The Future of Educational Technology and
Education
Thinking of what education might look like in the next decade, one quickly realizes that the trends in
technology are leaving a large number of our students behind. We no longer live in an age of visible
movement when it comes to progress and innovation. Today is an age of exponential change. New and
ever-improving technologies are popping up every day and in every corner of society.
Educating the best and the brightest in this brave new world will take a new and improved educational
paradigm. Allowing our educational tools to age in the corner of the classroom will be the mistake that
may cost us our future. Throwing away masses of children to inequitable access will ensure that we
languish at the bottom of the global pool of employable workers for decades to come.
The New Toolbox
I was at an auction a few years ago and noticed a few old woodworking tools that I thought I
could use. For a few bucks, I was able to snag an assortment of hand tools calculadora alicia that
may have been in someone's toolbox for a generation or more. As the next decade passed, I used
these tools in my shop for a wide variety of projects until my projects outgrew these old, dull
tools. My woodworking creations continued to improve as did my skills and artistry. I quickly
discovered that using improved tools would translate into improved craftsmanship. As any
woodworker will tell you, new tools require new skills.
Woodworking is a great metaphor for shaping and molding students. There is simply no good substitute
for a sharp tool. If you want to build the best projects possible, you need to use the best tools possible.
Thinking in terms of the next decade for our country, we will be sorely disappointed in our projects if we
fail to improve our tools.
Within this article, I will try to paint a picture of how technology will shape the way we educate students
in the next decade. I will attempt to show the amazing possibilities that lay before us if we will simply
walk through the doorway of opportunity that is open to us. My focus will be this idea: Transforming the
student from being a passenger to becoming a "user." You may be wondering what I mean by this. Let me
explain.
Ask yourself what it means to be a "user." A user is not simply a person who uses. For the student, being
a user should involve using the latest technology in a free and autonomous manner. This new-found
freedom will allow the student to become an active participant in his/her education instead of a passive
passenger. No other time in history have we been so able to make this a reality.
In our current technological society, being a user also means being tracked. Tracking has become a major
part of our daily lives and is precisely the engine that should drive our educational process for the
foreseeable future. Tracking a student means having the ability to target education toward weaknesses and
strengths. The ability to accurately customize curriculum to the individual has been the holy grail of
educational philosophy for many years. This golden age of technological development may soon enable
this dream to become a reality.
Current educational curriculum and individual assessment is arbitrary at best. Being able to accurately
asses a student can only be achieved by using modern tracking and database technologies. The means by
which we can make this a reality is readily available and only needs to be taken off the shelf to be used. If
Congress is looking for a shovel-ready project, this may be the one.
Imagine a world where every child has a tablet computer with ready access to the App of virtual
photographic memory (internet). Further, imagine that every student can access all the knowledge of
humankind freely at any moment in time. Continue to imagine a world where a misspelled word brings up
a spelling challenge application instead of an auto correction. Try to contemplate what it would mean for
a teacher to have a database of every misspelled word, every misunderstood concept or every missed
equation for each of their students. Try to envision a teacher with the ability to customize the experience
of the individual "user" with minimal effort. Imagine the curriculum being automatically targeted to the
user through an intuitive educational platform that knows every strength and each unique weakness. I
could go on, but I think you get the point.
The company that makes this standard available to the educational community will be the company that
shapes the future of humankind. Will it be Google, Apple, Microsoft, or some other yet unknown
pioneer?
Continuing from the thoughts in my last post, I would like to elaborate on the idea of the student as a user
of a new standardized educational platform. It is obvious to me that the future of education will always
mirror our everyday lives in one way or another. If you examine how technology has influenced your
daily life already, you begin to put together a snapshot of what it will mean to be educated in the next
decade.
In the last few hundred years, most individuals would consider an education as something you receive.
You often hear the question asked, "Where did you receive your education?" As we proceed through the
next decade, education will slowly move away from reception and toward being custom designed for the
individual user. New technology will not only allow us to receive an education, but also develop an
education. The question we might ask in 10 years is, "How did you develop your education?" The
question of where will still be important, but the how of the matter will be the focus that defines the
individual.
To make this a reality we will need a standardized platform from which to develop a student's unique
education. This standardized platform will allow us to tailor a custom curriculum that will be matched to
talents, interests and life goals. For the educator, a standardized platform will create a way to assist the
student in discovering a true purpose in life through a unique educational experience. The basics of
reading, writing and arithmetic will not be taught as much as they will be discovered and used. Learning
will become a reciprocal experience between the teacher, the student and the machine.
Under a standardized platform, each of these three participants will have a role to play. The teacher will
be the facilitator, assisting the development of the curriculum and inspiring the direction the student takes.
The student will be the user, gathering resources, skills and knowledge in an efficient and measured
sequence. The machine will do the work of data gathering and analysis, which will assist the teacher and
student in refining the curriculum. This data gathering work of the machine will also free the teacher from
the burden of record-keeping and tedious tasks that currently distract from the real job of teaching and
learning.
Under a standardized system, grade level will be far less important. Achievement and progression will be
measured by accomplishment and intelligence as a benchmark for success. The question of failure or
success will be irrelevant and replaced with a standard and consistent measurement of potential and
overall intelligence. Information will no longer be missed but continually rehearsed and monitored for
retention by the machine.
In our current educational paradigm, the teacher is in charge of arbitrarily constructing curriculum. This
approach to curriculum development is based on inexperience in some cases, outdated materials,
inadequate funding and a shortage of time. Measuring the success of a specific curriculum is currently
impossible. With a standardized system, comparisons of curricular success can be made across the entire
spectrum of education and then continually reformulated and enhanced by the machine.
Sadly, teachers today are bogged down with an assortment of mind-numbing tasks that would be better
suited to an off-the-shelf automated system. Tasks such as data tracking, reporting and record keeping are
currently accomplished manually. These tasks could easily be delegated to an intuitive database.
Developing a standard to follow would eliminate these tasks and free the teacher to do their main job of
teaching students.
Education 3.0
Throughout history, man has sought to pass on knowledge to the next generation. This process started
with oral tradition, storytelling and writing. With the advent of the printing press, knowledge and
information slowly became available to the masses. The amount of information that could be gained by
one human in a lifetime was severely limited by his access to printed materials and wealth. The majority
of learning was gained through observation and imitation. We can call this Education 1.0.
Education 2.0 starts around the late eighteen hundreds with universal literacy movements throughout
newly industrialized regions of the world. Improvements in education slowly transitioned from
apprenticeship to formal education and training. Despite our movements toward universal education,
access to knowledge and opportunity continues to be inequitable throughout the world. Even with the
arrival of the computer revolution, access to the tools of learning continues to define the learner.
The next decade may mark the moment in history when all men are granted equal access to the greatest
treasure a soul can possess. I use the word may in the last sentence because there is the chance that we
will miss this golden opportunity. Access to Education 3.0 will only be gained through investment and
universal standardization. If we continue to divert wealth toward fruitless goals and corporate greed, this
opportunity will be lost or hopelessly delayed.
Education 3.0, when it arrives, will be the age of universal enlightenment. Platforms for education and
learning will slowly standardize and become globally accessible and affordable. The poorest to the
wealthiest will have access to the machine that runs the platform.
The thought on your mind at this point is most likely wondering what machine I keep referring to. The
machine in question is the one we have been so busy teaching and training since roughly 1969. You've
probably guessed it by now that I am referring to the internet. The great cloud of knowledge that we call
the internet is precisely the mechanism that we will use to build the platform of Education 3.0. When the
platform is finally in place, the decade to follow will see the greatest amount of wealth, discoveries and
use of human potential that we have witnessed during our time on this earth. The only question that
remains to be answered is the point at which I will leave this article.
When will we allow the user to use the machine to its potential?
Stephen McClard has been the Director of Bands at Bolivar High School since 2002. Mr. McClard
graduated from Southeast Missouri State University in 1990. He started his teaching career in Southeast
Missouri before moving to Illinois where he taught band for 8 years.
Mr. McClard's bands have consistently received superior ratings at contest as well as many other awards
and accolades. Since 2002, the band has traveled twice to Chicago, where they won 1st place class 4A
and 1st place overall at the Midwest Music In the Parks Festival. The band also traveled to Cincinnati in
2006, receiving the same honors. In 2006, Mr. McClard was named by SBO Magazine as one of the 50
Directors Who Make a Difference. In 2006, 2008 and 2009, Bolivar RI School district was named one of
the "Best 100 Communities for Music Education" in America by the American Music Conference. Mr.
McClard was previously featured on the cover of the 2003 issue of SBO Magazine for his work with
music technology.
In addition to his career in education, Mr. McClard maintains an online woodworking business and is a
3rd generation piano technician. His woodworking creations include custom bass guitars, which have sold
all over the world and one-of-a-kind computer desks made from old pianos. His piano desks have been
featured in magazines such as Business 2.0 and Piano Technicians Journal and in many other newspapers
and television news features.
Open Source Software in Higher Education
The higher education sector is quite unlike other industries. It has its own processes and a different set of
demands. Most commercial proprietary application vendors develop their applications focused on a wider
domain spread across industries. This, academics complain, creates a distinct disconnect between
software vendors and the end-users in academia.
To overcome these shortcomings, the education industry started looking to "open source" as an alternate
model. Around a decade back, institutions started debating total cost of ownership in adopting an open
source based community approach vis-à-vis proprietary applications, viability of open source based
business models, sustainability and security issues.
The success of community developed open source software is quite well established. Linux and Apache
are ample proof of its success. A similar trend, though not that widespread in its reach, can be traced to
the development of community projects in education like the Moodle and Sakai.
Through the course of its formative years, the open source community based approach in education has
developed several alternative models. Some of these models and schools of thought have thrived and been
implemented successfully across a significant spectrum of the industry. Progress and success in open
source projects like the Sakai, Moodle, Kuali, uPortal, Shibboleth, and many more are being closely
watched by the industry.
Community Source Model
One school of thought believes that open source sharing is more a philosophical approach than a viable
alternative. The adoption of open source in higher education seems to suggest otherwise. FLOSS
(Free/Libre and Open Source Software) communities are thriving well in learning environments too.
The FLOSS model has been extensively used in initiatives like the MIT OpenCourseWare and Open
Source Biology. Project Gutenberg, the Wikipedia, The Open Dictionary project are prime examples of
how open source has been successfully adapted to education initiatives.
In a community source project, multiple institutions come together to partner in the project. All partners
contribute financially as well as in employing human resources for the effort. In the early stages, the
partnering institutions provide all design and development efforts and only in subsequent stages is the
project opened to the broader community. This way, the initial support is secured and the institutions have
a substantial influence in deciding how the application is modeled and designed.
The initial focus of community source projects is on collaboration between institutions. The focus in the
crucial first stages is therefore to form a common economic outlook and an appropriate administrative
framework rather than forming a community around a shared code. Most community based open source
projects slowly migrate to open source in the later stages.
The Sakai project, for example, started as a joint effort between four institutions (Michigan, Indiana, MIT
and Stanford). The initial agenda was to set up a framework of common goals that would produce
appropriate software based on an agreed list of objectives. The scope for participation was later increased
by forming the Sakai Educational Partners Program (SEPP), whereby other institutions can join and
participate in the community for a small fee.
The Current Landscape
An education enterprise like any organization has its own needs ranging from resource planning to
budgeting. Additionally, they have typical requirements like the need to integrate with financial aid
programs of the government, multiple payroll cycles, and student information systems (SIS) that handle
admissions, grades, transcripts, student records as well as billing. All these call for robust ERP systems.
Until recently, colleges and universities mostly rely on either custom-developed systems that are more
than 15 years old, or have transitioned to commercial products from vendors like Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft
or vendors like SunGard that are geared towards the higher education market.
Kuali Financials was borne due to the lack of open source solutions Enterprise applications in the higher
education sector are comprised of a mix of some proprietary application vendors and some key open
source community initiatives. PeopleSoft, Oracle, SunGard and Datatel are some key vendors that offer
tightly integrated ERP packages for the education sector.
Recent consolidation in the industry, like the acquisition of PeopleSoft by Oracle and of WebCT, Angel,
etc by Blackboard, has caused considerable unease in the education fraternity. The concern stems from
the fear that the trend of consolidation would lead to the monopoly of a few key vendors. The plans of
these vendors to offer tightly integrated systems heightens the fear that this will provide an unfair
leverage to these vendors as it would extend the community's dependence on them.
Author: NicoleBoses
Skill:
Marketing
Source: Education