Initial thoughts on Educational Technology

When you type educational technology, as known as edtech, into a google search, nearly 1.8 billion results come back. According to an article from Forbes, the educational technology industry was on target to surpass 7.5 billion dollars in 2019. 

What does all of this mean for teachers? First, that edtech is everywhere and a lot of people are buying into, and investing into, the hype. But, what is edtech? According to Oxford Dictionary, educational technology is digital technology used to facilitate learning, which is an incredibly broad definition. It can include anything from presentation platforms for teachers to use to prepare and conduct lessons, videos that supplement lessons, tools that students use from anything from coding to communication. Truly, the possibilities are endless for edtech, as are the applications of the technology into classrooms. 

Teachers need to learn about educational technology for reasons beyond just its universality. Edtech can streamline instruction and allow students to have access to material and resources that they would otherwise not have access to. For instance, schools that may not have the resources to provide lab experiences in the classroom, can have access to virtual labs that, while not as beneficial as the full immersion of in-person lab work, it can still provide a basis and a foundation to understanding laboratory methods when they are presented with them later on. Classes that may not have the budget to go on field trips can supplement that with virtual field trips. In these cases, virtual technology should not replace experiences, but they can provide supplementation when access is not available. 

Teachers also have a responsibility to introduce technology to their students because it is becoming increasingly necessary for students to have technological skills for future employment. According to an article by CNBC based on research done by the company LinkedIn, the hard skills that employers are looking for are primarily technology based. Personally, at my previous job, the company that I worked for was small enough that at times we would have to do work for other departments. I was a biologist and the primary part of my job was doing surveys (hiking) and writing reports, but I also had to pivot to do data entry, GIS mapping, learn and teach on other euipment. Without a basic exposure and background in the technology at the time (now, probably mostly obsolete) there is no way that I would have been as successful at just jumping into projects, at times with programs and technology that I had never used before. It is the same for current students. There is no way to know exactly what technology they may need to use in the future, but exposure to a number of different programs and applications, and, especially, exposing them to the means to teach themselves new technology, will be invaluable in their future endeavors.