Peering over the horizon
Wednesday, November 1, 2006 at 10:51AM 
For those of us who like some idea of what technologies might be impacting education in the near future, New Horizons and EDUCAUSE have released their Horizon Report, 2006 edition. While aimed at post secondary educators, the report should also be of interest to those of us in K-12 environments since what happens in college, seems to come to us shortly thereafter.
New Horizons concludes these areas will have the most impact:
- One year or less
- Social computing
- Personal broadcasting
- Two to three years
- The Phones in their Pockets (increased capability of cell phones)
- Educational gaming
- Four to five years
- Augmented reality and enhanced visualization
- Context-aware environments and devices
As interesting are the "Critical Challenges" and 'Key Trends" identified. (I am personally surprised that individualized educational services have not been more in demand given how the "long tail" has resulted in consumers expecting an increasingly individualized approach to other services and products.)
I was also fascinated by how cell phones are rapidly becoming the "delivery platform" for an increasing number of services. I made the observation a couple blogs ago that the decision of whether to allow personal information devices in the classroom has already been made for schools since parents are insisting (and suing) for their children's right to have cell phones in the classroom. As cell phones and computer merge in functionality, 1 to 1 ubiquitous computing argueably is already here in K-12.
Another observation highlighted by the report talks about technological "churn" - with each new technology requiring additional tech support. (Think how much time we are spending helping staff members keep their PDAs synched). The other side effect of churn is "a backlash effect from those who are asked to change the way they work, often just when they are setting into full productivity with the last new tool." (Implemented a new gradebook program lately?) One blogger recently asked what might happen if we declared a 3 year moratorium on new equipment purchases in schools. I would modify that to ask what might happen if we only declared a moratorium on the purchases of "different" technologies, including new software versions and operating systems.
Wouldn't it be glorious to have 3 years to simply master the tools we currently have today?
Well worth the read.
