Twenty two trends in education technology, e-learn and distance learning,
Here are some of the “key emerging technologies” that ed tech group thought were very possible education technology trends in the not so distant future (here is the formal Horizons 2009 report)
1) Audio seminars/podcasting
2) wikis
3) blogs
4) collaboration tools/sites
5) mobiles applications/cell phones as personal learning devices
6) microblogging + twitter
7) flip cameras + youtube
8} facebook
9) student oriented portfolio
10) digital storytelling
11) citizen journalism
12) geotagging
13) social bookmarking
14) blended learning (hybrid courses)
15) blackboard
16) virtual world
17) jinga webcasting (???)
18) iphone mobile outreach
19) small screen learning objects
20) screen casting
21) camtasia
22) hi def video conferencing [not buying it]
Technologies with Education Application in the Report:
Voice Thread
Adobe Buzzword
Google Docs
MySpace
Ning
Moodle
Pageflakes
Mind meister
iCue (created by NBC for social studies)
Classroom 2.0
RezEd
Flat Classroom Project
Project New Media Literacies
Swift Classroom
Youth Media Exchange
Global Kids in Second Life
Education Technology Trends in the Report:
• Dealing with Ambiguity
• Collective intelligence (wikipedia, Amazon suggestions, Netflix suggestions). “How we answer questions. Not all questions have factual answers. More qualitative than quantitative. Students need to be able to answer these questions too.”
• Visualization tools makes info more meaningful for both text and data sets. (Wordle + Wasabi for finance + Mint.com)
• Mobile phones changing incredibly fast (change after a year…whole generation of devices) Iphone (shake, touch) “More like little computers, and less like telephones.” Applications
3 Year Time Frame for Educational Technology Trends
• Cloud computing like Twitter (3 year timeframe)
• Geo-everything + geo-tagging. For instance trip to a botanical garden or Urban Spoon (3 year timeframe)
• The personal web. Flips the nature of the web. We can personalize to whats interesting + most important to us. Easy publishing like blogging. Also media aggregation services. Also collaboration tools + collaborative authoring tool. Collaborative textbooks via Flatworld Knowledge. Also page flakes and netvibes for project resources. Like a portal. Also personal learning environments and personal learning networks.
Far time horizon for education technology trends
Semantically aware applications. Applications can understand the meaning of text. (Turkey bird vs. Turkey the country) Trip It: the online travel iternaray uses this to some extent
• Smart Objects (2 dimensional barcode, can take a picture which leads to a URL. Like tagging the world) For instance a tire that knows it needs. Or in a science lab that says “don’t mix.” Libraries could use this by embedding smart technology (for instance location based–its been mishelved). Blocks on TED talks. Also smart clothing.
Challenges in Education Technology and New Media
• Changes in scholarship (recognize + reward)
• Meaningful assessment. Better data mining (current systems, can’t keep up)
• Need to keep up with mobile.
Compassion in Politics: Christian Social Entrepreneurship, Education Innovation, & Base of the Pyramid/BOP Solutions 
They mentioned the wiki at http://horizon.nmc.org/wiki/Main_Page, the tag “hr09” which cues to delicious bookmarks, and that Abelene Christian did their own version of the report.
I think they got it 97% correct. I think discovering how corporations were using e-learning, software as service, and enterprise 2.0 software might have helped to understand the full context of their study. Also, its minor in importance, even simple productivity applications can be part of the learning process and yet are overlooked. Micro-learning and the use of multi player online games didn’t even seem like a footnote (actually Second Life did get a slight nod).
Finally, the use of open source content like Academic Earth might be something which has been going on for such a long time that its important but overlooked by studies like this one. In terms of open source, this certainly suggests the possibility of a move in that direction: http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i06/06a01301.htm. Also the most recent article by the same author points out that the university publishing system where a company like elsevier makes $800 million in profits a year means that professors need to take back the power with the internet (perhaps an argument for open source + ad revenue as a business model). This is especially ridiculous because universities then have to purchase those publications (what a broken model) Certainly the report hits all the major issues to be considered–I was highly, highly impressed.
This visualization of ongoing trends (linked to from the horizon wiki) is pretty interesting + informative:
Click to access trend_blend_2009_map.pdf
The role of Platform as services looks to turbo-charge the use of the cloud and the software as service model:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19413_3-10270365-240.html?tag=mncol;title
I’m excited to see what this means for education and business.
Also, moving forward textbooks will never go away (at least not in the near term), but this is an idea of where we might be headed with respect to textbooks:
http://www.campustechnology.com/Articles/2009/02/18/Web-2.0-Finally-Takes-on-Textbooks.aspx
I wonder if an e-learning version of Jamcracker.com will eventually be necessary as micro-learning modules are created left and right, but without a central repository. Merlot has done this in the free and open source space, but I don’t think anyone has done it in the freemium or paid e-learning space.