Dawson’s Top 10 Ed Tech Predictions

It seems easy to look back in time and see how educational technology was implemented into our schools and our personal lives. Making predictions for the future year may not be just that easy. Dawson (2010), a teacher and writer, predicted five ideas that would give students choice in education during the year of 2011. He included Adam Garry’s (Dell’s Manager of global professional learning) top five predictions as well. As an educator I look to others for upcoming trends and then choose which of them are worth following and which of them to leave alone. I don’t consider myself to be on the cutting edge of technology as I do not know what companies are developing and getting ready to produce. I tend to leave those decisions to others. As some technology ventures succeed and others fail, I feel hesitant to create new technology for lack of knowledge and maybe even vision. In the education world, I think we tend to ride waves more than create them. It is important, however, to know what is coming around the bend and be able to direct how the new technology is used in classrooms.

The information in trend prediction is valuable to administrators and planning departments for future implantation and framework setup. For example, our school has decided to buy two class sets of iPads to use in the upcoming school year. Some teachers already have goals and objectives in mind of how to use the iPads effectively, while others will wait to see what is being done in other classrooms before they begin using them. We often look to others who have created the devices or have used them in the past to plan our use for them. Is this the right way to look at technology use and implementation? I have to admit that I am still on the fence about it. I think we do need to work closely with the technology companies to identify student and teacher needs and then create something that fills those needs.

Dawson’s predictions, in my mind, were quite accurate as he predicted the increased use of cloud computing, tablets in classrooms, and e-textbooks. He also suggested the e-reader becomes less popular with users, which I think he was right about, but just early in his prediction. Dell’s Adam Garry predicted some important ideological changes as well. He thought teachers would move towards not just getting kids access to technology but effectively using it to teach, as well as personalized learning replacing differentiated instruction. He also focused on the improvement of learning platforms and managing knowledge through increased focus on conceptual learning. I would refer to Dawson’s blog again to see what is trending in educational technology and then be prepared to evaluate those predictions and see them unfold as the year moves on.

Reference:
Dawson, C. (2010) Top 10 ed tech predictions for 2011. ZDNet Education.

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