, and they give examples of how teachers can change their practice to develop these skills. What I found most interesting in the report pdf was the divergence between which skills students feel are important to learn and which skills teachers feel students need to learn. Though there are obvious overlaps between students and teachers, the most profound divergences were in literacy and critical thinking where teachers considered them to be essential skills while students did not and in creativity and digital media skills, which students felt were important but teachers did not.
I think these forecasts are obviously useful for educators looking to refine their practice and develop more soft skills that will prove to be important in the future as they are less susceptible to automation. I also think the Ed. Technologists and EVA’s could find utility in these forecasts for developing a wider variety of software that helps teach students these skills, however, the financial forecast is less clear, and for that reason, I don’t believe this forecast necessarily helps EVA’s to better connect or identify with the purchasers or customers.
I continue to point out in my posts that the Ed. Tech market isn’t broken, but structured in an unusual fashion where the consumer (student) is distinct from the customer as is this case here. I’m not sure on how to solve this divergence beyond affording more opportunities for the consumer to have an influence on these purchasing decisions, but the means to do so aren’t yet clear to me; if any of you find a forecast on how purchasing might change, let me know; I’d love to compare it to this one to see if they converge on similar conclusions, or vastly different ones!
Hi Brendan,
Thank you for the link to the Microsoft course. One of the main takeaways is the approach to learning; it is not about retention but rather building skills. It refers to the shift from the focus of knowing to the focus of doing. I agree that the consumer needs to have more influence on purchasing decisions. Institutions are very data-driven, and often that is how students influence. Institutions need to retain students and recognize the need to implement EdTech departments or similar. However, the problem lies with are they making the right decisions when purchasing learning technology. Unfortunately, the consumer (students) does not have much input. They do not consult students on what is needed to support their learning. Unfortunately, sometimes student data is not collected beforehand when making purchasing decisions. I believe some of the influence lies in the student data; however, the correct data needs to be collected to determine the consumer’s needs. I may have gone off on a tangent, but I enjoyed reading your post.
Thanks for the feedback Anna! It was refreshing to consider how this could actually be implemented at a post secondary level as I had only considered my k-12 perspective!