Apodaca: Technology in the classroom is inevitable, but let’s proceed cautiously

For many years now we’ve heard predictions that technology would transform education. But that expected transformation has evolved in fits and starts, faced major obstacles and been beset by numerous mistake-prone rollouts.

Just last week, Los Angeles schools chief John Deasy resigned after facing harsh criticism for his ill-fated plans to equip every student with an iPad and put all student records online.

Yet despite such problems, it’s now obvious that we are already well past the tipping point, and that technology’s role in our schools is widely accepted and becoming an unquestionably essential piece of the educational fabric.

Part of the evidence for that development can be seen in the business world, where education technology has emerged as an expected hot growth market, just as other areas of the technology sector have hit lulls.

Global spending on education technology for the classroom reached $13 billion last year, up 11% from 2012, according to Futuresource Consulting. That figure includes spending on everything from mobile devices to “smart” classroom technology such as interactive whiteboards like the ones installed in the new middle-school enclaves at Costa Mesa and Corona del Mar high schools.

The consulting firm projects that the edtech sector, as it’s often called, will continue to experience substantial growth, reaching $19 billion by 2018.

In the United States, the firm predicts that more than 70 million mobile computing devices will be used in K-12 education by year’s end — and that doesn’t even include those devices that students bring from home. If that figure holds, that would represent a 34% penetration of the potential market. By 2019, it expects a two-thirds market penetration.

As computers become commonplace in classrooms, new opportunities have also arisen for content providers, and a rash of start-up companies and even old-school educational materials developers are racing to fill the demand for online curricula and educational apps.

“The global education industry is in a state of flux, with traditional learning styles and methodologies being challenged by a new breed of online delivery solutions,” a Futuresource executive commented in a prepared statement. “The opportunity is colossus.”

Venture capitalists, who make money spotting emerging markets, investing in companies expected to experience high growth within those markets, and selling them later for a profit, have taken notice. One recent example: an agreement this month for Renaissance Learning Co., a K-12 assessment and learning analytics company, to be acquired by a private equity firm for $1.1 billion just over two years after another private equity firm bought it for $455 million.

Nice profit, indeed.

A recent Education Week piece explained that the edtech market rush is partially being driven by “top-down” momentum fostered by government policies and economic forces. I read this as reference to the new Common Core State Standards, which rely heavily on the use of technology, a federal effort to equip every student with a mobile computing device and every school with sufficient bandwidth, and calls by industry for schools to better prepare students for the 21st century workplace.

The article also credited a “ground-up” movement by school leaders and entrepreneurs, who see digital tools as integral to the future of education.

The news about technology’s promise in education is now so mainstream that some sources have pronounced the battle virtually won. A recent Time magazine story, “The Paperless Classroom is Coming,” made the case that the future of education is nearly here: “Bulky textbooks will be replaced by flat screens. Worksheets will be stored in the cloud, not clunky Trapper Keepers. The Dewey decimal system will give way to Google.”

For many parents, this trend has the ring of inevitability as we observe our children’s native comfort with technology — a comfort that most of us will never feel. Few of us haven’t faced the humbling scenario of having our kids “help” when we can’t figure something out on a computer. On a recent weekend trip, I was just a little smug when my taxi arrived before my son’s Uber ride, as if that represented a momentary victory of old over new.

Still, I know that time is right. The future is upon us, and among other things that means that technology and education now go together like peanut butter and jelly. You can’t think of one without the other.

But as our schools race to incorporate technology, and businesses rush to make a killing on their computing needs, a large dose of circumspection is in order. The bumbling attempts by some educators like Deasy to be aggressive technology adopters might not be the last digital fiascos we see.

It’s also important to remember that all these new companies hoping to capitalize on edtech’s promise are competing for the same pool of revenues from school districts with continuing budgetary constraints; there will be winners and losers. More important, we have yet to completely figure out where all the money will come from to pay for the shiny new technology.

In the end, it might prove to be a zero-sum game, both financially (less paper, more software) and educationally (goodbye cursive, hello ebooks).

The future might be here, but the ride ahead could still be bumpy.

PATRICE APODACA is a former Newport-Mesa public school parent and former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She lives in Newport Beach.