K-12 BITS held a webinar on EdTech trends Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow identifies three different areas of trends in EdTech.

Three different areas of trends identified are:

• rising
• just emerging
• waning

I found these interesting.

Among the “rising trends”, there are a couple that caught my eye:

• New classroom models: blended, flipped, virtual
• personalization

In the “just emerging” category, I found these of particular interest:

• “Seamlessness” in digital instruction
• Moving beyond teacher skill development

Finally, in the “waning” category, these stand out:

• Bring your own device
• Gamification for gamification’s sake
• “One size fits all” teacher professional development

*Please note that there are more trends identified than I’ve pointed out as of interest.

In the rising trends category, I’m quite surprised that blended, flipped and virtual are included. These have been heavily discussed. There has been tons of virtual ink spilled on these areas. Schools have not universally implemented these (and probably with good reason). All of these take some adjustment within the system. First of all, students have to have some kind of reasonable access to devices. A bigger issue is teachers having access, training and support on implementing these pedagogies. While implementing any of those can be powerful, it does take work. Districts need to support teachers by providing them with platforms and training.

Personalization is a trend that we are all trying to really wrap our heads around. I doubt that it will look like what some Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are pushing, but I think that it will clearly have a role in education. I would’ve place personalization in the “just emerging” category.

The waning category is of particular interest. Many schools and teachers are still debating the “bring your own device” issues. These aren’t really as clear cut as some would make them out to be. In the real world, some of these issues are extremely complex. Gamification just for the sake of gamification should never have existed. This is one of the touchstones for me about the Glorification of Technology (see The Glitteratti).

One size fits all teacher professional development does seem more and more on it’s way out. More and more I see opportunities targeted much more closely to teacher need instead of one size fits all. That’s not to say that one size fits all is dead. Not by a long shot. However, we do seem to be moving quite purposefully to more appropriate professional development that is targeted to need. (Let’s hope that ends up translating to student education too).

“You make me a better educator.”

Words can be powerful. Sometimes, you never know where that power is going to come from.

I was finishing up a meeting with some wonderful Moodle users tonight. We had chatted about a variety of strategies and use cases. A few shared what they are doing in Moodle. It was a good meeting with some great people. I’ve been in plenty of meetings like this.

This one turned out different. As I was leaving, the organizer of the group thanked me for coming. I thanked her in return for allowing me to be part of the group and her efforts in connecting people together. Then she said something that floored me

“Thank you for all you do. You make me a better educator”

WOW. I didn’t really know what to say. I’m sure that I wasn’t very elegant in my response. I know that I thanked her and said something about being in this for learning. But, I’m sure that it wasn’t as powerful as the gift that she gave me.

I’m very thankful for what she said. I hope that if someone makes a difference for you, you share a similar expression with them. I can tell you that those powerful words touched me very deeply.

The Glitteratti. This is a term for teachers (and others) who seek the Glitter over the gold. (Please note that this post was very much inspired by the Tech Coach Blog post “Glue, Glitter and Gold, by Bob Harrison). Glitter is the fun, shiny, attractive parts of educational technology use. Gold is the substantive learning.

As humans, the glitter is very attractive. We are attracted to glitter is real, fundamental ways. However, we also need to be careful about not chasing after “fool’s gold” instead of the real thing.

A quick search of ISTE sessions for this year (I wasn’t able to go), provides this as the very first result of Concurrent Sessions: 101 Free Tech Tools for Teachers. The very first session. Skill level to evaluate, understand and process these 101 Tools? Beginner. (In case you’d like to preview the 101 Tools, I’ve provided a link.)

Now, I am just as guilty. Years ago, I attended some of these same sessions. Heck, I may have even presented a similar session. However, it’s not just one of these sessions. There are lots of them. (Check out 60 in 60, which has an entire web site and business associated with it). I’m also pretty positive that these folks mean well. However, if we are going to move Educational Technology forward, we need to focus not on the glitter, but on the gold.

Technology is becoming a fundamental part of education. Whether or not it makes the kind of impact that is possible or not is up to us. We need to make sure that we are leveraging technology to achieve accomplishments that we could only dream of in the past. Those accomplishments are geared around the latest glitter, but are deeply embedded in valuable gold.