In the first part of our video, LeiLani Cauthen, CEO and Publisher at the Learning Counsel News Media and Research, explains the new financial realities of the EdTech world. By all accounts, last year was a record-setting year for technology spending, yet 2021, with its super-sized portions of stimulus funding, will leave 2020 in its dust, setting new standards for hardware and software purchasing. “When we did our national survey,” said Cauthen, “we found that in 2020, the total spend on technology spiked by $7.5 billion. Now we’re looking at the third, big round of stimulus, which at $132 billion for education, will be 10 times the size of CARES Act 1. So it's really a significant tsunami of money. It will probably take three years at the bottom to spend it all. There are superintendents that we're carrying on back-channels with who are saying, ‘We don't know what to do with all of this money.’ That's what we really want to make sure people understand. We're in a moment of real transformation, not tack on only, not augment. Really start thinking about your overarching architecture and everything you do.”
In the second part of our video, Chris McMurray, VP of EduJedi Leadership at the Learning Counsel says, “Essentially there are four things that we're going to talk about today. One, is really identifying and understanding the types of things that we have now populated our ecosystems with, we need to make sure that we have a clear understanding and a basis of knowledge for that. Next, we want to establish common vocabulary, as we all know in terms of facilitating change and moving systems, common vocab is really critical. We're also going to understand professional responsibilities. That's a key point of discussion that we at the Learning Counsel and the EduJedi been developing. And fourth, we will talk about using a model. In all the iterations of the things that we've been doing and shifting to, having a clear model on a pathway really makes it much more manageable.”
Don’t miss this fascinating, nuts and bolts discussion about using and maximizing the resources within your digital ecosystem. Understand everyone’s role and function, and see how moving forward in sophistication allows teachers to be more human (and more effective).
