week # 13 Future of Education and Technology

I found a very relative article titled "Technology: Making Your Schools Future Proof" by Alan Desshoff.  Basically the article is about ways to upgrade your schools technology in an effective way, so that in the future, the technology will be obsolete and the mass amounts of money spent on technology will have been wasted.

The main pullout quote at the top of the article states: Administrators plan ahead by implementing flexible technology now to prevent major overhauls later.
It is a practical concern for school administrations to fear money being spent on technology that made not be effective or long lasting.  However, if a school spends money on the right kinds of technology that will last into the future, essentially you are making your school "future proof."
"'A future-proof facility is “the escort to a probable future,' adds Frank Locker, president of Frank Locker Educational Planning, a consulting firm in Dover, N.H. He defines it as 'inherently a flexible building that can be used as appropriate today but allows future reinterpretation and reassignment of programs and functions,' anticipating and supporting change without expensive remodeling" (Desshoff, 2).

Some overall tips:
#1 • UPGRADES—How easy or realistic is it to upgrade?
#2 • LIFE CYCLE—How long will it be before your technology is obsolete? What happens then?
#3 • INFRASTRUCTURE—Do you have the wiring, network, and facilities to support an expansion
of your technology fi ve years from now?
And lastly #4 • SUPPORT—Do you have the tech support for such an expansion?

The main points/ideas Desshoff stated in this article is:
First of all, making your school wireless.  This reduces the amount of cables that are needed to go throughout the campus/classrooms.  Anyone can hook up to wireless as long as they are in the system and have the password.
Second, Communication Alerts.  These are essential for a school, instead of having a loud intercom dictating what drill will be done, there can be a specific message sent to every individual on campus, sometimes cell phones, email, etc.  I know Northwest has Campus Alerts, and they are sent to student's cell phones.  When school was cancelled because of snow, I got a text message.
Third, Interactive Whiteboards.  They provided a list of at least five different interactive whiteboards, and I had only heard of Promethean Board.  I use Smart Board, that was in my high school.  The future is Interactive whiteboards, a SmartBoard is standard for schools.  Projectors are becoming more advanced as well, they don't have to hang from the ceiling anymore, there are becoming more precise.  The plan is to have every school using interactive whiteboards, and this is something schools want to invest in, and it will be worth the money spent on this technology.  eBeam Edge for Education is a cheap and reliable interactive white board for schools.
Fourth, "Into the Cloud" or other wise known as Cloud computing which is basically internet based sharing of resources, files, information and software that can be accessed by many computers.  At Northwest we had Discovery, in which information can be shared and documents can be exchanged and accessed by anyone with a username and password.