EdTech Promises for Higher Ed: Empty?

Similar to the K-12 educational environment, it has been my experience that in higher education there are a limited number of faculty “pushing the edge of the envelope” as far as innovative technology use goes, but most are still in a paradigm of traditional instruction. Traditional instruction is not “bad” per se, but in my opinion should be one of several modalities of offered instruction which cater both to the learning needs of the students, the skills and aptitudes of the instructors, and the content of the courses.

There is no substitute, in my mind, for one-on-one, just-in-time support and training for educators of all levels who want to further integrate the use of technology within their instruction. The people who provide assistance to faculty must not only have technical skills, but (just as important but sometimes harder to find) they must have excellent personal and communication skills.

I don’t personally think we will see broad-based “transformation” in the educational environment without a significant agent of change– either at the K-12 level or in higher education. The most promising agent of change I have experienced and read about is the laptop computer, in a truly one-to-one teaching environment. These videos about one-to-one computing by Apple computer make the point better than I can with text in my blog.