Value in Ed Tech Predictions?
ZDNet’s Top 10 Education Tech predictions for 2011 provides a brief look at some possible trends in the upcoming years. I believe this article provides more “food for thought” as opposed to a solid launching platform for venturers or organizations to base their purchasing decisions off of. The list compiled by Adam Garry, Dell’s manager of professional learning, and Christopher Dawson, a staff writer for ZdNet Education. This article is geared towards the broader community of educators, as well as parents. In particular, the trends/predictions are divided into two categories: pedagogical approaches and products.
The pedagogical approaches are provided by Adam Garry. He notes the following:
- 1:1 as a learning initiative
- personalized learning
- product-based assessments
- focus on conceptual learning
- evolving 1:1 – different accessing models
All of these ideas are fantastic to speak about, but the main question that remains is how to move forward on these in the current education climate. Garry does expand on each of these ideas and notes that Dell is piloting a platform (personalized learning platform) to aide in this manner. A lot of these concepts moves past the idea of just obtaining hardware and using “the expensive keyboards in our labs” effectively. Developing of key programs with assessment built into them, will be the main challenge. Most educators if not all I’m sure would agree they would love each one of these points, but the main question becomes, “how”?
The products are provided by Christopher Dawson. He notes the following:
- Tablets
- Thin clients
- Cloud Services (Google Apps, Office 365, Social learning platforms)
- RIP Kindle
- Long live E-textbooks
Dawson provides the product solutions to the pedagogical approaches given by Garry. In the list of suggestions he mentions that the advancements of each of these will drive prices down and in effect be more prevalent in classrooms. In particular, the tablets and thin clients, will be less of a purchasing costs on organizations. Cloud services and e-textbooks provide a new approach to a delivery model of the material to the students.
This article, shouldn’t be shocking, however, I do wonder how much of it is because we are well into the 2012 and approaching 2013 that it doesn’t seem this surprising. It’s important to note this article was written in late 2010. This report provides a general outlook of the education field from a journalist is current in Education Technology. While, I believe this article is more for interest, I would keep Christopher Dawson’s ZDNet RSS feed and Twitter account active to follow up with his latest.
2012 Ed Tech Predictions: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/top-5-ed-tech-predictions-for-2012/4761
— His 2012 predictions are quite interesting to examine as well!
Posted in: Week 02: The Edtech Marketplace
Mike Rae 8:56 pm on September 12, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Good synopsis Jonathan…when I read this of yours: ‘Most educators if not all I’m sure would agree they would love each one of these points, but the main question becomes, “how”?’, it reminded me that I was thinking the same thing while reading, but must have forgot to put it in my notes, as I left it out of my post. I thought that reading about a lot of these things might go as far as to frustrate educators, as now they see what is out there (or what is going to be out there), but they don’t have the ability to necessarily make it happen. Those decisions of instituting some of these trends are not at the ground level. I suspect a lot of teachers (I did), might feel more upset about their respective schools for not making more of the discussed initiatives.
Jonathan 8:41 pm on September 13, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Mike –
I just caught up with your post and couldn’t agree more on a lot of the comments you made, especially the one about the Dell’s involvement in the article and plugging their own product.
What comes to mind with regards to teachers not being the buyers or the the students for that matter is that we aren’t given much of a say. Quick story. I wanted to install Scratch (open source MIT – introduce simple programming in the form of Lego like blocks) onto our Mac Labs. I was encountered with a barrage of issues. Admin had to inquire with tech services. I was denied without a reason. On another day, I ran into the Tech Specialist that goes to schools to incorporate technology into classrooms, and she was more frustrated than me. She notes that on her own computer, she has to approve applications before they are installed on her computer. Her job is to assist teachers and blend curriculum with tech. She explained the process to me as somewhat of an application process for different computer apps (Macs and less so for iPads). Applications are submitted to a panel to review in the summer time. Some time (once a year) the panel meets to discuss viable apps. Once decisions are made they are final for the year.
What baffles me is that.. here at my school I want to incorporate 21st Century Learning and I am denied the opportunity. How frustrating is this? The tech specialist’s job is to incorporate tech, and she isn’t being allowed to do her job properly for fear that we may install buggy software. I’ve since found a way around this, but it’s frustrating and discouraging.
Okay maybe not that short 🙂
teacherben 11:42 pm on September 13, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Jonathan,
This doesn’t help with the bigger picture, but if you have a few USB sticks around, you can install Scratch to those. I just tried it and it works. You run the installer and drag the file to the USB instead of the Applications folder. Bit cheeky, but you do what you gotta do sometimes…
Jonathan 1:14 pm on September 15, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Ben —
I love the creative solutions that we have to come up with to get around the “red tape” (is this what it is?) Great solution, I went backwards and burned them onto a bunch of CDs. I like the USB idea though, so that the students can bring them home and save work on them, but at the time ADMIN wanted to keep costs a bit lower. I think it’s more possible now though.
The fact that we have to go to these lengths to do implement this vision of “21st Learning” is baffling and discouraging to other teachers that want to get into the technology game. Doing this stuff “should be easier” not harder. We shouldn’t be sneaking around like bandits just to provide our students with a positive learning experience.
Side note: I just received an iPad from my admin to test implementation into the classroom. I spent last night going perusing the “Approved Apps” that the district had given a check to. I felt like creating a folder called “Useless” and dumping many of them in there 🙂 I’m probably still huffing and puffing fumes from my denial of Scratch and an approval of an app on the iPad called “ChoiceMaker”. Bless the developers that created it but the app simply flickers a “YES” “NO” sign at you after you press the “Go” button. I should be clear this app isn’t completely useless but pedagogically speaking — this is more of a sound app than Scratch? Really? 🙂
Okay I’ll stop being such a grouch. I thought it was just amusing 🙂
Ranvir 6:05 pm on September 15, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I believe Dawson’s predictions are coming true to a large extent in terms of plummeting costs of text books and tablet devices. E-textbooks are gaining popularity with major publishers providing ePub version of textbooks available that can be viewed in popular eReader software. Also, cost of ebooks is generally less than conventional books. Moreover, many publishers are allowing students to rent books at a discounted price for a certain duration rather than buy every book they need. Finally, more reasonably priced tablets are available today such as Google Nexus and Kindle Fire that are under $200 price tag and enable an average student to have them in their backpack.