Tag Archives: Horizon report

Horizon Report 2014 K-12 edition – an outline

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The Horizon Report 2014 K-12 edition is now available.  Developed by the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), this is the sixth annual K-12 edition.  It describes findings from the NMC Horizon Project,  an ongoing, collaborative research activity designed to identify trends and describe emerging technologies that are likely to have an impact on teaching, learning, and creative inquiry.

A number of editions specific to different sectors are produced.  This edition addresses primary and secondary schools.   Another is the NMC Horizon Report: Higher Ed edition which addresses higher education, whilst the NMC Technology Outlook – 2014 Australian Tertiary Education is a Horizon Project regional report related to Australian higher education.

The Horizon Report is appreciated by educational technology leaders as a tool that is used to inform teachers and school administrators in future decision making.  Follow the Horizon Discussion Wiki for links and active engagement in discussion.

You will notice that technology such as ebooks and cloud computing is not listed as forthcoming trends.  This is because they are already here.  They are not a forecast.  It is interesting this year to note a move away from the description of devices and technology infrastructure, to the discussion of outcomes and the effect of technology on schools, teachers and pedagogy.  The Horizon Report is important reading within all schools.

Access and download the full report

An overview of topics addressed in the report.

Key Trends Accelerating K-12 Ed Tech Adoption

  • Fast Trends: Driving ed tech adoption in schools over the next one to two years
    • Rethinking the Roles of Teachers
    • Shift to Deep Learning Approaches
  • Mid-Range Trends: Driving ed tech adoption in schools within three to five years
    • Increasing Focus on Open Content
    • Increasing Use of Hybrid Learning Designs
  • Long-Range Trends: Driving ed tech adoption in schools in five or more years
    • Rapid Acceleration of Intuitive Technology
    • Rethinking How Schools Work

Significant Challenges Impeding K-12 Ed Tech Adoption

  • Solvable Challenges: Those that we understand and know how to solve
    • Creating Authentic Learning Opportunities
    • Integrating Personalised Learning
  • Difficult Challenges: Those that we understand but for which solutions are elusive
    • Complex Thinking and Communication
    • Increased Privacy Concerns
  • Wicked Challenges: Those that are complex to even define, much less address
    • Competition from New Models of Education
    • Keeping Formal Education Relevant

Important Developments in Technology for K-12 Education

  •  Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less
    • BYOD
    • Cloud Computing
  • Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years
    • Games and Gamification
    • Learning Analytics
  • Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years
    • The Internet of Things
    • Wearable Technology

Do you have any comments to make about the Horizon Report?  Is it an accurate indicator?  Does it present a global perspective?  Your opinion is invited.

Fiction on gaming

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A couple of new YA fiction books about gaming have recently been published and are must reads for teacher librarians, library staff, teachers, parents and of course young adults themselves.

I recently read and reviewed For the win by Cory Doctorow. Covering a global approach to gaming, much of this book is actually based in fact. It’s quite scary to think that economies are influenced by the invisible and virtual gaming economy and that young adults can earn more money from gaming than their currently parents earn. For the win is available in paperback or ebook format and the ebook download is free. My review is here, thanks to CMIS.

Helen Boelens alerted me to another new book, this one by Salman Rushdie.  Helen explains that “Luka and the Fire of Life makes references to Super Mario and there is a strong connection between the story and the video game.” Information about this book from The Huffington Post is available here and a review by The Guardian is available here.

It seems (and it is) a long time ago that Space Demons was published. However I think that these books are an excellent way of discussion and coming to terms with gaming and how it affects our young adults. We can build on this information. Remember that the 2010 K12 Horizon Report assessed gaming as becoming mainstream in education in 2-3 years. One of those years has almost passed.

Mobile computing is education’s future

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A recent article in eSchool News outlines the need for schools to acknowledge and use students’ mobile phones for good rather than evil. Summit: Mobile computing is education’s future explains that currently there are one billion people connected to a 3G network, rising to three billion in 2014.

As the 2010 Horizon report stated, mobile computing is set to become mainstream within the next six months. The eSchool News article gives an example of the success of mobile phone use for learning:

At-risk ninth graders taking part in the project have access to specially created mobile applications that help explain algebraic principles, and they also can watch videos of other students explaining these principles. In addition, they can text or IM their peers for advice when they get stuck.

According to early studies of the program’s efficacy, students taking part in this Qualcomm-funded project outscored their peers who did not have access to the mobile phones and content by an average of 30 percent in algebra proficiency.

“Kids are excited—[they’re saying,] ‘Wow, we get to use cell phones in class?’” Johnson said. “It lets them learn in a way they’re learning outside of school.”

I recently learned that students’ internet use at home far outweighs that at school. This is due to a number of issues including school access. However the proliferation of mobile phones within students’ pockets could help change that. Are we ready to start using this type of technology regularly in schools?

K-12 2010 Horizon Report

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The 2010 Horizon Report for schools K-12 has recently been released. Predicting the technologies that will be influential in teaching and learning over the next 5 years, the K-12 Horizon Report is a must read for all educators.

The top trends to watch are:

  • One year or less – Cloud Computing
  • One year or less – Collaborative Environments
  • Two to three years – Game-based learning
  • Two to three years – Mobiles
  • Four to five years – Augmented Reality
  • Four to five years – Flexible Displays

CLOUD COMPUTING

The Horizon Report explains:

The “cloud” refers to surplus computing resources available from specialized data centers, each often hosting thousands of servers, that power the world’s largest websites and web services.

Examples of this include:

  • Flickr
  • Google Docs
  • Wikis
  • Blogs
  • Twitter

Virtually anywhere were information is not stored on your own computer and accessing to it is via the internet.

COLLABORATIVE ENVIRONMENTS

Collaborative Environments are defined by the Horizon Report:

Collaborative environments are online spaces where the focus is on making it easy to collaborate and work in groups, no matter where the participants may be. As the typical educator’s network of contacts has grown to include colleagues who might live and work across the country, or indeed anywhere on the globe, it has become common for people who are not physically located near each other to collaborate on projects. In classrooms as well, joint projects with students at other schools or in other countries are more and more commonplace as strategies to expose learners to a variety of perspectives.

Examples include:

  • Ning (but for how much longer as it seems they will be charging for use in the near future)
  • Wikis
  • GoogleDocs
  • DropBox
  • Drop.io
  • Voicethread
  • Netvibes
  • Wikipedia

GAME-BASED LEARNING

The Horizon Report explains more:

The interest in game-based learning has accelerated considerably in recent years, driven by clear successes in military and industrial training as well as by emerging research into the cognitive benefits of game play. Developers and researchers are working in every area of game-based learning, including games that are goal-oriented; social game environments; non-digital games that are easy to construct and play; games developed expressly for education; and commercial games that lend themselves to refining team and group skills. At the low end of game technology, there are literally thousands of ways games can be — and are already being — applied in learning contexts. More complex approaches like role-playing, collaborative problem solving, and other forms of simulated experiences have broad applicability across a wide range of disciplines, and are beginning to be explored in more classrooms

Examples that use consoles include:

  • Little Big Planet
  • Guitar Hero
  • My Word Coach

Examples that use PCs include:

  • Arcademic Skill Builders
  • National Geographic Kids

MOBILES

The Horizon Report gives more information:

The mobile market today has more than 4 billion subscribers, more than two-thirds of whom live in developing countries. The global network supporting mobile devices of all kinds now covers more territory than the electrical grid. A massive and increasing number of people all over the world own and use computers that fit in their hand and are able to connect to the network wirelessly from virtually anywhere. Tens of thousands of applications designed to support a wide variety of tasks on a host of mobile devices and platforms are readily available, with more entering the market all the time. These mobile computing tools have become accepted aids in daily life for everything from business to personal productivity to social networking. The range and number of educational applications for mobiles are growing at a rapid pace, yet their use in schools is limited — more often constrained by policy than by the capabilities of the devices they run on.

Examples include:

  • Smart phones such as iPhone and Android
  • iPod touch
  • iPad

AUGMENTED REALITY

The Horizon Report explains:

While the capability to deliver augmented reality experiences has been around for decades, it is only very recently that those experiences have become easy and portable. Advances in mobile devices as well as in the different technologies that combine the real world with virtual information have led to augmented reality applications that are as near to hand as any other application on a laptop or a smart phone. New uses for augmented reality are being explored and new experiments undertaken now that it is easy to do so. Emerging augmented reality tools to date have been mainly designed for marketing, social purposes, amusement, or location-based information, but new ones continue to appear as the technology becomes more popular. Augmented reality has become simple, and is now poised to enter the mainstream in the consumer sector.

Examples include:

  • Second Life
  • ARIS Mobile Media Learning Games
  • eTreasure

It is vital that we all start considering and using these tools to keep pace with the use of technology across all aspects of society so that our students are not disadvantaged or left behind.

Horizon Report 2010

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The 2010 Horizon Report has been released. If you are new to the Horizon Report, it looks at the future impacts of technologies on teaching and learning.

The six technologies to watch that have been chosen for this year’s report are:

Near term (within 12 months)

  • Mobile computing
  • Open content

Second adoption (2-3 years)

  • Electronic books
  • Simple augmented reality

Far term (4-5 years)

  • Gesture-based computing
  • Visual data analysis

Of particular note to school libraries is possibly mobile computing and electronic books. The Horizon Report adds that:

  • Network-capable devices that students are already carrying, are already established on many campuses, although before we see widespread use, concerns about privacy, classroom management, and access will need to be addressed. At the same time, the opportunity is great; virtually all higher education students carry some form of mobile device, and the cellular network that supports their connectivity continues to grow. An increasing number of faculty and instructional technology staff are experimenting with the possibilities for collaboration and communication offered by mobile computing. Devices from smart phones to netbooks are portable tools for productivity, learning, and communication, offering an increasing range of activities fully supported by applications designed especially for mobiles.
  • Electronic books have been available in some form for nearly four decades, but the past twelve months have seen a dramatic upswing in their acceptance and use. Convenient and capable electronic reading devices combine the activities of acquiring, storing, reading, and annotating digital books, making it very easy to collect and carry hundreds of volumes in a space smaller than a single paperback book. Already in the mainstream of consumer use, electronic books are appearing on campuses with increasing frequency. Thanks to a number of pilot programs, much is already known about student preferences with regards to the various platforms available. Electronic books promise to reduce costs, save students from carrying pounds of textbooks, and contribute to the environmental efforts of paper conscious campuses.

Some other important points made by the report are

  • Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession.
  • Institutions increasingly focus more narrowly on key goals, as a result of shrinking budgets in the present economic climate. Across the board, institutions are looking for ways to control costs while still providing a high quality of service. Schools are challenged by the need to support a steady — or growing — number of students with fewer resources and staff than before. In this atmosphere, it is critical for information and media professionals to emphasize the importance of continuing research into emerging technologies as a means to achieve key institutional goals. As one example, knowing the facts about shifting server- and network intensive infrastructure, such as email or media streaming, off campus in the current climate might present the opportunity to generate considerable annual savings.
  • New scholarly forms of authoring, publishing, and researching continue to emerge but appropriate
    metrics for evaluating them increasingly and far too often lag behind.

It must be noted that currently Higher Education authorities in the US are not promoting the Kindle due to its limitations for blind and vision impaired students. Thanks to Helen Boelens for this article.

K-12 Horizon Report

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The Horizon Report has now published a K-12 edition specifically for schools. In this edition they highlight the challenges facing schools in relation to technology:

Our research indicates that each of these six technologies will have a significant impact on schools within the next five years:

  • Collaborative Environments
  • Online Communication Tools
  • Mobiles
  • Cloud Computing
  • Smart Objects
  • The Personal Web

Key Trends

  • Technology continues to profoundly affect the way we work, collaborate, communicate, and succeed.
  • Technology is increasingly a means for empowering students, a method for communication and socializing, and a ubiquitous, transparent part of their lives.
  • The web is an increasingly personal experience.
  • The way we think of learning environments is changing.
  • The perceived value of innovation and creativity is increasing.

 Critical Challenges

  • There is a growing need for formal instruction in key new skills, including information literacy, visual literacy, and technological literacy.
  • Students are different, but educational practice and the material that supports it is changing only slowly.
  • Learning that incorporates real life experiences is not occurring enough and is undervalued when it does take place.
  • There is a growing recognition that new technologies must be adopted and used as an everyday part of classroom activities, but effecting this change is difficult.
  • A key challenge is the fundamental structure of the K-12 education establishment.

It is well worth a read to see where we are headed and if we are on track!

aka-aki

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The Horizon Report (Australia and New Zealand edition) focussing on emerging technologies, where next generation mobile phones were selected as one of the six most important emerging technologies (out of over 100 considered) has been released. And recently, one new application for mobiles has caught the attention of Bright ideas.

aka-aki is a kind of scary tool (users do have the option to turn on privacy settings if they don’t want to be contacted) that once downloaded to your mobile phone, enables other aka-aki users to contact you if you come within 20 metres of them. Bluetooth technology enables user profiles to be viewed by you once another registered user is within the 20 metre distance.

aka-aki homepage

aka-aki homepage

The main difference between aka-aki and other social networking sites is that aka-aki is designed for people who are not in front of their computer. aka-aki is a German development that offers free unlimited messaging and chat to other aka-aki users in groups of your choice, but beware that your phone carrier could charge for data use. Texts can be sent from phone to phone, computer to phone and phone to computer. All mobile encounters are saved on the aka-aki website, so you can follow up contacts later via the Internet.

No doubt there is at least one enterprising and creative soul out there who can think of an educational application for aka-aki. If so, please share it with us!

Roman Hansler, Founder of aka-aki says that it is available for use in Australia now. For more information, go to the aka-aki blog. And for a laugh, have a look at this video.