Education Stormfront

There were a couple of interesting trends to watch this year in the US.  Firstly, businesses are posting great profits, especially the financial institutions.  This is natural for banks right now because it doesn’t cost them hardly anything to borrow money and they can give loans or even just buy bonds and make lots of profits.

The other trend that goes along with that is that businesses aren’t hiring right now. I think this is partially because of all the new regulations and taxes coming from the government.  It just costs too much to hire someone now, especially if you have to get saddled with a massive new vaguely defined  health care obligation.  You either hire part time with no benefits, or you use technology to help you current staff get more done with less.  Technology is a very forecastable investment.  You can budget for it.  Human costs are very hard to predict right now.

So how does this affect education and specifically Higher Education?  Well, the same factors are going to affect it even worse.  With tenure, it becomes very hard to trim payrolls and adjust to enrollment numbers.  This also greatly reduces the pressure to help existing teachers become more efficient with technology.  In all areas of society workers are using technology to do more in a day.  You can have 5 meetings with clients in 5 cities by using teleconferencing technologies.

If you were to apply that same principle to education, class sizes would be going up and the number of teachers would be going down and yet the opposite is happening.  That can’t continue for long.

Campus Technology magazine (which I really enjoy reading) has a list of tech trends to watch for in 2011. I like this list but think there are other factors that will hit higher ed in the coming year.  I’ll have to make my own list soon. 🙂

• 5 Higher Ed Tech Trends To Watch in 2011 — Campus Technology

  List of trends to watch for 2011

  tags: education technology highered nell

  • Technology that was unimaginable a decade or so ago is commonplace on today’s campuses. In 2010 American colleges and universities responded to the ever-advancing IT requirements of their students and faculty with mobile pilot programs, investments in online learning, massive network overhauls, and initiatives designed to offset some of the increases in energy use brought on by all these new technologies, among other novel programs.
  • What will 2011 bring? Campus Technology spoke with a handful of higher education technology experts to get their take. We’ve compiled their top 5 responses here.
  • The Cloud Computing Movement Will Continue.
  • Investing in purchase-and-install software is falling by the wayside as institutions catch onto the value of using “cloud” applications that are housed (and accessed) online.
  • More Work Will Be Done Without Wires.
  • Being tethered to an outlet or Ethernet connection is so passé for college students, teachers, and administrators. With more and more of these individuals using mobile devices to connect to the Internet, the wireless wave is sure to grow in 2011.
  • Mobile Technologies Will Continue to Proliferate in the Classroom
  • “We’re not quite at the point of every student using a laptop in class, but we’re definitely getting there,” said Stoloff, who added he expects the mobile trend to take an even stronger hold on higher education in 2011. “It provides a great way to supplement classroom instruction in a productive manner.”
  • Online Education will even Further Displace Seat Time.
  • 2011 will find more colleges integrating online learning into their curriculums as core offerings, and not just adjuncts to classroom learning.
  • Looking out even further, Stoloff painted a future picture where colleges are less focused on “seat time” and more on validating learning regardless of where it takes place (be it overseas, in the community, or in a traditional classroom)
  • A Retreat from Technology Overload is Imminent.
  • As the Master of Arts in Teaching and Technology program director for the Marlboro College Graduate School in Marlboro, VT, Caleb Clark uses blended learning, e-portfolios, WordPress, and other Web media tools in the classroom. And while he doesn’t dispute the value of these and the multitude of other technology innovations being used in higher education right now, he does expect a slight pullback on the technology hype in 2011 as people get back to basic communications and human interactions (outside of Facebook and Twitter).

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.