A few days ago, I took a stroll between the DePaul Library and the Student Center, and this is what I saw in students’ hands in a single walk through campus:

• Lots of Android phones
• Lots of iPhones
• Several Macbooks
• A number of Windows laptops
• A couple iPads
• A Chromebook
• An Android tablet (something in the Asus Transformer family)
• A Microsoft Surface tablet (I couldn’t tell if it was the Pro version or not)
• A Kindle Fire

If there were any Linux devices, I must have missed them.

I like seeing the diversity of connected devices we’re using today. The competition among tech companies is good for the pace of innovation, and I like innovation. But it presents a challenge to institutions who allow students to bring their own devices and the students who expect their chosen device to do everything for them.

I don’t believe institutions of higher education can or should standardize what technology students should bring with them. In many cases, students and/or their parents invest a good amount of money into their devices before students even know which college they’re going to. If a student already bought a Windows RT device, should we tell him that, no, he can’t use it; he has to get a Mac or Windows 7 or 8 device to use our systems? That’s an additional burden on students that are already financially burdened enough.

But it causes a problem when a student has been going through their degree requirements just fine using a Chromebook or an iPad with a keyboard for a couple years, when all of the sudden they run into a class where they need to use a web application that requires the Java plug in. Or another student has to use a product has an app for iPad and not Android or Windows RT/8.

To technology vendors, I understand why these compatibility gaps exist. You started your development cycle years ago when Android was a fledgeling platform and Windows 8/RT was a twinkle in Steve Balmer’s eye. And even when these new platforms are announced, its hard to tell what students might actually use and what they might expect to be able to use for school. Consumer technology trends change so fast, and it’s hard to keep up.

And I think about what the next major type of connected device might be, whether its wearable computers like Google Glass or smart watches or connected TVs, and how behind the higher-ed-focused applications and services we utilize are going to be compared to the rest of the consumer-focused apps students use and organize their lives around. Personally, I don’t want the educational technology we’re adopting and supplying to teachers and students to be thought of as limited and outdated.

So here’s my advice to developers. If you want to be an educational technology vendor today who expects your products to be used on students’ own devices, you have two choices: 1) Create your tools on open, standards-based, and pervasive technologies (read: HTML5) and using responsive design to allow them to adopt to a variety of device form factors, or 2) Be prepared to devote the resources necessary to make your product work well on the wide variety of devices students are using in a rapidly changing consumer-technology market. Because whatever the next big thing is, students are going to bring it with them to college.