Top 10 IT Issues- Opportunity Horizon
In the article, Top-Ten IT Issues the authors identified 10 Issues as follows:
Top-Ten IT Issues, 2011
- Funding IT
- Administrative/ERP/Information Systems
- Teaching and Learning with Technology
- Security
- Mobile Technologies
- Agility/Adaptability/Responsiveness
- Governance, Portfolio/Project Management
- Infrastructure/Cyberinfrastructure
- Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity
- Strategic Planning
and thanks to my colleague melissaayers the 2012 list:
Top-Ten IT Issues, 2012
- Updating IT professionals’ skills and roles to accommodate emerging technologies and changing IT management and service delivery models
- Supporting the trends toward IT consumerization and bring-your-own device
- Developing an institution-wide cloud strategy
- Improving the institution’s operational efficiency through information technology
- Integrating information technology into institutional decision-making
- Using analytics to support critical institutional outcomes
- Funding information technology strategically
- Transforming the institution’s business with information technology
- Supporting the research mission through high-performance computing, large data, and analytics
- Establishing and implementing IT governance throughout the institutions
This list serves as huge market research for the entrepreneur wanting to capitalize on the latest consumer demands of the educational environment. However, I think the ventures that will capitalize on this list, except # 3 teaching and learning with technology, will be short lived. I believe that the real capitalization in this market is not the technology itself but how it is being used. Most teachers still do not understand how to use the technology effectively. Content is still hard to research and find. Teachers still plan for hours. This will not be replaced with better technology infrastructure, but better teacher education and content or data mining (according to PLO’s). For the person or company looking to provide added value to this EDtech Marketplace it is the delivery of content and access to resources that are the biggest struggle for classroom teachers. I believe that this list serves valuable purpose, but not to those who are looking to exist in the market space for a long duration. It is more like a band- aid to deeper and more complex problems with the daily operations of a classroom.
The incorporation of technology seems to be an emphasis and a push in the last couple of years. I worked with schools who have spent a remarkable amount of money and resources trying to solve many of the problems on this list, yet when they solved these issues, the same problem with teacher education still seemed to be the biggest challenge.
Anyone else have any thoughts or disagree? Would love to hear some different perspectives.
Posted in: Week 02: The Edtech Marketplace
visramn 4:57 pm on September 16, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Shaun,
I agree with you 100 percent. This is so true. Buying a technology and bringing it into a school is useless if no one knows how to use it. I have seen this happen in all the schools I have worked in. Technology is bought because it seems ideal but either the technology is not used at all and it gathers dust or it is used incorrectly because teachers do not have the necessary training or do not know what to use the technology for. Many educators are open to using new technologies but they already have so much on their plates and they do not have the time to learn how to use these technologies to a degree that they can teach with them effectively.
There is a huge push in the school district I work in for more and more technology to be adopted and courses to be offered. This is great because it opens more doors for kids but it is also extremely costly and can be frustrating for teachers and schools.
Teacher training is where the investment needs to be made. One thing that the board I am working for has began doing and that I think is a valuable way to assess what technological investments should be made is a loan pool. The school board has purchased some technologies and is allowing schools to borrow sets of the technology to try out with their students. This way students and teachers can be exposed to a new technology and find out if investing in it would be a good idea.