Instructions
Find the “Emerging Markets” category in the course menu. The listed posts are brief individual statements about currently emerging learning technologies. These have all been excerpted from very recent professional research reports which have predicted that these are the most important emerging technologies for educators to take notice of.
We want to know if you agree, and if you have alternate technologies you wish to promote as being even more significant. Here’s what to do:
- Emerging Markets Poll: Carefully review all of the posts in this category in order to identify the eight (8) emerging technologies you believe are the most opportunistic (urgent, exciting, dangerous, impending, important, inevitable, prospectively transformative) for the general, global future of teaching and learning. Also identify the eight (8) emerging technologies you believe are the least opportunistic of these posts. Use the ratings tool (hover over the five stars and click when you have the right number according to the ratings rubric given in the Participation Guide earlier) to vote positively for the eight (8) most opportunistic technologies and negatively for the eight (8) least opportunistic. You can only vote a maximum of once for each technology. Each of the posts contains a link you can follow to the relevant research report so that you can find out more about each technology, but this is completely optional for this poll: we’re confident in the value of your immediate, unresearched opinion. {N.B.: Here, and throughout the course, we are relying on your most objective professional opinion, not what you ‘like’ or ‘dislike’. For example, few educators ‘like’ the idea of “AI teachers”, but few would also dismiss its looming impact on education. In this course it is very important for you to work with what you expect to happen rather than what you might wish to happen.}
- What is missing?: (Optional) Are you a more astute futurist than any of these studies, or do you have a better oracle at your disposal? Here is your chance for sharing. If you have a clear idea about a highly opportunistic learning technology that isn’t listed, please post it in roughly the same format as the other listings, making sure it is categorized “Emerging Market Poll” so that everyone else is able to vote on it. Each new post effectively gives you one extra vote (you can’t vote on your own post, but its existence is nonetheless a vote!). Do not post more than two (2) alternate selections without first discussing the matter with your instructor.
- Professional Reviews: Identify the three (3) emerging learning technologies from the full list that you believe are most opportunistic for you professionally in your career, either because their impact is most imminent (possibly negatively so) due to factors in your professional environment, or because you personally are deeply interested in them and intend to champion their application. For each of these three (3) posts compose a Review (ie: respond to the “Comment” prompt in the box at the bottom of each post) summarizing your professional opinions regarding why this technology will be important.
- Recommendations: As close as possible to the end of Week 1, go back to your eight most opportunistic technologies and read any reviews composed by your peers. When there is more than one review available for a particular technology, provide a thumbs-up recommendation for the one (only) review you found most helpful, insightful and valuable.
N.B.1 – There are sometimes two dozen posts in the Emerging Markets Poll, so don’t miss any!
N.B.2 – Polling Impact: The meshed results of these two polls will help determine which emerging technologies will become the research focus for this iteration of 522, and which Emerging Market Team (to conduct Assignment #2) you will be assigned to. Nominally speaking the highest-rated posts will become our eight (8) topics, and you will be assigned to one of your three personal selections, but it almost certainly won’t come out exactly this way. If you have a high priority reason for being assigned to any specific topic, please email your instructor before the end of Week 1.
Deadline
This activity must be complete by the end of Week 1 to have any useful effect. Opportunity Forecast topics and teams will be announced at the beginning of Week 2.