Robert,I am absolutely no Luddite, I can point to an extremely impressive track record in the industry, designing genuinely useful educational applications and to a decade of experience training teachers in how to engage with technology purposefully, but what I cannot stomach is the literal none-sense and techno-voodoo peddled by so many "gurus" and companies marketing to schools which reveals not even a basic grasp of the reality of what skillful, professional teachers, or great schools do. What worries me about your list, exciting and relevant though it undoubtedly is, is that a lot of it is so strongly redolent of those, highly subjective influences.
On The Inertia Of Institutional Education And The Evolution Of Technology And Integration
Exactly the same, naive faith (because it certainly isn't science or serious educational research that's driving this) that has fuelled this waste, has been pumping redundant and inefficient technology into schools for years while professional, skilled, none technology teachers get on with their job. Your last "trend" is the one on which all else depends and I would argue that it isn't a trend at all. It is an aspiration of the influencers referred to above.
I would seriously argue that 10 years ago I heard exactly the same grand claims made for the educational benefits of technology, while all around ordinary teachers (the overwhelming majority) sat by letting techno-zealots run amok with budgets and policy.
As the Director General of one of the very few public school boards to have provided (2003) free wireless laptop computers from Grades 3-11, in Quebec. The trends that you have identified are precisely what I have been saying for years. It is very difficult to integrate technology into an operating model of education designed in the 19th century. Too much has changed and our children are more in "touch" with the world than ever. The key remains what I have described as the "Human Factor."In my travels to present our 1:1 deployment, one must deal with an acronym that I developed a year ago: B.I.P.P. That is, one must deal with Beliefs, Ideologies, Philosophies before you deal with Pedagogy.Great article and I have sent it into our system for all to read.
1. I agree that in too many projects the technology tail has wagged the proverbial educational dog. Wiz bang technology should not be implemented in search of an educational solution but rather the educational objectives should determine the type and use of technology in schools. Often if teachers are not convinced that their time invested in use of the technology is worthwhile, it will not be adopted. Teachers are the frontline of any ICT investment and proper support and consultation needs to take place.
2. Piecemeal reform is difficult and often ineffective. Even where the educational benefits are clearly articulated, if issues such as curricular integration, assessment reform, and pedagogy are not addressed, the investment will not attain its educational benefit. Many programs that introduced ICT as a means to implement project based learning -- while investing in teacher professional development and convincing teachers of the educational benefits -- did not have the desired impact because the curriculum was overloaded and did not provide space for this type of innovative instruction and the assessment systems did not measure much of the learning that comes out of collaborative project based learning. Resulting in many dedicated teachers engaging in these projects as extra-curricular activities and on their "own time"
In reading the various posts about what it takes to initiate the needed changes, there still remains some fundamental issues that rarely are treated. In education, one of these issues is the notion of "Sharing of Best Practices". It is very often cited but very infrequently practiced. Too often, educators, regardless of backgrounds and contexts, prefer to learn the "hard way" and truly re-invent the wheel or in this case, the platform for successful integration.Blogs and other social media contexts are now providing more opportunities to share, and that, in itself is another reason why technology can play a profound role in the future of teaching and learning.As a 13 year old student once told me, while I was asking her about working with various operating platforms, Mac, Windows, Linux.... Her answer said it best: "Who cares! Only adults seemed to be bugged by this. I like learning with a laptop."In my books, this is quite illustrative of the dichotomy between adults and children. The world is changing and I am grateful for this. Therefore, so should education change, especially for our children.
For readers of this blog looking for discordant or critical views of the use of technology in education from a developed country perspective, the archive of the EdTechNot web site might be of interest:
Being a teacher of English as a Foreign Language, I have been reading this article and I was asking myself a huge bulk of questions as to what world this post is talking about. The writer said in one of his lines that "it is likely that mobile devices with internet access and computing capabilities will soon overtake personal computers as the information appliance of choice in the classroom."I wonder what world will this be true in.DID YOU KNOW THAT IN MOST PARTS OF THE WORLD: 1*Technology is nothing ore that a word in the speeches of educational policy makers? 2*Our classroom are not equipped with nothing but a blackboard and chalk? 3*People still resist using technology for one reason or another?
We tend to think of "technology" and "trends" as having to do with "the future" and "progress." But I'd like to suggest that the impact of new and emerging digital technologies in education is about reform and restoration. The artificiality of the 19th-century industrial model of schooling, with its implicit standardization, narrowing uniformity, mechanization, and multi-level segregation is giving way to a new model of learning that is organic, self-directed, personalized, and holistic. I further suggest that this a reform and renewal of values and approaches to human learning that are, in fact, timeless. So, here are what I see as being the most important developments in global education:
As a teacher in a cyber-oriented environment, even we realize the future of education will need to encompass changes in order to effectively reach our youth and keep them engaged. I feel it is pertinent that the education system learn what our youth is using as far as technology so they can teach the teachers how they research and how they learn. The teachers can deliver academic content in a way that engages our youth and teaches them because they learn by doing. Our youth are very skilled with their electronic devices more so than the adults and we must learn from them. The youth are multimodal and need to be stimulated in order to learn. I feel the trends that will make the most successful advancements in education will be with: Mobile devices-phones, ipads, ipods Social networking-facebooking, youtube, blogs Hands on learning-collaboration with other students Search for academic content--google searches Personalized + socialized experience--customized to fit student needs but engaging enough so that the youth teach adults
Given the amount of time today's students seem to spend on the internet and involved with social media, it is no surprise that so many of these trends have to do with technology. I currently work at a cyber school, so many of the trends mentioned are ideas that we are currently implementing. We have just started an iPad pilot with many of our students. We are encouraging our students to explore the iPad in a variety of ways. We not only want them to think of what is available to them now, but also how they could be used in the future. I also agree that games can be important to student learning. As part of our elementary curriculum, students have access to game that directly relate to the concepts they have been learning about. I am extremely interested to see how many of these trends turn into the norms for education.
Rédha Younes Bouacida, The national innovation system and the difficulty of integrating the higher education system for science and technology in Algeria , Revue d'économie industrielle, 168 2019, 45-78.
Rédha Younes Bouacida, The national innovation system and the difficulty of integrating the higher education system for science and technology in Algeria , Revue d'économie industrielle [En ligne], 168 4e trimestre 2019, mis en ligne le 04 janvier 2023, consulté le 08 février 2023. URL : ; DOI :
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