What is on the horizon for education and technology

For the past three years, EDUCAUSE along with the New Media Consortium have looked into a “crystal ball”, examining the trends in education and technology. This look toward the horizon focuses on the “trends affecting the practice of teaching, learning and creativity”. While this report was produced with an eye on higher education, the implications are just as relevant to K-12 communities. The goal of the project was to look out over the next five years and identify major trends in education and technology, producing a watch list of technologies that could have a significant effect on education.

This year they identified four major trends:

1. Dynamic knowledge creation and social computing tools and processes are becoming more widespread and accepted
2. Mobile and personal technology is increasingly being viewed as a delivery platform for services of all kinds
3. Consumers are increasingly expecting individualized services, tools and experiences and open access to media, knowledge, information, and learning
4. Collaboration is increasingly seen as critical across the range of educational activities, including intra- and inter-institutional activities of any size and scope.

(Taken from EDUCAUSE, 2006, p.3-4)

They also identified several challenges. Those most directly related to our environment include: (1) information literacy should not be considered a given, (2) intellectual property concerns and the management of digital rights and assets continue to loom as unaddressed issues, (3) the typical approach of experimentally deploying new technologies on campuses does not include processes to quickly scale them up to broad usage when the work, and (4) the phenomenon of technological “churn” is brining new kinds of support challenges.

This year, they identified six technologies to watch: (1) social computing, (2) personal broadcasting, (3) phones in the pocket, (4) educational gaming, (5) augmented reality and enhanced visualization, and (6) context-aware environments and devices. The following is a brief description of each and was taken from the executive summary.

Social Computing: The application of computer technology to facilitate interaction and collaboration, a practice known as social computing is happening all around us. Replacing face-to-face meetings with virtual collaboration tools, working on a daily basis with colleagues a thousand miles away, or attending a conference held entirely online is no longer unusual. An interesting aspect of social computing is the development of shared taxonomies-folksonomies- that emerge organically from like-minded groups.

Personal Broadcasting: With roots in text-based media (personal web sites and blogs), personal broadcasting of audio and video material is a natural outgrowth of a popular trend made possible by increasingly more capable tools. From podcasting to video blogging (vlogging), personal broadcasting is already impacting campuses and museum audiences significantly.

Phones in Their Pockets: A little further out on the horizon, but rapidly approaching, the delivery of educational content and services to cell phones is just around the corner. Among the keys that will unlock the true potential of this technology are improved network speeds, Flash Lite, and video: as new features that take advantage of the capabilities of these appear in phones, barriers to delivery of educational content will vanish.

Educational Gaming: A recent surge in interest in educational gaming has let to increased research into gaming has led to increased research into gaming and engagement theory, the effect of using games in practice, and the structure of cooperation in game play. The serious implications of gaming are still unfolding, but we are not far away from seeing what games can really teach us.

Augmented Reality and Enhanced Visualization: Currently in use in disciplines such as medicine, engineering, and archaeology, these technologies for bringing large data sets to life have the potential to literally change the way we wee the world by creating three-dimensional representations of abstract data.

Context-Aware Environments and Devices: Advancements in context-aware computing are giving rise to devices and rooms that respond to voice, motion, or other subtle signals. In the ultimate application of these technologies, the “computing” part simply disappears, leaving an environment transparently responsive to its human occupants.

For more on each of these technologies as well as some wonderfully interesting links and examples, check out the full report at http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2006_Horizon_Report.pdf.

The Horizon Report: 2006 Edition. Annual report of The New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE.