Page 16 - THE Journal, March 2017

16
| MARCH 2017
TECH TRENDS
Added P21’s Ross, neither homework nor grading will “ever go away until all the teachers die.”
Tablets
The use of tablet computers in school is no longer fresh or exciting, which puts them on the chilly end of ed tech right
now. But that doesn’t mean that computing devices themselves are no longer of interest in education. In fact, just the opposite.
“Devices come and go. The next cool device will be out next week or whenever,” declared Digital Promise’s Cator. “But
the fact remains that every student needs
an access point at their fingertips all the time. They need to be able to do their own research, keep their own portfolios, use
data, create, produce, communicate — all the things students do with devices. Whether
it actually is a tablet or a laptop or another device we haven’t thought of yet, every student needs that access point that they can put in their backpacks, take home, use to access their homework, communicate with their peers and experts and get their work done on.”
One problem with the term “tablet” is that whenever people hear it, they “automatically think iPads,” said Nank, who advises in schools on the use of technology. “They
think $600 per. It’s just not effective because you can’t get as many.”
Nank recommends to schools that they
do their research before they “spend any money.” “What people will do is get a certain amount of money and they’ll go with what’s really hot,” he said. “iPads are great. But if you don’t particularly need everything that an iPad gives you, you can spend a third the amount of money and get access to online resources. What that does then is put the technology in three times as many students’ hands. Because, really, what it boils down to is that access to online resources that opens up the world to students.”
Cost is a major reason why Chromebooks are on the rise and iPads are on the decline, said elementary teacher Redmon. “iPads
are great, but if I want my students to
work on a project and they need to type more than a couple of words, they need a keyboard. The keyboard on the screen isn’t effective, so then you’re adding more cost
to cover something that’s built into the Chromebook.”
On top of that, Redmon considers the functionality to be “constantly improving.” While he doesn’t expect tablets to become “obsolete,” other types of devices are going to rule 1-to-1 programs for the foreseeable future.
Maintaining Temperature
While plenty of ed tech is distinctly cooling down, arts education and blended learning are maintaining steady states, which, in
a world predicated on continued growth, could be viewed as a form of cool-down.
Arts Education
Although STEAM, which
encompasses the arts, is still heating up (as we covered in Jan./Feb.), arts education as its own category is hitting a wall. Common Sense’s Mendoza said the fate of the arts is tied to budget limitations. “Schools are cutting funding for the arts.”
Even where schools are trying to squeeze the arts in as part of STEM curriculum, noted Redmon, there are too few resources to let it really gain traction. “Currently we have an art teacher shared among so many students that it’s a pretty limited program. We don’t have the ability to sit down and plan with her what we’re doing in science and math to connect it into art. There isn’t the ability to collaborate in the way that would be ideal.”
Alongside that problem, he added, “’The standards-and-testing push emphasizes reading and math and de-emphasizes arts and music. So those budgets get cut.”
One potential remedy, suggested
DOWN (BUT NOT NECESSARILY OUT) FOR THE COUNT IN 2017
1-to-1. Teacher Tom Redmon, who, in his role as a facilitator for LearnZillion, consults with schools and districts, has decided that having schools give devices to every student no longer makes sense, at least not in elementary schools. “I piloted 1-to-1 in my classroom five or six years ago, when it was really heating up,” he recalled. “Now, it’s just not a practical use of funds.” His suggested alternative: sharing devices, a solution that’s easier now than it was in the past. “My fourth-grade team has five teachers. We share a Chromebook cart and it’s plenty of technology for all of us. If we used it more, we might be able to use two carts. There is so much value in other experiences than sitting on a device all day.” The sharing is simplified, he added, by including multiple student profiles on every device. “When they get on, their profile is already loaded. They have their stuff saved in the cloud, but it’s tied to that device as well.”
Gaming. Game-based learning first showed up as a trend in the Horizon Report for K-12 published by the New Media Consortium and CoSN in 2010. “Interest in game-based learning has grown in recent years as research continues to demonstrate its effectiveness for learning,” the report stated. The time to adoption — meaning that it would be picked up by at least 20 percent of classrooms — was
two to three years away. It showed up again with the same time-to-adoption in the 2012 and 2014 reports. In other words, “It has always seemed just beyond that magical bend in the road,” mused CoSN’s Keith Krueger. “It doesn’t mean that gaming isn’t important in some classrooms. It doesn’t mean that gaming won’t be important. It just means it’s taking a lot longer than the experts thought. I don’t think it’s going away. It may pop up as a hot topic again.”
Growth Mindset. Last year, when Carol Dweck suggested tweaking how growth mindset was viewed and used by teachers in the classroom in an Education Week article, Digital Promise’s Kelly Mendoza wasn’t surprised. “Growth Mindset is not a specific set of principles — it’s not that you either have it or you don’t. It’s more about seeing every student as having potential for growth in all sorts of areas and helping them see that potential. It’s not a final place to be.” Educators “latched onto” Dweck’s research, she said, “because they saw it as a useful practice to start incorporating questioning and prompting and building resilience in their students, particularly in math and science. Even though Mendoza believes growth mindset is “cooling off,” she still considers it “applicable to any educator” who can find “very practical, easy ways” to implement the concepts in their teaching.