Rachel Smith, vice president at NMC, said the first technology likely to be adopted in one year or less is cloud computing,
which she said is essentially many computers networked together that
share storage and applications, and swap off computing power. “And what
we’re seeing is a lot of schools are using cloud computing for the
shared apps and the storage,” she said, “but not as many schools are
using them for the higher end computing power that’s used in research.”
As outlined in the report, cloud computing “can offer significant cost
savings in terms of IT support, software, and hardware expenses. It has
become common for schools to use cloud-based applications to manage
calendars, rosters, grade books, and communication between school and
home.”
The second technology, also likely to be adopted in 12 months or less is
collaborative environments, which Smith said are simply online spaces
where people can work in groups and they’re typically used for
collaborative creation of content and as social networking spaces.
“What teachers are finding out is they can connect their classrooms with
classrooms across town or in another part of the country or world, and
their students can actually work with these sister classrooms,” Smith
said. “No matter where they are, they can explore the differences that
happen because of different cultures or environments, and the students
can work together to create products with people they may never meet in
person.”
By Jessica B. Mulholland
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