How Mobile Tech Is Disrupting K12 Education

Let’s look at the two biggest technology trends colliding in K12 classrooms:

Interactive Displays and Mobile Devices. It’s ed tech’s hottest mess yet, and that means work for EXO U, where we provide the teaching platform that connects those trends. It also means I get to work with teachers again, integrating the tools that make displays, content, and devices work together  precisely in the moment of instruction. It is a fun and rewarding time.

How will these trends shape the market?

Here’s a look at how BYOD and 1:1 learning environments are making a mark. BYOD More A Necessity Than Privilege Mandates are happening in many places. Students bring mobile devices into classrooms regardless of whether these devices are implemented into instruction. This can serve as a distraction, or, the available technology can help Teachers to improve learning outcomes. For cash-strapped districts, mobile integration solves problems. Not all students have mobile devices, bearing the solution of providing rental/borrowed devices to students.

Schools must be prepared to process a LOT of broken devices. Its a huge, messy equation. But districts will continue to work it out, emboldened by the success stories all around. You can expect the classroom to finally extend beyond school walls. Web-Driven Tools See Strain Schools are using more bandwidth. With lesson materials accessed from the cloud, videos streaming for instruction, thousands of students interacting on their mobile devices, and cloud-based SIS and LMS systems constantly moving data, complexity is blooming. Add thousands of mobile devices accessing cloud services and running a school becomes as complex as running a corporation. Districts feel the pain, and CIOs are getting smarter than the vendors that sell to them. While some companies have optimized their digital resources, most have a lot of work to do. So whether the product/service is free or low cost, data transfer is now being factored in.

Schools will ask for more offline capability, and developing markets will demand it. Expect to see better LAN and hub-driven solutions. Teachers Finally Get The Tools They’ve Been Asking For For decades, a teacher’s ability to integrate technology was limited to what their teaching system could add on.

It was pretty unlikely that you would find a Promethean classroom that had SMART’s assessment system. Once a new tool arrived, you likely used it for a long time. Today’s education technologists are far more skilled and adventurous.

They’ve grown impatient with giant brands and limited options, and they’ve been designing brilliant integrated solutions for years. They’ve figured out that teachers can train each other far better than companies can, prompting a respect for culture and, for many, a vehicle for leadership development. Enter student devices, and the teacher can integrate a wider range of content and tools than ever.

This opportunity bends our paradigm for instructional technology in the classroom, and it lands at the feet of the educational technology marketplace to deliver.

Because EXO U’s platform:

a) extends fast, easy teaching tools and

b) allows you to use your current teaching resources and

c) manages the devices in the classroom, leading the way.

Instead of a platform that forces adherence to our technology, we focus on integrations that extend more easily using our platform tools. When Teachers with iPads ask for Ormi, it’s usually because a few limitations in iOS won’t let them bring the right resources together at once.

When Google Teachers ask for Ormi, typically they love what they have, but they want to control what kids are doing on their screens. Teachers aren’t lost and looking for new tools. They are looking to integrate and move faster, easier and more confidently with what they have. Learn more about EXO U at http://ormi.exou.com/