The Horizon Report 2007 Edition
The Horizon Report 2007 Edition, a collaboration between The New Media Consortium (NMC) and the Educause Learning Initiative is now available.
This report identifies and describes 6 emerging technologies that are expected to have a significant influence on higher education over the next 1-5 years. They break them down into likely timeframes for widespread adoption on university campuses.
Time to Adoption Horizon: One year or less
- user-created content (e.g. tagging, YouTube, Flickr)
- social networking (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn)
Time to Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years
- mobile phones
- virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life)
Time to Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years
- New forms of scholarship/emerging forms of publication (e.g. online books)
- Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming (e.g. serious games, World of Warcraft)
Of interest is the section on mobile phones which includes an excellent list of links to related articles and projects.
For example, the ability of phones to record datahas tremendous applications in fieldwork for many disciplines. In the UK, students in a grade-school geography class use cell phones to record data (text and pictures) in the field and submit it to the teacher, who remains in the classroom. Students can create mini-documentaries easily and cheaply with their phones; online tutorials for phone-based moviemaking offer tips and techniques. In Australia, a grant-funded project invited filmmakers to write and shoot five-minute movies specifically for the mobile phone platform (see www.abc.net.au/miniseries), a
technique that has been used in visual literacy and cinema courses.
Photo by David Cooper, Toronto Star
Relevance: The benefits of mobile phones for learning, education, and creativity has been outlined in this section along with examples of schools/universities that have incorporated these devices into their curriculum. It is interesting that some school districts within Canada (e.g. Brampton catholic schools) have either banned or are looking at restricting mobile phone use on school property (e.g. Toronto school board). How may these actions affect the ability to create cutting edge curriculum with these emerging technologies?