Fishbowl

The annual SXSWedu phenomenon has rapidly outpaced the TED talk as the most innovative, fresh, and prognostic venue for envisioning the future of the education and technology marketplace. This year, the SXSWedu® Conference & Festival will be held in Austin, Texas from March 6-9. 

The following ed-market trends emerging at SXSWedu are noteworthy, appearing in great frequency and with strident emphasis at this trailblazing conference:

• STEAM education
• Virtual Reality
• MakerSpaces
• Coding
• Learning Space Redesign
• Re-designing Schooling
• Social Justice

The remarkably stout presence of the virtual reality meme, one totally expected, now appears to be one of the biggest ed-tech footprints at 2017 SXSWedu conference. This meme has literally doubled or tripled since last year. 

If you are in the neighborhood, I’ll be presenting on Wednesday at 11am in Salon H of the JW Marriott hotel. Joined by Dr. Michael Duenas, the Chief Public Health Officer from the American Optometric Association, we will be pushing past the hype and executing a “deep dive” with our joint 2-hour workshop, Fishbowl: Virtual Reality in Education. See this link for a preview. This unique “deep learning” session addresses the challenges, logistics, scaling, classroom management, research, pedagogical strategies, and vision health (medical) issues surrounding the roll out of VR in U.S. classrooms. No breathless cheerleading here. Just the heavy lifting.