Scenario 2 ()

Scenario for The Future of Technology in Secondary Education in 2020


By the end of 2007, two were the main factors that enhanced secondary education all over the world. Firstly, the majority of the governments decided eventually to support the educational system not only with frothy speeches but also by increasing the spending on education. Until 2010 there is a noteworthy increase of spending on education, especially in Europe and United States, which was also supported by private funds. Secondly the broadband penetration in daily life was a fact, and till the end of 2012 high internet connectivity and WiFi access points were a commodity. Both factors were really important for a significant growth of utilizing technology in secondary education, and together with the general governmental support led the market for educational software and hardware to maturity by the end of 2015. Not only had they sold many pieces of educational software in schools but they also invested a large amount of money to develop added-value services and applications. During that period and due to technological breakthroughs, some online “coursewares”, which offered high quality learning possibilities, have been introduced by the end of 2012. At the beginning of 2014 video glasses and 3D Holograms started to be utilized in several schools in the US, China and Europe. These kinds of technologies provide students with the ability to watch 3D interactive videos and presentations, stimulating their curiosity and their willingness to learn, and actually it illustrates how technology helps and facilitates motivation during the process of learning. Even though, those kinds of technologies were definitely adding value to the learning process, the lack of sufficient teacher’s training as well as the restrictive curriculums prevented the wide use of those devices and their further improvement.

At the same time that the high internet connectivity all over the world had been established, a dramatic progress of the open-source community took place, which caused the wide use and design of wikis not only over the entire internet but also over educational intranets. A new tendency emerged, and the learning process starting to move from teacher-to-student towards student-to-student. This interaction among students enabled new patterns of learning to be developed, and encouraged the collectively generated and managed knowledge within schools. The progress of the open-source community together with the market maturity led to the development of a high quality, user-friendly virtual school following the example of second life, at the beginning of 2015. Two years later and even though the pilot programs were finished with great success, there were still legislation issues postponing the use of the virtual environment in real life, and politics who were having doubts, whether a student can get a certified secondary education degree online.
At the beginning of 2020 US ministry of education was ready to legalize the acquisition of a secondary degree online, and a new era in secondary education was about to rise. Moreover, the progress of the open-source community as well as the governmental support caused further improvements on the 100$ laptop during 2013 to 2016 and it was distributed to more children at the developing countries. The 100$ laptop together with the worldwide broadband penetration and governmental support, led to an increasing use of technology in secondary education at the developing countries by the end of 2020.