My response to a piece I read yesterday:  Top 10 Education Technologies that Will Be Dead in Gone in the Next Decade

The perpetual problem with educational technology is that, collectively speaking, educators do not take time to really think about the affordances and (dis)advantages of the particular technology. In other words, will the technology really be a boon for student learning, or will it just be another fad to be momentarily (and expensively) embraced in the beginning, only to be quickly relegated to the storage closet. Here’s a quote from a piece I read a couple of years ago:

“Every technology is used before it is completely understood. There is always a lag between an innovation and the apprehension of its consequences.”–From “Among the Disrupted,” New York Times Book Review, 1-18-15

As for dead technology # 7 (from the article/link above), last semester I assigned each of my students a DVD with content that was to be the central source for an upcoming research project. The material is only available on DVD. One student was truly puzzled and asked what she could do about her dilemma: she did not own or have access to a basic DVD player (Blu-Ray wasn’t even mentioned). As I write this post, I look to my left and remember that laptops are now manufactured without DVD drives. “Stream” is a verb…for now…and a river runs through it…