In George Veletsiano’s blog, he defines Emerging Technologies as “tools, innovations, and advancements utilized in diverse educational settings (including distance, face-to-face, and hybrid forms of education) to serve varied education-related purposes (e.g., instructional, social, and organizational goals)”.
My favorite characteristic in his definition comes from #2: Emerging Technologies are evolving organisms that exist in a state of “coming into being”. This to me means that we can use what is available in ways that fit our specific needs. Me for example….I am a first grade teacher. Using technology in my classroom can be very tricky with 19 sets of little hands and 299 questions that go along with those little people. But I think of Christine Pinto, a kindergarten teacher in California who has used Google to create wonderful lessons for her kinders. She has taken Google slides or spreadsheets and made them into math lessons that are relevant to her students. She has used what was available and evolved it to exist in a state that worked for her.
I was also struck by George’s “Not Yet” statement. Emerging Technologies fit into that “Not Yet” category. To me, this means that while we have the potential to use technology in amazing ways, we haven’t yet. Simply because a platform doesn’t exist for it yet, or the tools to bring it to us aren’t there yet.
What’s exciting to me about Emerging Technologies is that there is the amazing opportunity to really enhance student learning by meeting individual and whole group needs. There are programs designed to be high interest and differentiated in order to allow individual students to be at their best. Emerging technologies are ways that we can bring technology to a new level, especially in the classroom.
Sources:
Click to access 2016-nmc-cosn-horizon-report-k12-en.pdf
Mrs. Richardson's Room 
Hello
I really like the way you found a tool dealing with emerging technology (google slides) that can be used in your classroom. I know our kindergarten teacher uses classdojo with his 19 kinders and they love it.
I have also had success using pre-existing google slides in my 5th and 6th grade math classes with our eureka program. I am interested to learn more about them so that I can create them for my social studies classes.
Have a great day.
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I need to try to do more in my classroom! I think it would really be amazing 🙂
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Hi Brandy,
I am curious about your statement, “while we have the potential to use technology in amazing ways, we haven’t yet.” I would argue that some pretty interesting things are already happening. What do you envision?
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Forgive me Carolyn! You are absolutely correct. That was poorly worded. What I meant to imply is that I believe that new technology is waiting to be reimagined. We have done this, but my statement meant to imply is that I believe there are new technologies that are waiting to be discovered by classroom teachers to be used in “out of the box” sorts of ways 🙂
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Brandy,
Google has so much to offer. I have been using Google Drive for the last part of my undergrad and for my whole masters program at UAS. It is great to have everything in one place where I can access it from home or school. My pictures are also backed up to Google Photos. I didn’t use them too much before about 5 years ago when I would use CD’s or a USB drive to get files from A to B. Now, I can’t image using anything else. It goes to show that technologies are ever changing and we need to try and keep up to keep our students present in today’s world!
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Google has definitely made my life easier! Especially with organization!
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I find it a bit overwhelming to sift through all the new apps and programs, and; therefore, often keep working with what I already know. Any tips on how to find new tech to help differentiate for students, without spending hours looking and getting overwhelmed?
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Pepper, I’m the same way. I am blessed to have a husband who loves technology, and holds a position working with tech. He’s usually the one who points me in the direction of new apps or programs that he thinks are worthwhile. Otherwise, I will go off articles I read or recommendations from peers.
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I love your enthusiasm towards ET. The way I look at ET has similar feel to it such as I see it as new territory that needs to be crossed and investigated. After we do this, it is then our responsibility to share our findings with others (specially teachers). I am excited to see what different technologies our classmates present to us so that we can have an idea whether or not the time spent using it is worth it.
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It IS our responsibility to share, isn’t it!? What a great opportunity for professional learning communities 🙂
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Good blog entry. It is important that as teachers we use what works for us to help our students learn. And there is a lor out there that we just don’t know how to use. Keeping current with all of it is impossible. And I agree that much of what is new we don’t have the means to utilize, but we will one day.
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I believe it is up to us to keep up to speed with technology in the classroom, there are times where I want to scream where is my tech person!!! I wish I was more of a problem solver myself when tech is being wonky. Keep reaching is what I have to keep reminding myself.
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