In 2020, educators became heavily tech-reliant during lockdown to keep in touch with their pupils. Yet still, keeping pupils motivated from afar was a complex challenge.
This ongoing issue with remote learning has forced a pragmatism around tech-use. Teachers and other school staff have recognised that edtech must support learning goals and pupils’ results to be effective in the classroom.
According to the Promethean report, the preference for interactive panels and tablets continues to increase, together with apps—all of which saw their highest use rates yet. This was along with laptops, cloud-based lesson delivery and screen mirroring.
This year, perhaps unsurprisingly, remote teaching software, distance learning and video conferencing solutions have come into their own, supporting the many teachers and pupils working and learning remotely.
At the same time, there’s been a significant uptick in the use of hardware like laptops, visualisers and interactive flat panel displays. Emerging technologies like VR, 3D printers, however, are waning in popularity.
Find out how lockdown has encouraged edtech to evolve in 2020/21.
When it comes to the future of edtech, it seems key lessons have been learnt from lockdown.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Promethean’s annual research has shown that over half of SLT members expect virtual learning environments to see the biggest growth in the future. At the same time, however, teachers (40%) and IT managers (46%) expect front-of-class technology to have the biggest growth.
Remote learning certainly isn’t the future — 9 out of 10 educators expect technology to seamlessly blend with traditional teaching methods in the next 10 years.
This points towards a more holistic approach to learning in the future — perhaps combining traditional class-based learning with the flexibility of cloud-based homework submission and online assessment.
To read more about the predicted edtech trends of tomorrow, and find out which edtech tools are expected to stand the test of time, read the Promethean blog.
Reproduced from Promethean World: Evolution of Edtech Trends
Read more about the role of Education IT Managers during the recent pandemic
