Nailing Digital Jelly to a Virtual Tree

Summary: This article written by Kathy Schrock and Ferdi Serim explains how ISTE created an Emerging Technologies Task Force (ET) to help educators, school districts and staff with deciding if a new technology to them is right for their school or learning environment. An emerging technology is expressed throughout the article as a virtual tree and the challenges are the digital jelly hence the title of the article. The ET is an online database. The way data is collected is through grade level, size of district and type of network connections. This can allow the users of the ET to search for an emerging technology that fits the user’s demographic. The definition for an emerging technology within this database is one that is not widely in use or widely known. This means that an emerging technology for one school isn’t right for another. The way an emerging technology is looked at is by three different components organizational capacity, process management, and operational capacity. Organizational capacity discusses the amount of human resources and professional development needed for the technology. Process Management is about the tools used by the technology for teaching and learning (i.e. literacy tools, creativity tools). Operational capacity gives users an idea of other items needed to make it work, like network security or data management. The challenges that arise in this article are how can these emerging technologies be used? How long will it take from time implemented to adoption of technology? This database has broken up these emerging technologies into sub-categories to better understand what each is and what the technology is capable of doing. These categories are social networking, mobile phones, virtual worlds, user-generated content, new scholarship and emerging forms of publication and massively multiplayer educational gaming. These categories help users distinguish what type of technology they are looking for and what is out there for them. It seems that this database is helping schools decide and decipher which emerging technology is worth their money.

Reflection: It seems emerging technology can be very useful for school districts but also really overwhelming to decide which should be chosen to be used and which shouldn’t. I feel that this Emerging Technology Task Force created is a great tool that can be used by all educators. It seems through this article the way everything is broken up and even the technology itself if a school district or an educator themselves is looking for a new emerging technology to use then can read reviews, feedback, professional development needs, types of network needs and etc. However to get a better understanding of the ET I would have really liked to have navigated through this database myself.

References: Schrock, AuthorK., & Serim, F. (2007-08). Nailing digital jelly to a virtual tree Tracking emerging technologies for learning. Learning and Leading with Technology. 35(4), 12-16.