Dive Brief:

• The education technology market is growing rapidly and expected to hit $252 billion globally by 2020, according to the 2017 Kahoot! EdTrends Report, which identifies four major trends in ed tech based on a survey of 50 million active users, and 580 U.S. teachers.
• In looking at top trends, the report found that Google OS and overall computer usage in the classroom had increased among faculty and students, decision-making on the types of technology to adopt is more often tied to its potential for productivity gain, and that there is rapid of expansion of digital platforms in classroom, with greater attention given to computational thinking, coding, and data.
• And in terms of technological implementation, Kahoot! found as a fourth trend that the greatest obstacle to technological integration for public school educators is a lack of resources. While this issue exists for private school teachers as well, their biggest hurdle is around a lack of training to understand and adopt the technology. 

Dive Insight:

Technology adoption in K-12 classrooms across the United States is growing at a fast rate, with students coming into the classroom demanding more creativity and interaction in their learning. The EdTrends Report highlights this reality, showing that not only ed tech increasing in usage generally, but that teachers are also needing to adjust quickly in order to handle technology's rapid saturation into the classroom. In identifying the four trends the report found specifically that Google's operating system increased to 27% from 14% in 2015, while computer use generally increased by 6 percentage points to 46% year-over-year for Q1 of 2017. 

Further, it showed that the top reason why educators want technological teaching tools is to increase student productivity levels, with over 60% of the teachers surveyed indicating this as an answer to what their most significant ed tech priorities for the year would be. And, 56% of survey respondents indicated that they are moving toward digital platforms for teaching, learning and assessment, while more than half mention personalized learning. Both public and private school respondents identified budget and resource constraints and lack of training as greatest hurdles to technology adoption, in addition to generally seeing technology as not all that necessary, having a disconnect with the curriculum, or facing bureaucratic obstacles.