Global technology trends are affecting the way education can be delivered.  Gregg Downey, of eSchool News outlined some of innovations, from cloud computing to global assembly of computer systems that will affect the delivery of educational content — especially for students with special needs.  But what makes these new tools innovative?

Google’s T.V. Raman offered some insights into how new approaches for managing information, sharing content and presentation it are affecting the types of services available.  Specifically, the encapsulation of these computer system functions, ability to interchange one for the other, and the flexibility to access applications from virtually anywhere offers powerful opportunities to individualize  content, human-computer interfaces and functions for manipulating information.  Raman mentioned the rise of web-browser technologies such as cascading style sheets as the beginning of a trend toward customizing the presentation of content on today’s web sites.  Emerging technologies, such as xml promise to build on this distributed computing model by separating the representation of data to be stored, from their manner of presentation — or even manner of use. 

Gordon Freeman, VP of Education Strategy for Blackboard, suggests leveraging the trend toward encapsulation of information, functionality and presentation offers a way to create repositories through which content can be individualized for the learning styles, special needs, interests and other personal characteristics.  Freeman believes that providing global access to individualizable resources from a common repository may provide a model for creating greater efficiency and better outcomes for 21st century students.  This approach is being tried successfully in Columbia — not often recognized as a leader in education technology innovaton.