Eden Dahlstrom
Executive Director, New Media Consortium
We live in an era where technology itself often precedes the practical application of technology solutions to teaching, learning and creative inquiry challenges. In order to use new tech tools in meaningful and engaging ways for education, it’s important to understand the trends driving technology adoption in the K-12 environment. According to a panel of 59 experts across 18 countries for the latest K-12 edition of the NMC/CoSN Horizon Report, the key trends accelerating technology adoption are as follows:
1. Coding as a literacy
The digital economy of the future will be driven by those who have programming skills and an understanding of how computers work. It is becoming more important for students to interact with technology and to have the ability to control the devices, programs and applications they interact with.
2. Supporting students as creators
Learners are beginning to explore subjects through active creation instead of by passive consumption of content. Makerspaces, fabrication laboratories, media centers, intuitive creative suites of desktop programs, and apps provide hands-on opportunities for students to boldly channel their creativity into inventions, solutions and expressions.
3. Collaborative learning
Collaborative learning models are proving to be increasingly successful at engaging students. Collaboration mirrors the way humans solve problems, and technology tools help students (and faculty) connect with one another. Synchronous and asynchronous workspaces built into tools like Google Apps for Education and Microsoft Classroom remove time, space and demographic barriers among learners.
4. Deeper learning approaches
For students to remain motivated, they need to have sense of how their knowledge and skills will have an impact. Social media platforms like Twitter, WeChat and Snapchat keep students connected to one another and to local and global issues. When folded into pedagogy and combined with content creation tools like YouTube and WeVideo, these same outlets can be used to actively contribute insight or solutions in meaningful ways.
5. Rethinking how schools work
Adaptive learning tools and open educational resources are, respectively, personalizing and democratizing how students learn. Combine these with a mobile technology like a network-connected smartphone or a tablet, and students have a powerful any-time, any-way, any-place learning environment.
6. Redesigning learning spaces
Flexible learning spaces allow for students to group and regroup as is appropriate for a lesson. Network-enabled classrooms allow students to connect and collaborate in familiar mobile-first and social modalities that are part of their daily digital habits outside of the classroom.
Eden Dahlstrom, Executive Director, New Media Consortium, [email protected]