ETEC 522 – September 2012

New Media Consortium 2012 Horizon Report

New Media Consortium 2012 Horizon Report

1.     How, and how much, is it useful and valuable to the broader community of educators, as well as learning technologies specialists and venturers?

Upon opening the forty two-page New Media Consortium 2012 Horizon Report, I was immediately engaged and spent a great deal of time reading and following the many links of this well-written, well-researched and highly applicable resource. I believe it is an exemplary report and I highly recommend it to anyone currently working in education. I was so convinced by this report, that I have already forwarded it to my Dean, in the School of Media Studies at Humber College.

The NMC 2012 Horizon report is valuable because its content and form are conducive to informing and inspiring anyone interested in the future of educational technology. The information was presented in a clear and useful format/order. Beginning with an effective contextualization of education, technology trends were forecast for the short, mid and long-term future. The report was far-reaching and employed a highly appropriate methodology.

The report begins with a very concise executive summary, which identifies the “Key Trends” that are affecting teaching and learning in higher education. For example, trend number one is that, “People expect to be able to work, learn and study whenever and wherever they want to.” Naming trends in behavior effectively contextualizes the examination of technology that follows in the latter part of the report. The six trends are ‘must reads’ for educators, as I believe they summarize and situate the current state of education, which is critical in understanding what technology is appropriate. This section is followed by the “Significant Challenges” that we face, including economic pressures, institutional barriers and also the changing role of libraries (and several more). Again, this list of challenges essentially distills the current state of education and technology and must be understood prior to exploring any technologies. The introduction of the document, which contains this contextualization, is what is used to carefully steer and justify the “Technologies to Watch” section. It is likely naïve and obvious to say that no matter how much we like to read about the new apps, the context of what we need and why is far more important than the actual technologies.

Having said that, what follows will excite any educator when reading. The “Technologies to Watch” is revealed in three sections, “Near-term Horizon,” which includes Mobile Apps and Tablet Computing, “Mid-term Horizon,” which includes Game-based Learning and Learning Analytics and finally, “Far-term Horizon,” which includes Gesture-based Computing and The Internet of Things. Each technology is given an overview, with excellent and recent examples, followed by a “Relevance for Teaching, Learning or Creative Inquiry” section. Each section has brief summaries of existing exemplary implementations, along with links, and “Further Reading” resources. It is as if this report was written so that it is just a matter of highlighting sections and handing it to those in charge of making decisions at one’s institution. From my personal experience, sometimes showing a Dean how others are pushing their institutions forward, is enough to get a ball rolling. As an excitable educator and student, the various links and resources delayed me in finishing the document quickly, because I was busy downloading new apps or viewing others’ inspiring websites. This report caused me to reconsider my voting from last week. I don’t think I truly understood the items we voted on (maybe I should have read this report in full prior). I believe the inspirational nature of this document, above all, is why it is very useful for educators. It is vital to become excited and inspired by examples, in order to consider adopting new technologies.

Since the NMC (New Media Consortium) brings together international expert representatives in educational technology, educators and industry members, it is a highly reliable entity with a broad reach. It is stated that 450 technology professionals from all sectors, from more than thirty countries compose the NMC Horizon Project. The report is part of this project. There are 47 members on the advisory board who collaborated online, in a wiki, to produce the report. It is worth noting that the employed an iterative Delphi methodology (in which experts use questionnaires to build consensus). I believe this method eliminates domination by any one interest, however, I would need to further investigate the method to best assess it.

2.     Do you expect to seek out future versions of this report to help drive your own professional success, and also to recommend it to others in this regard?

Yes, I will seek out future versions of this report. I have already recommended the report and will be forwarding to many more. Here’s the link again:

http://www.nmc.org/publications/horizon-report-2012-higher-ed-edition.

Johnson, L., Adams, S., and Cummins, M. (2012). The NMC Horizon Report: 2012 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.