Today’s post comes from regular contributor Catherine Hainstock (M.Ed TL) of Vermont Secondary College.

Many Bright Ideas readers will be aware of the Horizon Report released by the New Media Consortium. These reports are invaluable to educators and schools planning for change.

Now there is another excellent forward planning resource, a visualisation created by Envisioning Technology. They describe Envisioning the Future of Education Technology as:

… a concise overview of technologies that have the potential to disrupt and improve teaching on all levels.

This visualisation comprehensively maps out 6 key trends, puts the emerging technologies into educational context and projects it forward on a 30 year timeline. It can be downloaded as a pdf or high resolution png image.

It is also well worth exploring this trend-forecasting firm’s website if you have students looking at themes such as future careers or envisioning the future. There is an amazing visualisation on Emerging Technologies highlighting areas of STEM with some truly extraordinary predictions. Envisioning Tech’s blog is currently featuring “Sci-fi Scaffolds”, scenarios situated in the near future and based on emerging technologies. Spend a bit of time on this site and I guarantee you will be thinking about the future in a whole new way.