Education Vision Consultancy Ltd

The Coming Ed Tech

I hope to see the emergence of tested tools supporting mental health and well-being for all — staff as well as pupils. Workrave is an interesting little piece of software, which although geared towards prevention of RSI, could also be used to support improved general health as well as well-being benefits.

I expect to see an increasing range of off-the-shelf offerings of "Artificial Intelligence as a commodity" products, where ordinary users can add AI to their own projects, by configuring, e.g., a standard neural network. These will start to filter into the education space.

AI may also start to filter into data analysis, with tools that assist with spotting trends and patterns that could be easy to miss otherwise, to support higher impact decision-making.

Challenges

I find it hard to look beyond perennial issues such as specialist staff recruitment and retention, good quality technical support at sensible prices and trying to make good use of limited budgets.

Any other comments?

I expect to see growing examination of how we pay for our tech, especially software. It is not realistic to expect to benefit from the fruits of others' hard won specialist knowledge for free.

Sometimes that does happen (e.g. software that is written as part of an academic collaboration), but often the costs are not explicit or fully understood, as has been the case with social media. As with supermarket loyalty cards, benefits appeared to be free; now it is better understood that the cost has been to allow our personal data to be exploited for the financial gain of others.

What will happen to those cloud-based services that many rely on and were taken up in the days when no explicit charges were made? Will providers want to start seeing a return on their investments? Some have started to introduce charges already, or have downgraded their free offering to make premium products more attractive. It seems likely others will follow.

Website

http://www.educationvision.co.uk

Mark Baker @EducationVision