Hello. It is great to be back from a good break and I look forward to providing my readers with the best information on training, education, teaching, coaching and anything else in between. I have been reading online a host of 2011 predictions for everything and anything including education and I thought it was only fair to have my own stab at this new year obsession. Here are my predictions for 2011 in the area of education and training:
1. Most things remain the same
2. Nothing new occurs
3. Real innovation is almost absent
4. Governments continue to downgrade and undersell the importance of education while at the same time telling the public that they are doing even more to ensure that education is priority one
5. We have more and more trials of everything we trialled last year and in most cases the year before that
Ok, so I am a little pessimistic. But honestly, what really happened in education and training in 2010. Very little that was innovative and inspiring. There were some excellent new advances but in most cases they were just adaptions of old formats using some slightly different approach or available technology.
There were many advances in other professions through out 2010 and I am sure this will continue in 2011 so why don’t we have anything really new happening in education. Are we risk adverse? Are we technically incapable? Are we lacking innovative spirit. I don’t necessarily think that these are the reasons but on the other hand I am not sure what some reasons for our incredibly slow movement into the future are. Do you? Maybe you think that I am wrong and possibly you know of some real innovation that occurred in 201o. Please tell me what it was as I would like to be proven wrong on this one.
Here are some very interesting statistics on internet usage in 2010. There is something important going on here. Where is education and training?
I received an iPad for Christmas and I can see it’s potential but just moving textbooks to it can’t be called innovative. Mobile phones, according to the future predictors, are going to have a huge year in 2011 but I haven’t really seen anyone do anything amazing yet in education.
So what are we waiting for. The rest of the world is barely keeping up with the rapid advances in technology but we in education and technology keep plodding along (except a very small group of pioneers) dipping our toes in the ed tech future but never really diving in and getting soaked.
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