Room With A View

The folks at the Bit by Bit podcast referred to the Horizon 2007 Report. It’s written by the The New Media Consortium. I read the report a while ago but the podcast inspired me to go back and have another read. I’ve been holding off writing about it because there’s too much to write and I have too little time. So, I’ve decided to write about the report in stages. Here’s my first post.

The report is “a research-oriented effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within higher education.”

I work in K-12 education and though several of the report’s finding do not apply to my field of education many of the findings do.

The report identifies 6 technologies to watch and a time frame for each.

1. User-Created Content–1 year
2. Social Networking–1 year
3. Mobile Phones–2 to 3 years
4. Virtual Worlds–2 to 3 years
5. The New Scholarship and Emerging Forms of Publication–4 to 5 years
6. Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming–4 to 5 years

All but perhaps the fifth technology have direct implications for K-12 education.

It’s well worth a read to learn more.