A Map of Education Technology Through 2040 [#Infographic]
What will education look like in the future?
Considering that 10 years ago very few students carried smartphones, and tablets didn’t even exist, it’s impossible to look 20 or 30 years into the future. It is likely, however, that cloud-based technology will be the foundation for educational technology and that remote, online learning will continue to grow at a faster pace.
Will the developing world catch up with the developed world? Will residential colleges be as popular as they are today? And what about degrees…will they still mean something to employers?
According to his recent column in the Guardian, education consultant and head of ICT at Kingston Grammar School Matt Britland believes that the cloud will solve many of the problems facing today’s educators:
The future is about access, anywhere learning and collaboration, both locally and globally. Teaching and learning is going to be social. Schools of the future could have a traditional cohort of students, as well as online only students who live across the country or even the world. Things are already starting to move this way with the emergence of massive open online courses (MOOCs).
For me, the future of technology in education is the cloud.
Technology can often be a barrier to teaching and learning. I think the cloud will go a long way to removing this barrier. Why? By removing the number of things that can go wrong.
The infographic below, designed by Michell Zappa of Envisioning Tech, examines a few other technologies that could play an important role over the next 30 years:
This visualization attempts to organize a series of emerging technologies that are likely to influence education in the upcoming decades. Despite its inherently speculative nature, the driving trends behind the technologies can already be observed, meaning it's a matter of time before these scenarios start panning out in learning environments around the world.
Check it out and let us know what you think the future looks like.
