Which Technologies will Shape Education in 2008?

The New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) just released the 2008 Horizon Report. "Each year, the Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years."

The 6 technology trends identified in the report that could shape education in 2008 are:

• Grassroots Video
  - evolved from user created content in 07 report....the popularity of YouTube has spun of many similar web services. Shooting, editing and publishing video can be done easily, even with your mobile phone.
  
• Collaboration Webs
  - evolution from social networking and virtual worlds in 07 report....teachers networks have grown beyond their backyard.
  
• Mobile Broadband
  - evolution from mobile phone in 07 report....people are using their mobile phones more and more. Unfortunately the prohibitive cost of telco prices - ie: NZ - in some parts of the world limit the potential for educational use.
  
• Data Mashups
  - a great concept for educators to understand and be able to develop. Mashups is pulling data in from various sources around the web into one area. For example, if a teacher wanted to pull resources in from around the web for a project on climated change....they could create their own mashup for this and then host it on their school or classroom website for the students to then access. Links in the report on authoring tools to create mashups.
  
• Collective Intelligence
  - bringing together the knowledge and thoughts in "real time" in what the report calls "explicit knowledge stores." An example of this is wikipedia.
  
• Social Operating System
  - is an evolution of all the "social aspects" from the 07 report. The report also talks about the "third space" (see side bar under "things for thought," where I blogged about the 3rd space back in 06, with a link to a great article by Tracey Bretag.) How do people connect? How do communities of interest develop?
  

The 6 trends that were identified to impact education in 2007 were:

• User-created content;
• Social networking;
• Mobile phones;
• Virtual worlds;
• New scholarship and emerging forms of publication; and
• Massively multiplayer educational gaming

Download 2008 Horizon Report
Compare with 2007 Horizon Report