The Learning Coach –

Alright, time to come clean. Although I read most of the articles that had been provided to us it was really the Learning Coach that caught my eye with it’s title.

And that’s only because I thought that it was going to be an article about a new technology – Learning Coaches. Which in essence I consider myself to be as I provide online and f-f support for kids who are home schooled. That is not, however anywhere close to what this article is actually about and I really have to laugh at my short-sightedness.

It turns out it is actually an overview of technology trends and their potential for education in 2012. Of the eight that were mentioned, really only one was new too me – the online curator service. And that gave me a bit of pause. Am I the typical educator?

When I think about the question of how useful these technologies would be to the broader educational community I believe we really need to take a look at what defines community. There does appear to be growing divide in public schools between teachers who are willing/flexible/comfortable/confident with technology and those who are not. I have many colleagues that still consider overhead projectors to be adequate technology.  At the same time there is also a spectrum of teachers with good classroom strategies (from experience and seasoning) to those who struggle (usually but not always due to inexperience). I have witnessed new teachers trying to implement technology without a sound framework and appropriateness for it’s use into their lessons.

By my calculations that leaves probably less then 10 percent of the educational community that have enough experience and enough tech-savvy to be able to appropriately find use in their practice for these technologies. So how useful are these technologies – incredibly and undeniably useful, but only to about 10 percent of educators.

Counter arguments anyone?

And I’ve already signed up to eLearning Coach newsletter and included the link on my twitter feed. It’s a fabulous resource.

PC

Posted in: Week 02: The Edtech Marketplace