Ten Educational Technologies You Should Be Using Now
And how I stopped being a tech-skeptic in the classroom.
I wrote the first draft of this essay by hand. I still don’t own an iPhone. But I have drunk the ed-tech Kool-aid, and here’s my story of how that happened. (Scroll down for the practical list of technologies you should be using now.)
In 2016, a world where we would all go to school and teach online was unimaginable. Well, that’s not really true. Many of us deigned to imagine that future world. However, folks all over the globe were working tirelessly to develop cheaper, more accessible, and higher quality online educational experiences for all levels of students.
Back then, ed-news — by today’s standards — was rather tame. What was controversial in pedagogical debates then is the norm now. I remember when Harvard started distributing their free online MOOCs, folks in my department at the University of Texas were aflutter. What would this mean for tuition dollars? Would students no longer need or desire to enroll in (and pay for) the full-service university experience? What would happen to the faculty hierarchy if the popular, tenured faculty taught huge online courses? Would there be jobs left for anyone else? Many of these questions, in fact, remain.
