Buzzwords and the next big thing are hard to escape. They sidle up to us when we are not watching. I get my share of these, especially in education. (Truth be told, I could not escape it even in marketing, or advertising).

So I get asked sometimes what I see as the next big thing to hit us in teaching. It’s easy to rattle off some tools, because they are touted as some form of  ‘student engagement.’ I have this feeling that Ed-Tech is going to be as passe as Social Media. Meaning we should stop talking about it as if it was some self-contained phenomenon or enigma that needs to be deciphered.

I’m not alone in having this sentiment. I’m sure many teachers are thinking the same. Andrew Marcinek has written a sensible piece about this in Medium. He goes so far as to say (“The End of Ed-Tech”) that

It is no longer necessary to say whether you consider yourself “tech savvy” or not. Essentially, “tech savviness” should be an inherent part of an educator’s educational philosophy because it will be an essential part of every student’s future. This is to say, educators should understand how active use of technology hardware and software should be led by the learning objectives and outcomes as opposed to being front and center in any classroom.

Like it or not almost anything we don’t yet consider ‘technology’ or a ‘tool’ will become so embedded in what we do that we won’t need to have a class on how to use it. I don’t think there was ever a PD session on how to use the electric pencil sharpener, or the two-button mouse.

So the next big thing in Ed-Tech will be ‘Nothing Much.’ To look out for it, is to look ponder about the wrong question.