Giving Compass' Take:

• FOEcast is a group of educators who want to look ahead to the future of education technology and build newer tools utilizing educators expertise in the field and tracking the trends they see.

• How can educators collaborate and create networks that share knowledge about what works and what does not work in edtech?

• Learn about other challenges in edtech, including figuring out how to address the teacher shortage and diminish the effects of that on the edtech movement. 


A group of educators trying to get a handle on what’s coming next in technology are working to build a new type of organization to track edtech trends.

The effort isn’t backed by any college, major philanthropy or membership organization. Rather it’s a loose group of volunteers with a website and a notion that a digital collaboration might fill a gap and offer new kinds of insights. The effort is tentatively called the Future of Education and Everything community, or FOEcast (think 'focused,' or 'fauxcast').

According to the group’s website, “it aims to enable the positive conversations and solutions that learners from K-12, Higher Ed, Vocational Ed and workplaces need so we can thrive no matter what comes our way…”

The idea for the effort was first proposed by Bryan Alexander, a consultant and self-described “futurist” of edtech, in response to the sudden end last year of the New Media Consortium, a nonprofit known for its series of Horizon Reports on the future of edtech.

As FOEcast was forming, Educause, a major edtech association in higher ed, bought the assets of the New Media Consortium and pledged to continue the Horizon Report for higher education.

The goal is not to replace Educause or NMC, he adds, but to do something new, with a “decentralized organization.” The hope is to include educators from both K-12 and higher education, and from institutions around the world. “We’re not hearing enough voices from the rest of the world, and there’s also a diversity aspect, in that some of the organizations have tended to be male and less people of color,” he says. “We want to make sure we have our ears everywhere.”

Read the full article about future of edtech by Jeffrey R. Young at EdSurge