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What edtech innovations can you anticipate this year?

We asked 49 edtech executives to look into their crystal balls and share their thoughts about what will happen in 2019. In addition to the usual suspects—more augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) apps—a lot of people believe this will be the year that social emotional learning (SEL) and interoperability become part of the mainstream. There are also a lot of predictions about improving safety and security. Read on to see what’s in store for 2019…

Berj Akian, CEO, ClassLink

• With 2019 here and 2020 in arm’s reach, there’s an ever-growing expectation that next-generation tech tools should do a better job of informing educators on which resources improve learning outcomes. I’m pleased to say that more and more education leaders and technology products providers are regularly talking and doing something about this. I hope this topic always remains the main problem to solve, and that the slow, steady progress the industry is making continues.

•  The industry has made loads of good progress on interoperability; now it’s on the mind of all educational leaders. This is a good thing, because it will take motivation from all sides to achieve simpler data connections between systems. The only wrinkle I see in the land of interoperability is that the conversation is still too complicated, and school leaders still don’t have a go-to resource that helps them translate the techno-babble of open data standards into plain English. What the industry needs is a place where interoperability can be discussed and advocated without complicated jargon and a standards bias—maybe a “Church of Interoperability” that’s open to all. I see Project Unicorn possibly filling this role. They see the bigger picture and nicely bridge the tech and curriculum sides of the discussion.