According to results from a new innovation survey, CoSN today revealed the top five hurdles, accelerators and technology enablers in K-12 education.
 
The trends were identified in CoSN’s survey of nearly 100 education leaders, practitioners and changemakers worldwide. The participants engaged in a six-month discussion about emerging technologies as part of CoSN’s Driving K-12 Innovation initiative. Beginning in early 2019, CoSN will produce a series of three publications focusing on each topic. The series will be capped off with a new toolkit delivering practical tips for schools leaders to spark discussions and action around the findings.
 
“CoSN’s Driving K-12 Innovation series continues our commitment to delivering high-quality insights on education technology developments. By highlighting the key challenges and opportunities – with an eye toward future implications – our findings should encourage meaningful discussions on the actions needed to enhance teaching and learning environments,” said Irene Spero, Chief External Relations Officer, CoSN. 
 
According to the initiative, hurdles are obstacles that make participants slow down, evaluate, practice and then make the leap to better support teaching and learning. The five hurdles, scored and ranked in order of difficulty to overcome them, are:
 
  • Ongoing Professional Development
  • Technology and the “Future of Work”
  • Pedagogy vs. Technology Gap
  • Digital Equity
  • Scaling and Sustaining Innovation
Accelerators are megatrends that drive change suddenly and gradually over time. The top five accelerators, which were ranked from most gradual to fastest and most intense, are:
 
  • Building the Human Capacity of Leaders
  • Design Thinking
  • Personalization
  • Data-Driven Practices
  • Learners as Creators
Tech enablers are tools that support smoother leaps over the hurdles and expansive changes in global K-12 education. The top five tech enablers, which were ranked in order of closest proximity to mainstream adoption, are:
 
  • Mobile Devices
  • Blended Learning
  • Cloud Infrastructure
  • Extended Reality
  • Analytics and Adaptive Technologies
 
The full survey results are available here. CoSN invites all members to explore the findings and submit their own examples of hurdles, accelerators or enablers by January 25, 2019. Select examples will be showcased on the Driving K-12 Innovation website and in future publications.
 
The Driving K-12 Innovation project is made possible through the following sponsorship support: ClassLink and Google (Gold sponsors), Amazon Web Services, Dell EMC and Kajeet (Silver sponsors) and ENA (Bronze sponsor). For more information, visit: cosn.org/k12innovation.