Devices Used to Matter

Mac vs PC

I remember starting my teaching career using whatever Mac was in Brevard County School classrooms in 1998. I had to do everything at school on that machine, because I certainly could not do it at home on my PC. Luckily I was a first year teacher, so I already planned on staying late.

That does not matter anymore as files are opened and used on both devices and the transition between platform documents no longer looks like twiki throw-up.

When market share equalled portions of your class which could not access files – that mattered. Welcome to today, where what used to matter in #EdTech doesn’t anymore. Look at the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) initiatives and realize softwares, such as GoogleDrive, are making your device a non-factor.

iPhone vs Android

Speaking of devices no longer being a deal breaker, can we talk about phones? Style or status might still make this choice matter, but since I am talking about apps on phones these are essentially equal.

What else used to matter in #EdTech which doesn't anymore?

Storage Used to Matter

It used to be local storage or portable storage. The size of your hard drive was paramount. Now you can have a cloud strategy to over-come any hard drive shortcomings.
Now everything is cloud-based and it doesn’t really matter which cloud anymore.

Students can go their entire educational career and never encounter a 3.5″ floppy or laser discs. Software is rarely locally installed and instead is more likely a subscription-based access code away on The Cloud. The USB has a minor following as now an added layer of security is to be housed outside of an Internet machine. However, once connected to an Internet machine that data is compromised anyway. (P.S. I do not have a computer not networked, don’t hand me that Top Secret USB drive, seriously).

Location Used to Matter

Meetings used to depend on physically gathering everyone together. Things used to get done synchronously or not at all.
Consider the evolution of web conferencing from costly to free in the past decade. Location does not matter anymore either.

Consider the variety of people working together on a daily basis around the world – and what that means for the future of the students sitting in classes today.

Consume vs Construct Used to Matter

We used to buy the entire album, used to wait months to rent that new movie, and watch a season of a television show once a week. And as we experienced that content, there was little new material we could create out those resources. The way in which we consume has changed, what we consume has changed, and what we do with what we consume has changed. We can consume digitally via many platforms outside the cable or satellite company structure of the past. We can own that content and create new products out of it unlike any other time in the past.

Why Does this Matter?

Technology is not as tedious to deal with in education as it (admittedly) used to be. Teachers do not need to have special training for the most part. It is not a foreign language to avoid learning, in fact it might be harder to avoid using technology in education today. So what this means is that if you are not using technology with your students, in your classroom today, soon you are going to be in the “used to matter” category.