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Part 1 of my Top 10 Ed-Tech Trends of 2014 series

It’s time once again for my annual review of the dominant trends in education technology. This is the fifth year that I’ve done this. It’s a massive undertaking, aided in part by the weekly roundups of all the education-related news that I write every week. It’s a project that I both dread – I mean, this is how I will spend December – and adore. I learn so much about the politics, industry, implementation, ideology, business, and bullshit by scrutinizing the year's occurences so closely. As someone who is fascinated by the cultural history of ed-tech, it’s always useful for me to see what stories are told most frequently and most passionately, what stories resonate and why.

A quick look back at previous year’s trends:

2010


Ed-Tech Politics
Online Learning
Mobile Learning

Social Learning / Social Networks

Investment in Education Technology

2011


The iPad
Social Media – Adoption and Crackdown
Text-messaging
Data (Which Still Means Mostly “Standardized Testing”)

The Digital Library
Khan Academy

STEM Education’s Sputnik Moment
The Higher Education Bubble
“Open”
The Business of Ed-Tech

2012


The Business of Ed-Tech
The Maker Movement
Learning to Code

The Flipped Classroom

MOOCs

The Battle to Open Textbooks

Education Data and Learning Analytics

The Platforming of Education

Automation and Artificial Intelligence

The Politics of Ed-Tech

2013


“Zombie Ideas”
The Politics of Education/Technology

Standards

MOOCs and Anti-MOOCs

Coding and “Making”

Hardware

Data vs Privacy

The Battle for “Open”
What Counts “For Credit”
The Business of Ed-Tech

As you can see by this list, some things change; some things don’t. Indeed, last year I kicked off the series by arguing that what we often see in education technology are “zombie ideas,” monstrosities that just don’t seem to die.

You can read the rest of this article here

Audrey Watters


Published

Hack Education

The History of the Future of Education Technology

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