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Education & Tech Trends

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Knovation Chief Academic Officer Steve Nordmark explores and leads discussions around 6 major trends in technology and education.

Introductory Webinar
Join Steve Nordmark as he presents the overview of the 6 major trends in technology and education in this one hour webinar (will be archived after the live session).

Check out the recorded version of the introduction webinar.

For the content slides from the session, click TrendsInK12.pdf.
Discussion Forum Schedule
Starting August 21, we will kick off a new discussion around one trend and introduce a new trend every 2 weeks:
- August 21 — Trend #1: 21st Century Culture
- September 4 — Trend #2: Data-driven Learning Process
- September 18 — Trend #3: Intuitive Human Computer Interaction
- October 2 — Trend #4: Let Me Learn My Way
- October 16 — Trend #5: Smart Social Learning
- October 30 — Trend #6: Technology Backbone

Members: 15
Latest Activity: Apr 23

Discussion Forum

Relying on a Strong Technology Backbone to Support 21st Century Learning

As our 21st century has progressed, we’ve all seen amazing advances in technology. Within those technology advances, we see a trend in the “Technology Backbone” (or Technology Infrastructure) that supports the learning process. Although we interact with hardware and software everyday, this Technology Backbone trend relates more to the advances that occur on the back-end, hence calling it the “backbone”. It's the "dark arts" of software engineering and computer science - most of which makes the average person's head spin. There have been some significant trends in how technology architects design data storage and exchange, as well as complementary improvements in hardware that stores and transfers the data. As a result, we see increased speed and efficiency in our data driven learning systems, creating enhanced opportunities for technology to serve us. Connecting to the Internet has become foundational to the future of education. We see increased Internet speeds, increased…Continue

Tags: bandwidth, connectivity, speed, Internet, backbone

Started by Steve Nordmark Oct 29, 2012.

Power and Impact of Leveraging Technology for "Smart" Social Systems

One of the most recognizable advances in the consumer space are online systems that have been designed to make it easier for people to connect with each other. From LinkedIn to Facebook to Twitter to flicker to Pintrest to dating sites, many "smart" social systems have been designed to connect people based on their profiles and interests. "Smart" social systems have big potential in reshaping how we conduct business and learn from each other. Work spaces and learning environments are becoming much more collaborative. McKinsey predicts a significant impact from social business collaboration. People will always have "private" spaces that permit focused thought, but there will be a greater emphasis on technologies and spaces that enable people to intelligently gather (whether physically or virtually in the same room/space) and quickly document their ideas in a collaborative…Continue

Tags: collaboration, profile, collectives, learning, social

Started by Steve Nordmark Oct 14, 2012.

Competency Connections to Let Me Learn "More" My Way

The grammar police will probably break out the handcuffs based on the wording in the title of this post. What I'm attempting to emphasize is that within a public system of education, each learner will never have it completely his/her way; there will always be levels of compromise. Hopefully, though, we see policies and implementations and models that enable each learner to have more flexibility and influence in his/her learning environment.One of the main policy issues that work against us learning our own way is "seat-time" - the legislative requirement that students must have their "behinds" in the classroom for a certain amount of time to qualify for credit. Thankfully, policies are slowly shifting to more of a "competency-based" model - away from a "seat-time" model. With a competency-based model, students can demonstrate knowledge/skill with a set of material or topic at any point in time, before, during or after a course. The time associated with achieving competency is…Continue

Tags: seat-time, competency-based

Started by Steve Nordmark Oct 1, 2012.

Getting "INTO" Learning - New Models of Human Input and Interaction

Some recent developments in Human to Computer interaction are making there way into K12 classrooms. A story posted today on eSchoolNews titled, ‘Embodied learning’ blends lessons with student-computer interaction, highlights some interesting new developments coming out of SMALLab Learning ("created by an interdisciplinary team of researchers and media experts at Arizona State University").I ran across the folks from SMALLab Learning at a trade show about 2 years ago and was impressed with how they were transferring their research into product ideas for the classroom. More recently, I saw them at the TCEA conference last February in Austin, TX and had a chance to play with one of their "…Continue

Tags: engage, gesture, embodied, SMALLab, Flow

Started by Steve Nordmark Sep 27, 2012.

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Comment by Dawn Crawford, M. Ed. on August 8, 2012 at 10:30pm: We had a fantastic overview webinar to kick off the discussion series - check out the recorded version and the content slides above.