The Consortium of School Networking (COSN) is one of the leading associations for school system technology leaders. COSN recently released the first of three publications in their series on Driving K-12 Innovation: Hurdles 2019. The goal of this series is to “provide insights into pressing educational challenges and thoughtful, intentional use of technology to address them.” Additionally this series provides “resources and insight into strategic planning and smart technology integration into teaching and learning.” (On a side note: I had presented a keynote at the COSN conference back in 2013.)

As the title suggests the focus of the first report is on the hurdles faced by school leaders as they seek to transform teaching and learning mediated by technology. The image below shows the top 5 hurdles identified in the report.

One of the key hurdles they identify is The Gap between Technology & Pedagogy. As the report says, “this hurdle captures with a new sense of urgency a perennial challenge: tensions that arise when the impulse to adopt new technologies takes precedence over preparedness to use them effectively.”

One of the key approaches to addressing this hurdle is “making technology an explicit component of the learning equation is an emerging concept.” I was pleased to see that one of the key frameworks cited in the report is the TPACK framework (see screenshot from the report below).

There is a lot more in the report that may be of interest. You can access the complete report here. Incidentally I was told that this is COSN’s most downloaded publication to date!

Note: Finally, this may not mean much to most people but I feel obligated to point out that this is the first official citation of the recently upgraded TPACK framework that was first reported on this website. (The TPACK diagram gets an upgrade).