New entries in the adoption curve

I spent most of the last two days at our local "Innovation Zone Summit." A collaboration of our school district and two neighboring districts with the support of our local university, the event stresses not how to use technology, but how to use technology effectively in the classroom and are lead by our own practicing teachers, not hired guns or outside experts. Only teams that include classroom teachers, the building principal and the librarian participate - not individuals - and there is the expectation of a building plan for technology integration for the year by the end of the two days. And each district has a "liaison" that will work to continue the sharing among districts and the teachers who participated through the year.

It's pretty cool.

It's also a good time to get a handle on where our buildings are on the adoption cycle with new technologies. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle 

Anyone who has been working in educational technolgy for even a few years will vaiidate the curve above. Most technologies or application starts with a few brave souls who risk being "odd." In few years, that technology is used by the majority of teachers and the one's not using are the odd ones. It's happened with word processing, electronic gradebooks, multimedia presentations, digital cameras, web-based resources, and interactive whiteboards among other now unexceptional technologies and applications.

I'd place these newer technologies/practices at these stages for the adoption curve in our district:

• Technology for differentiated instruction: Early adopters
• BYOD: Innovators
• Flipped classrooms and self-created instructional videos: Early adopters
• Use of CMS (Moodle): Early majority
• Tablets for personal/professional use: Early majority
• Tablets for student use in the classroom: Early adopters
• Digital textbook use: Innovators
• Teachers using technology for Redefinition of the SAMR model: Early adopters
• Teachers using technology for Substitution on the SAMR model: Laggards 
• Gamification: Innovators (if that)
• GoogleApps for Education: Laggards
• Online information for parents: Late Adopters

YMMV

Using my old PSLA (Probability of Large Scale Adoption) Rubric (2007) below, I'd give tablets used in a 1:1 program a very high score. Laptops, Chromebooks, Student Response Systems, hmmmm, not so much.

Kind of fun to speculate!

Comments

[Kelli M]

A question I have - why do you score '1:1 tablets' more highly than 'laptops'? Is it the 1:1 factor (because you can also have a 1:1 laptop program)? Or is it because you find tablets to be more usable/cheap than laptops?
Cheers!

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Kelli,

I would personally score tablets higher in the areas of simplicity, convenience and affordability. On usability and reliability, they seem about even to me. (Usability depends on the tasks one asks of them.)

This is not scientific! - YMMV!

Doug