A Critique of Gartner’s Report
The Gartner Newsroom is an accurate and relevant report on emerging trends in e-learning that is specifically useful to educational administrators. In particular, the press release titled, “Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2012” is valuable for strategic planning in an administrative capacity, because I can refer to the document for emerging trends and incorporate those trends in my departmental strategic planning.
While this type of report is useful to me, an administrator, I’m not convinced that it would be equally useful to teachers and the broader educational community. I do believe that working in a collaborative environment (i.e. teachers and administrators working together to enhance education systems and practices), with the limited amount of time that teachers have these days, I don’t think it is efficient to expect teachers to be in the position of “predicting market trends”. Sure, it’s helpful for teachers to know where their industry and practice is headed, but I believe it is the educational administration that is responsible and expected to be on top of market trends in education.
Beyond teachers and administrators, this document is very useful for learning technology experts and entrepreneurs because it details the specifics of which devices and technologies are on the rise. This helps this group of individuals focus their attention on what’s on the rise, and therefore allows them to operate efficiently.
I was also attracted to this report because it was one of the most recent (2012) and because the layout was reader-friendly (common language), the layout made it easy to identify the “emerging trends” and because the site was comprehensive (linked to other resources for further information).
Because I am an educational administrator, I will refer back to this site, and will recommend the Gartner site to my administrator peers.
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Dennis Pratt 8:28 am on May 21, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Lisa;
Thank-you for your perspective from an administrator point of view. It is funny that you brought it up that teachers may not need to predict trends in ET as that is what I have sort of been asked to do.
As a technology teacher I have been asked to sit on our schools instructional leadership team where we will be the “visionaries” for the upcoming school year. I have never tried to be a visionary before and am a little bit nervous having to forsee or create trends in the school. I do like the model that our admin team has set up in that they ask for teacher input and have us involved in decision making. It has proven to be very effective, of course. The teachers really come together to develop great ideas.
Dennis
Allan 3:28 pm on May 28, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks Lisa for sharing this. I think it’s certainly debatable how relevant it is for instructors/teachers to be up to speed regarding this type of information. As a librarian who is immersed in emerging technologies, this type of report is immensely fascinating and important. I’ve noticed mobile technologies have been slowly appearing as an important trend in not only technology but also the educational sector.
Allan