RIP Ed Tech

This morning an article popped up in my personal Inbox from PC Mag. It was part of a newsletter from a website I only occasionally peruse. But this article caught my attention and you can read it here: In Memoriam: The Tech We Lost in 2014.

It prompted me to think about how many technologies we have seen come and go in education during this past decade. Some of the technologies looked promising and then, just, didn’t. Or they were picked off by a more advanced product or technology. I am sure each of you have a stack of equipment in some room, perhaps your own office, which was purchased to “try” the trend, and then was never adopted. Or the equipment that was requested, desired and oh so necessary to student success, only to have the instructors completely lose interest or not change their styles enough to make the ed tech useful.

I am not talking about typical changing technology that we all witness like projectors which had user replaceable lamps and now advanced to lamp-less versions. Technology is always evolving. What I am talking about are the tech products that seemed so interesting- a problem solver- but they never seemed to get off the ground, at least in education. Maybe the products were widely adopted but over the past few years a killer technology buried the old one six feet under Giant’s Stadium a la Jimmy Hoffa, never to be heard from again.

By the way: VGA is not an example of this. We all HOPED VGA would be dead this year, but gosh we still have to support those professors who haven’t upgraded their laptop in way too many years. So I don’t want to see anyone list VGA in the comments.

I know you all have them. Take a moment and share some items that may be in the corner of your office, collecting dust. The promising piece of technology that is no longer necessary on your campus or building. Let’s give them one last honor, and then send them out to sea.

**Also, remember that if the...