5 Focus Areas For EdTech In 2021
New Expectations, Technical Adaptability, Equity, Wifi 6, Data & Digital Literacy Skills
Evolving Pandemic Topics & Focus
After a year of shifts, changes, and challenges to best meet the needs of students, educators, and parents in the adaptation to remote, online, and hybrid methods I wanted to write a post on what I feel will be key focus areas for EdTech in 2021. These are areas that I think will be of particular focus and many of these topics will evolve and refine the landscape of educational technology in the coming year. In the big picture, many of the topics introduced below ask new questions.
Adjusting To The New Expectations Of The Role Of Technology In Education
The challenges met in the adaptation to online, remote, and hybrid models also pressed the technical adaptability of educators, students, and parents to use a range of new video conferencing, collaboration, and digital tools to submit learning artifacts and assessments online within portals and classrooms. The backbone of this process required an upskilling of all stakeholders to learn the nuances of these environments from all sides. Now that these are known skills, will we return to the old way of doing things? What will the buy-in look like as we move forward?
The buy in on these resources and the digital transformation will require significant financial support to maintain the infrastructure of digital tools, devices, resources, and training to maintain. How prepared are districts to support these needs moving forward?
Equity and Equality In Technology Distribution and Support
How scalable did districts find their technology infrastructure? The ability to provide devices, hotspots, and remote learning support from a learning and technical perspective is a luxury that needs to be part of the strategic technology planning process moving forward. The demands of any district’s model will always rely on the planning the district has done to support it. Equity and equality in the deployment of these resources need to mirror the support needs and desire for equitable instruction and measures of student learning to identify student learning gaps and support staff growth.
Reliable Wifi and Device Access
What will future school-based infrastructure look like? As we move into more implementations of Wifi 6 into educational institutions. Wifi 6 will bring expanded coverage areas and larger throughput for devices and enhancing student learning spaces with this type of connectivity. This will require additional federal and state grants to support these upgrades. I have included a few articles below which describe the value of these types of upgrades.
Impact Of Widespread Implementation Of Wifi 6
Adapting To New Workflows and Data Management
More technology equals more opportunities for expanded data collection opportunities. The benefits of high-level data management are the ability to identify new ways to secure data, impact student learning, and support staff.
The challenge is finding the skillsets, support personnel, and the vision to design beneficial workflows. These new digital assessments and data collection opportunities will require new data processes for data integrity, data privacy, workflows, and specific skillsets for managing the information in effective safe ways.
Institutional data, student learning data, staff data, and the workflows of managing and organizing the use of this data is currently transforming the background of education.
Expanding Students Digital Literacy Skills For Next Level Learning
Students are spending a tremendous number of additional hours per day online since the onset of the pandemic. Please check out this article on the comparison of time online pre and post-pandemic. It is essential that we continue to moderate and support the student learning of proper digital citizenship and proper device use while navigating the web to support their learning. We must continue to bridge the gap between passive web browsing and video viewing and more skill-based use of technology to support learning.
I do believe the enhanced and increased use will support increased student interest in Computer Science, Digital Arts, and Video Production using digital tools. We can look forward to a more embedded Computer Science curriculum and demand for these skills as essential at the elementary level and the demand to secure students understanding of skill sets and knowledges related to Digital Literacy.
Thanks for reading. These areas are on the top of my list in the coming year and I am sure that as we move forward these targets will shift with the ever-evolving landscape of educational technology. If you have any thoughts or comments please feel free to email me at danielmdowns@gmail.com or ddowns@nrpsk12.org