Technology predictions for 2012

One of the IT vendors that sends "stuff" to my inbox in false-hope I will buy their products sent me a list of seven technology predictions for 2012... as we are nearly the end of the calendar year, such predictions will be common in the next few weeks...

Here is the list... I wonder if it applies to education (in my opinion)...

1. Corporations adopt social networking as a primary communication tool.

Educators seem to be afraid of social networks... and for good reason... but. The model of connecting and communicating provided by social networks is works, and most of our students find it familiar. Educators will find ways to join our students in the 21st century.

2. Death of the laptop?

We all hear the hype about tablets and smartphones... those devices are increasingly useful for academic purposes. While we will still use computers and laptops for those tasks for which they are needed (e.g. multimedia production and other tasks that require processing and memory), we will come to the conclusion that tablets and phones are appropriate and available for many purposes.

3. The "To the Cloud" movement continues.

Moving to the cloud will allow educators to save many costs and to provide a more seamless connection between off-campus computing and on-campus computing. Educators will realize this and join the movement to the cloud. 

4. The need for Virtualization skills will grow exponentially.

"Virtualization means moving multiple physical servers to a virtual machine environment. Virtualization vendors such as Citrix, VMware, and Microsoft are making it possible for companies to improve the efficiency and availability of IT resources and applications." These words begin the description of why this is a trend for the next year... my guess is readers of this blog will nod their heads and trust the IT professional making that move!

5. The days of owning software are numbered.

This is an extension of the cloud model, that educators will be slow to adopt (except for those of us who join the open source movement). If I buy software that provides a useful curriculum need-- perhaps to simulate experiments, and that is a useful lesson, then we--in education--are likely to own and use that version as long as we can keep it running.

6. Real bandwidth to the household.

This will be a motivator for schools to get online with distance learning, hybrid classrooms, and other applications of computers to instruction.