Trend-Spotting, Scanning the Horizon, Emerging Tech and Trends
As tech leaders in your schools, you know that keeping up with current technology often feels overwhelming (no kidding!). And sometimes it feels like we’re never going to catch up and be on top of things. So you may balk at our “look to the future” topic. But don’t!
One of the best ways to cope with the exhaustion of trying to keep up, is to learn from the experts who are carefully evaluating the trends and technologies that are most likely to affect education and libraries over the next few years. Once you’ve read a few trends/issues reports, you’ll start to pick out the tech and trends that are likely to be relevant to you, your students and colleagues. With that knowledge you’ll realize that you’re really ahead of the curve and will be ready for the changes to come. And also ready to lead the way through those changes.
READINGS
- IDEA WATCH: Far Beyond Makerspaces—Reinventing Libraries for the Future – by Carolyn Foote
- IDEA WATCH: Reinventing Libraries for the Future–Part 2 – Carolyn Foote discusses how the issues covered in the Aspen Institute’s “Rising to the Challenge: Re-Envisioning Public Libraries” play out in school libraries
- Technology Trends Reshape Today’s Libraries: Modernizing learning in the 21st-century school can start in the library
- New Media Consortium Horizon Reports – The annual Horizon reports identify key trends, challenges and tech developments that will affect technology adoption and planning over the next 5 years. Available now are the 2017 K12 report and the 2017 Higher Ed report. It’s also interesting to look back at the older reports to see what predictions have come to pass. A video overview of the 2017 report is available on YouTube.
- Future Ready Librarians – Are you ready? If you’re taking this workshop, you probably are!
- ISTE’s 5 Tech Trends to Watch This School Year
- What’s Hot: 9 Major Ed Tech Trends for 2017 – from ISTE
- 11 hot edtech trends to watch – From ISTE
- Gartner’s 2017 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies – Always fascinating to look at this and see what might be coming down the pike. What in the world is “smart dust”??
- 5 Gadgets that are Positioned to Reshape our Classrooms
- Future of Educational Technology – Blog posts from the Emerging EdTech blog.
LOOK BACK: It’s always interesting to take a look back at predictions to see how things have turned out.
- What Technology Will Look Like In Five Years – This article is from 2015. It’s now 2018, are we on track?
- My top 10 tech trends – Joyce Valenza’s 2014 roundup of tech trends. 3 years later, where do we stand on these trends?
- What Does the Next-Generation School Library Look Like? – “At a time when public libraries are starting to offer everything from community gardening plots to opportunities to check out humans for conversations, some school libraries are similarly re-evaluating their roles and expanding their offerings.”
- 10 technologies that will change the world in the next 10 years – Written in 2011, we’re already 5 years into “the next 10 years. Have some of these things started to affect your life? Education? Libraries?
LEARNING ACTIVITY
- Read some of the reports and articles and note which tech/trends/issues resonate with you.
- Write your blog post and discuss:
- How these are relevant to your library, classroom and school community.
- How are they relevant to your community at large, outside of school?
- What challenges and opportunities do they present?
- What trends do you feel are most important?
*TURNING IN YOUR ASSIGNMENT
- Write & publish your blog post.
- Copy the URL (webpage address) for your post.
- Return to the Google Classroom, find the assignment page for the lesson you just completed and follow the directions for turning in and sharing your work.
*Only for students participating in the workshop for PD credit hours through the Google Classroom.
Many thanks to Dr. Michael Stephens for openly sharing the course content for SJSU LIBR 287 course – Hyperlinked Library Emerging Trends, Emerging Tech. Many of the resources in this lesson were borrowed from that course.