Research carried out by various scholars has enabled identify technology embedded in education as a useful tool in improving student learning and motivation. Education is a diverse area. Research links can continuously change with the continual advancement of technology to produce more hybrid and ideal methods in the learning carried out in classrooms and the other regions. For the educators and other various stakeholders to achieve this advancement, there are numerous challenges involved and challenging requirements that need to be met to achieve the educators' desired results. Among these challenges is ensuring that students are not swayed away during lessons by technology and that the main objectives are being achieved. There is a lot of planning involved in the implementation of educational technologies within a classroom setup. This research paper's major focus is to explore the emerging fields in the educational technology field and bring out the educators' perspectives to achieve future functional directions while engaging with current technological and academic trends.
Current Landscape
Technology today has a more significant impact on education than it has ever had, and it is the most substantial factor shaping the education landscape today. Researchers have continually passed down research trends. The focus has been majorly the content to be learned, the instructional message format, the students' interactivity with the computers, and other technological advancements. The field's current landscape primarily focuses on learning incomplete, complex, and interactive environments ( O'sullivan, M. L., & Samarawickrema, 2008) . These environments are both a simulation of the real-life that students interact with daily and some challenging experiences to be experienced directly in real life. These experiences create the learning environments that allow the students to be in a position to communicate their ideas using the symbols. Although the teachers and educators positively embrace new technology, they find integrating learning technologies as a rough and strenuous process, which is a big challenge to them.
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From the new technology to the curricula adaptation, changing the teaching techniques to adapt to the latest technology is challenging. The challenges faced by educators can be both extrinsic and intrinsic. Outside factors are the first-order barriers that deter the successful integration of the technology into the classrooms. These types of barriers need to be addressed at the institutional level, where the changes are incremental. Research indicates that external barriers (First-order barriers) in the United States are being tackled to make implementation easier for the institutions (Ertmer et al., 2012). These external barriers include access constraints, which surrounds poor internet connectivity in institutions, students' inconsistent access to computers, inadequate technological training to the educators, teachers, and insufficient technical support within the institutions.
On the other hand, even with the removal, and proper alignment of the external factors, various internal factors will hinder the integration of technology into the learning and classroom environment. These are the immediate challenges that educators face in their pursuit to work with learning technology. Individual educators have the responsibility of using the technology to reach the learning objectives set out. While considering internal factors, barriers such as attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge are assessed. Consequently, it isn't easy to handle the internal matters more broadly, for they are individual-determined factors. These factors are under consideration to be second-order barriers.
New techniques can be introduced to help engage the learners on different technologies to integrate learning technology integration. Educators need to know how their students adapt to various learning environments and the new ways they can adapt to making sure that the learning objectives are easily achieved within the learning environment ( Hartman, Townsend, 2019) . The new ways to integrate the latest technology need to involve the students in grasping the required concepts. Among other methods, visual methods such as powerpoint presentations and engaging games can go a long way toward integrating technology into the learning classrooms. However, technological integration comes with positive and negative aspects that are beneficial to the learning process and inhibit achieving the learning objectives ( Hartman, Townsend, 2019) . The various positives that come with the integration include preserving the environment, teaching and learning become more manageable, and making learning more accessible as distance learning can be enabled by virtual learning.
On the contrary, technology comes as a distraction that can hardly be ignored by the students. These distractions often lead to the failure to achieve the required learning objectives. Besides, more technological advancements within the learning institutions need more technical support teams to solve the technical disparities experienced over time, which requires additional costs within the institutions.
The expectations of students and educators differ a great deal when it comes to technology. Students' expectations are high upon the educator to deliver expert knowledge more profoundly ( Elstad, 2016) . Educators also expect that technology will make work more comfortable when learning is automated, which means more time to engage with their students. Educators' work is made more comfortable from the automation of the learning process, which is quite efficient and effective.
Recent Developments
Over the past few years, there have been great advances in educational technologies. Significant strides with educational technologies are prevalent among learners and educators. Technological advances change how we think through various methods, facilitating access to content to learners and other more advantages. With the technological advancements that have been happening recently, big data is a significant advancement. Tracking students' learning behavior and tracking their patterns helps learn what keeps people engaged and what they know, and how to improve their desired outcomes ( Halem et al., 2020) . With the fact that technology has had various advances every year, there have been numerous developments in the education sector. EdTech has enabled schools to put more focus on technology, science, and engineering with technological advancements ( Schrum, & Sumerfield, 2018) . It is easy to handle technical subjects with the introduction of new and advanced technology in the classrooms.
Also, cybersecurity and privacy of students' data is a key aspect in the EdTech today. It is a priority of all the institutions and all the data organizations to keep the privacy policies put in place by the federal and state governments concerning data privacy ( Halevi, Lewis & Memon, 2013) . Consequently, there has been a development of large markets within the key aspects to improve the efficacy of the existing data products and create new ones that will be efficient in handling and managing students' data from data security and cyberbullying. This recent development has been effective in managing the data of young individuals against piracy.
Additionally, a recent development addressing a new educational approach has proved to be effective and cost-effective. This approach, known as flip learning, involves turning the traditional teaching methods around. In a flipped classroom, what happens is that students take advantage of new technology in absorbing content at home through digital content such as videos and then complete their homework at school in small groups under the supervision of the instructor. Technology is advancing at high rates, and keeping alert is the best solution for everyone under technological influence. For instance, the current trends in the educational field are important since, as a teacher, one is in a position to embrace new technology with its arrival as an aiding tool.
Current Issues Facing the Field
Technology in the current world has overtaken the education fields at almost all levels. From the research conducted, it is evident that all stakeholders involve, starting from the administrators, the educators, and the students, are faced with technological issues during their interaction with educational technology. Primarily, most problems are faced by educators since they are most involved in interacting with the systems to know how to direct their students. Teachers lack the professional development that they require in integrating the technology into the classrooms. According to the Horizon report, when schools have mandated using a particular technology, the instructors are left without the necessary tools to incorporate the technology effectively into the new education methods ( Brown, McCormack, et al., 2020). Secondly, resistance to change is a serious issue that comes in several forms. The prime resistance identified from the report is "conformance with the status quo" ( Brown, McCormack, et al., 2020). Researchers have determined that teachers and educators perceive technology as a scope outside their job description.
Furthermore, another major issue with educational technology is introducing other new modes of schooling and learning. The introduction of MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) provides a big competition to traditional education models. MOOCs have been identified as being at the forefront of delivering K-12 education. According to the report, K-12 are latecomers to distance education in most cases. However, competitions from other institutions such as non-governmental institutions have called to today's students' needs. This has continued to upraise technology, which is an issue for most students as access to particular tools is limited.
Related to the MOOCs challenge, there is a challenge in delivering informal learning. The rigid lecture and test methods fail to challenge the students to push them into experimenting and engaging in informal learning. However, according to the Horizon Report, the solutions to this challenge can be found in the flipped classrooms, which are non-traditional and provide informal education opportunities. The flipped classrooms allow for the blend in of formal and informal learning.
Additionally, the Horizon report noted that frequent assessment is important for educational change and practice. Few changes are notable over the last few years in formative assessments in the education practice. However, even with these changes, there is still a gap that has not been addressed on how the curricula and new skill demands should be implemented in the school and education. The gap exists since schools do not make the necessary implementations towards the new technology introduced.
Emerging Trends in K12 from a Global Perspective
In our world today, the number of emerging technologies is practically endless. Technology has changed our perspectives on how we perceive the world. With the numerous technologies emerging every year, it is expected that sectors and fields will experience immense changes, not excluding the education sector. There are top emerging trends in the education field that are a reflection of the changing world. From the research conducted in the Horizon Report, some trends are emergent within the secondary and primary schools. According to Ganter, the five emergent and trending trends include Digital ecosystems, postclassical computes and comms, sensing, and mobility, advanced Artificial intelligence and analytics augmented human, ( Panetta, 2020) . The sensing and mobility trend mainly features the technologies to manipulate the objects around them and increase mobility. This trend will continue to evolve, and it will aim at aiding the more advanced technologies such as the Internet of things. Within the sensing and mobility trend, other technologies include the AR cloud, autonomous driving levels 4 and 5.
Technology has evolved within the learning environment, changing the world's educational system due to technological advancements. Within a few years, a more evolved form of instruction will be integrated into the schools, including the five global emerging trends. These trends are slowly being adapted into the system whereby they will reshape education ( O'sullivan, & Samarawickrema, 2008) . It is apparent that since the dawn of digital systems, learning has been made more manageable and more accessible ( O'sullivan, & Samarawickrema, 2008) . Augmented Reality and simulations have left a mark in the world of visuals. This significant impact has changed the way students and teachers interact and collaborate ( Panetta, 2020) . AR is perceived as the best way to capture the imaginations and dreams of humans. With this, AR aims to help students capture imaginations for better learning experiences.
Secondly, K-12 will be improved greatly from the AI technologies emerging and changing the people's perspectives in the various fields used. AI is not limited to education, as it will help the education field evolve as it has helped the world grow. It is perceived that in the next few years, education will receive more levels of evolution from it. Artificial Intelligence can also have language refining applications for the translated languages while improving access for students with various visual and hearing impairments. AI can be closely associated to Virtual Reality programs where students are able to perceive different environments and relate to them for the sole purpose of learning. Virtual Reality expose the student differently to fields that cannot be accessed normally but need to be studied. These fields are majorly the technical fields that require practicality in execution.
Additionally, the 5G technologies will enable the students to benefit from it as it involves high speed and low latency wireless technology. This is an assurance for students to download the students' files quickly and resources, and more powerful networks. The 5G technology can bring advancements such as the holographic teacher to read some specialized instructions, and students can gain better from virtual reality experiences (Baratè et al., 2019). With the emerging trends, education is presumed to evolve a great deal to make learning more accessible, engaging, and enjoyable.
Future Directions in Education
In the next 10-20 years, education is set out to high evolvement due to the technological trends that will always impact the education sector (Brown et al., 2020). The Horizon Report shows that AI technologies have already been integrated as part of the curriculum design. In the next few years, human instructors will use AI technology in providing feedback for the students' work and facilitating other Virtual teaching assistants.
Moreover, the Next Generation Digital Learning Environment (NGDL) is currently creating a significant shift in how instructions are administered and how institutions to design ecosystems for learners and educators (Brown et al., 2020). Open standards in educational technology applications facilitate institutions in offering flexible education experiences to a wide range of students. This agility provides instructors and students immense opportunity to think and reason for a reconceptualization of their educational approaches.
With the continuity in the technological and digital evolvement, institutions must be more proactive in protecting the students' privacy ( Ipek, & Ziatdinov, 2017) . This move requires the institutions to be more careful when making decisions on organizational partnerships and data exchanges with data institutions and organizations. This will require institutions to invest in analytics know-hows and cost-benefit outcomes. Data breaches can be costly to organizations and can cause massive damage; hence an organization needs to be keen on that direction.
Safeguards
Technological advancements come with the need to protect the information, intellectual property rights, and other educational institutions' stakeholders. EdTech companies, together with institutions, have embraced a level of self-monitoring, along the lines of protecting the student's confidentiality. The significant commitment within the policy "K-12 School Service Provider Pledge to Safeguard Student Privacy policy is not meant for building a personal student profile meant for supporting approved educational resolves. (Regan, 2019).
Over recent years, I have experienced the impacts of students safeguard as a teacher and their implementations. Being on a hybrid model, but approximately half of the students are virtual students whose classes are done without their presence. Administrators are required to monitor the meetings in goggle meets and sometimes recorded them if need be. This practice is the law and the policies put in place as a safeguard for students' data. It is a requirement for the teachers to use LMS systems and do the daily meets on goggle meets for any questions and the help sessions (Regan, 2019). To join the meetings, students require to have a passcode and the school email. This guideline is a measure that has been put in place as a safety measure to safeguard data integrity.
From a biblical perspective, and from a Christian point of view, when security comes into play, two scriptures crop up; " He who dwells in the shelter of the Highest will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord , My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust. For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings, you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day" (Psalms 91:1-12). "Then fear not, O Jacob, my servant, declares the Lord , nor be dismayed, O Israel; for behold, I will save you from far away, and your offspring from the land of their captivity. Jacob shall return and have quiet and ease, and none shall make him afraid" (Jeremiah 30:10).
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