Gartner Inc. provides a glimpse into the future. Their report focuses on the next top 10 technologies that have either grown into game changing technology or have the potential to grow into one.
This review will focus on the technologies I feel will have the largest impact education. I have merged some of the top 10 technologies, as I feel they are directly related.
Change: Microsoft is being attacked on two fronts; mobile devices are becoming more popular than PCs and Microsoft only has 20% of the mobile market.
Impact on Education: Every school that has the adequate budget currently has either an Apple computer or PC located in classrooms or libraries. With a shift towards mobile devices will the need for a full labs still be needed? A school that advocated BYOT (Bring your own technology) could potential reduce its need for dedicated computer labs. Apps like Socrative are making mobile devices a viable educational tool.
Change: The storage of information and to a certain degree the running of apps is moving from the traditional PC to the cloud. People are now expecting access to their information 24/7 regardless of their location (of course Internet needed)
Impact on Education: Traditionally students have been limited to their access to school material and learning programs to a physical building. As the capability of clouds services increases, the opportunity to move educational resources to the cloud will only increase.
In addition, as cloud services get more efficient, the memory capabilities of PCs or handhelds will become less relevant, whereas the need for larger Internet bandwidth will increase. Schools will potentially move away from investing in labs and servers and move towards providing larger Internet bandwidth.
Future Reports:
Gartner Inc. delivers a concise and simple list of potential future technologies. This is an invaluable resource to keep on top of new emerging technologies that could potentially affect education.
Gartner is one of the go-to organizations when it comes to trend detection and analysis.
BYOT is becoming a big challenge on post-secondary campuses, but it is hard to fight the reality of students wanting services delivered in ways that meet their needs. In higher education, students are perhaps more like the actual customers than in K-12 situations – at least so far.
Just spoke to a student here in Boston attending Harvard about her team’s use of Socrative. She gave it two thumbs up!
To the point of evolving technological solutions: I agree that the cloud is already having a huge impact on emerging trends. However, I wonder to what extent the matter of security will outweigh considerations of cost and convenience, particularly for corporate customers. The Edward Snowden affair has shown us how exposed our online presence is, and what is possible for both benefit and crime will in fact occur sooner rather than later.
I too often wonder about the security issues. With Google and others now facing legal challenges to their access to information through conditions of use agreements, I wonder how/if these concerns will/can ever be addressed to the satisfaction of the ‘private’ individual. The rate of technological advancement is far outpacing our ability to anticipate these challenges. We always seem to be trying to catch-up. I am not sure that we can do it.
Interestingly enough, BYOT is also happening in the technology industry. When the iPads were first released, everyone wanted a corporate iPad. Of course, our sales and development teams were given iPads from the get go, but in many cases, support teams were not, which is problematic. The result was that the team began bringing in their personal devices which in turn leads to some significant security concerns. – Terri