In a column written in 2014 I wondered if academic librarians were being overwhelmed by the EdTech Surge – or if they were missing it altogether. The column referenced the EdTech Surge as a rapid growth in the number of educational technologies becoming available, resulting in a growing wave of resources that librarian-educators needed to keep up with in order to evaluate which new EdTech products and services could best meet the needs of librarians and those who they educate.
My opinion was that we were not doing a particularly good job of keeping up if most of the EdTech tools we were talking about had already been around for more than a few years and had been widely adapted. Why, I asked, weren’t we talking about cutting edge EdTech and the ways we were exploring their use in instruction, collaboration and more.
I’m sharing a new resource I’ve developed to publicize this challenge and to offer some basic resources that could be of help to all librarians who want and need to keep up with and explore educational technology. The result is Keeping Up With…The EdTech Surge, a new addition to ACRL’s “Keeping Up With…” series. After providing a brief overview of the EdTech Surge and the challenges and opportunities it presents, it shares a list of resources that librarians can use to conveniently keep up with the latest developments in EdTech and new educational technology tools. I hope you will check it out.
And while we are on the topic of EdTech Surges, the folks at EdSurge have announced DILA 2015. That stands for Digital Innovation in Learning Awards. Are you doing some cutting edge technology work that you’d like to share? There’s now a DILA category specifically for librarians and media specialists – the Learning Ninja Award – for “expanding the concept of the library and/or the role of the librarian or media specialist to harness the vast resources of the internet to support teachers and students”. Take a closer look and give some thought to applying.