The Ecosystem Knows The Trend

I browsed some of the trend reports, and focused my eyes on the “Ambient Insight – Global Learning Technology Market Taxonomy”. It gave me a very clear panorama of the Educational Technology. According to it and other resources, I drafted a small “ET ecosystem” map.  The biggest enlightenment it gave me is that “Learner != Customer”. That’s what I thought in the past!  Apparently there are a bunch of more players involved in this big game. I like the Ambient Insight’s taxonomy for “Customer”: Buyer (who opens their wallets), Teachers (or end-users who open the package) and Learners (who open their mind). This makes me understand that we should design the ET products on a 3-level paradigm: 1) “The Pedagogic Level”, to satisfy the Learner with engagement and fast way to goal; 2) “The Product/Software Level”, to satisfy the Teacher with simplicity, usability and flexibility to control; and 3) “The Operational Level”, to satisfy the Buyer with low price in launching &maintenance and with high accountability.

There are some interesting trends can be detected from the ET ecosystem map. The first is the blending of Customer and Supplier. Today we have more learners contribute as prosumers, and more teachers produce as developers & content curators. This trend changes the game rules by splitting wholesaled ET packages/services to retailed programs/virtual parcels; and urges the demand for non-professional tools, and open channel for easier distribution and revenue-sharing. Examples of this trend are Web2.0-based Learning, AppStore, etc.

Another trend can be seen on the vertical direction of the map, i.e. the convergence of Customer of learning and the Non-learning Customer. That means, learning is jumping out of the traditional scenarios, and integrating into our daily lives. We’ve seen the trend of BYOD, Big Data and DLEs as proofs. Accordingly, this vertical merging happens on the supplier side. Vendors and operators of Channel are seeking to widen their realms by providing services/products specified for education, e.g. Google Ed, Amazon and so on. This merging is only on infrastructure level at present, but no one can tell what’s the front edge they will stop, given the vast data resided in their clouding assets.

In my opinion, the essential power beneath these trends is just the simple law of any ecosystem:  to reduce the overall consumption of a life body meanwhile to increase its productivity as much as possible. This law can explain lots of trends we are faced. For example, the merging of learning and non-learning customers is on other facet just a reuse of the common infrastructure, that certainly saves the running cost of the ecosystem. It’s a value-adding process. ET ventures are expected to add values to any piece or link in the ecosystem, and they will get paid for the saving of consumption and the productive extra.

Besides the beautiful panorama I’ve learnt from the “Ambient Insight” report, I’d like to mention a little puzzle I found in it, that is when they emphasized the Mobile Learning as high as an “all roads leading to”, they excluded laptops and netbooks (with mobile capability) from their “handheld” taxonomy. Why is that? I don’t understand. I can’t see too many differences between a laptop and an iPad, except their keyboard are hard .vs. soft, and their Apps come from different channels. But as we noticed that channels are converging. So, when we talk about Mobile Learning, should we limit it as a process just to function when you stand or move, instead of that you can have time to sit down and pull out your laptop to learn with in hotels and coffee bars? I think that exclusion of laptops narrows the scope of the Mobile Learning and is unnecessary. I prefer to watch the road instead to watch the screen when I’m moving.

References:

1. Ambient Insight – Global Learning Technology Market Taxonomy

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