The Gartner Report: A Crystal Ball?
As the new Director of Technology at Fraser Academy, I am in charge of creating and developing an equally new e-Learning program for our senior school. I selected the Gartner report on Strategic Technologies for 2012 because knowing where and what technologies are developing will enable my team and I to build a dynamic and flexible e-Learning program, which can embrace the developments and affordances of new technologies while still creating learning platform based on sound pedagogy.
The report was reasonably useful in that it provided an initial quantification of how they selected and defined Strategic technologies along with a brief note of the target population, thus enabling a reader to quickly surmise if the report was relevant to them. While the technologies are grouped into broad categories (Media Tablets, Mobile-Centric Applications, Internet of Things…) and generalized to reach a larger audience, the topics were still on task and there was enough details to be useful in terms of assessing the impact of the application or inclusion of a particular technology by an IT Leader (such as myself) or an organization (School, business, etc).
As well as providing diversity, their particular selection also includes various technologies which compliment and or add on to one another and thereby provide answers to follow-up questions about how a series of tools maybe used either individually or in tandem with other new technologies to create complete systems. I found this quite useful as we are going to be using iPads for all our senior students next year and need to know options for storage, context, User Interface interactions, and evaluations of how the technology is being used and where it is going. The report is not limited to only the positive assessments of the strategic technologies, but also identifies some of the potential risks and or drawbacks associated with these new ventures. Addressing not only the positive, but also the negative aspects of any technology or venture increases the value of a report to a consumer. Ultimately it is of course up to us, the buyers and consumers to do our due diligence and make sure that we have adequately evaluated any new technology.
Overall, I do look forward to reading further reports from Gartner and would recommend it as a resource to other Technologists. With a healthy grain of constructive evaluation of course.
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ping 12:13 pm on May 15, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Dave,
Can these “reports” accessible to anybody? I followed the link and found a press release, but links leading to reports came up with “register / purchase” prompt. Maybe I missed the entry?
karonw 9:55 pm on May 15, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Dave,
Great post! My workplace is also steered towards implementing iPads now as well, instead of having a person type up the meeting minutes we are beginning to use the app on the iPad that would transcribe the audio into text which saves a lot of our time as employees. It is amazing to see how tablets and iPads are playing such a role in our society in education, work, and our personal lives nowadays.
Karon
karonw 9:51 pm on May 15, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Ping,
Did you click on the link Dave hyperlinked in his post? I didn’t get the “register/purchase” prompt.
Maybe give it another try later?
Karon
ping 8:05 am on May 16, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Karon,
I entered the link, and saw the press release, there are “top 10 strategic technologies for 2012”, but I thought that was like a summary, and I expected more details. So I traced some links on the Gartner site, and found lots of reports titled “Cool ventures in XXX area”. When I tried to open them, I was redirected to the register and purchase page.
Ping
ping 8:46 am on May 16, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Sorry Dave and Karon,
I made a misunderstanding. When I saw Dave’s post, I thought he was just sharing something interesting for us to discuss. I didn’t realize this was his Week2 report. Sorry I hopped on the 2A instruction. I think I’d better sit down and finish my reading homework before talking more 🙂 Good post, Dave.
Ping
Dave Horn 5:32 pm on May 16, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Ping
Sorry for the confusion. I had just read and analyzed the summary reports but had not explored further. It does look as though you need to be a member if you want to get real in-depth data, but I didn’t realize that. I will be sure to be more thorough next time.
Dave
Sherman Lee 10:41 pm on May 16, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Dave,
Thanks for being the first one in 🙂 I was not quite certain what to do so I am just watching and learning as I go.
I am not certain as to the timeline that you have on your design and development piece, but I understand from my experience with such implementation that often deadlines drop quite quickly (I have never been a part of a team for formal education so I am not quite sure if your world is similar to mine). With that said, I do agree that the quick summary would help efficiently focus on topics of interest rather than spending seemingly endless hours on research (which I think is important but not exactly favourable when dragged on).
Just a question though, do you think you would supplement information on this website with further, more in-depth sources? I saw your conversation with Ping and I understand that there is a membership available for purchase. Would you make this purchase? Or would you seek out other resources?
Cheers,
Sherman
Dave Horn 11:23 pm on May 16, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Sherman
Our project is making decent progress, but a few deadlines have been missed, luckily they were part of an older plan. I liked that the report gave an initially summary of potential tools and there associated benefits and drawbacks. These in turn would serve as starting off points for further investigation and I wouldn’t just rely on one report or source for deciding on whether or not to pursue a venture. Even if a source is good, I believe it’s valuable to look from multiple angles (I think it’s the skeptical scientist in me).
I suspect that I’d look to follow the reports and updates for a bit prior to purchasing an account.
Denise 3:04 am on May 20, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
HI Dave,
I am fascinated by oyur move to iPads. Our CEO decided to bring them in last year for all staff, but with little real planning about how they would be integrated in. We have had lots of problems and they are mainly used for email and sometimes meetings. I use my laptop more than many use the iPad and with fewer tech hitches. Love Karon’s idea about audio transcribing – will have an explore.