eSchool News has a great article called “Six ed-tech trends to watch in 2007” By Gregg W. Downey. A definite “must read.” I listed the six trends below along with a teaser quote from each – but read the entire article. They also have an article - The top 10 ed-tech stories of 2006
if you haven’t seen that yet. Add them to your “Holiday Reading List.”

From: “Six ed-tech trends to watch in 2007″:

Trend No. 1: The leveling power of the World Wide Web

Call it community-generated content, social networking, or–if you’re a young technology company pitching yourself to venture capitalists–Web 2.0. Whatever you call it, it’s the trend toward end-users, consumers, teachers, and students creating content for themselves and their peers. This self-generated content can be delivered in writing, in audio files, or in video clips.
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Trend No. 2: Cloud computing

Google’s current CEO, Eric Schmidt:
“We call it ‘cloud computing,’” he proclaims. “The servers should be in a cloud somewhere. And if you have the right kind of browser or the right kind of access, it doesn’t matter whether you have a PC or a Mac or a mobile telephone or a Blackberry–or new devices still to be developed–you can get access to the cloud.”
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Trend No. 3: Service-oriented architecture

What’s revolutionary about SOA is not the concept itself, which has been around for a while, but the fact that it now can be implemented via the World Wide Web. Just as web pages load on any platform, web services work the same regardless of platform, provided they are built using universal standards.
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Trend No. 4: The gathering SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Mode

The SCORM specifications–now in edition three–are becoming increasingly important for ensuring that digital content can be integrated into any learning management system (LMS) software, regardless of its manufacturer. What’s more, SCORM is opening the door for the creation of “digital repositories,” or collections of sharable, reusable online content that educators can search through to find items they can incorporate into their own instruction.
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Trend No. 5: Telepresence and anytime, anywhere education

According to an industry insider, unsuspecting visitors entering a room during a telepresence conference have at first been unaware that all the participants were not physically present:
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Trend No. 6: 21st-century learning

Specifically, according to the Partnership, our students need:
-Information and communication skills;
-Thinking and problem-solving skills;
-Interpersonal and self-direction skills;
-Global awareness;
-Financial, economic, and business skills; and Civic literacy.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 26th, 2006 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Change, Education, Student Access, Technology, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.