2011 Horizon Report: A Quick Overview

I always enjoy reading the new edition of the Horizon report. It’s interesting to see what they think is close to being used in mainstream HE, what is far off, and how things have changed since previous years (2008, 2009, 2010). I don't think that they've been far off in their predictions, although uptake of the technologies by the mainstream has perhaps been a little slower than expected.

This year in the One Year or Less to adoption section we have Electronic Books and Mobiles. In the Two to Three Years to adoption group we have Augmented Reality and Game-Based Learning. Four to Five Years to adoption contains Gesture-Based Computing and Learning Analytics.

Over the next week or so, some of us in LTD hope to write up some thoughts on the report and the individual technologies discussed within.

Emerging Technologies: Horizon Report 2010

Each year the Horizon Project releases a report that looks at technologies and tools which are likely to impact teaching and learning over the next few years. The technologies that are highlighted in this 2010 Horizon Report are:

0-1 Years to Adoption: Mobile Computing and Open Content

2-3 Years to Adoption: Electronic Books and Simple Augmented Reality

4-5 Years to Adoption: Gesture Based Computing and Visual Data Analysis

Why is this important to a Higher Education institution? Well, it advises us on which technologies might be at a realistic stage of development and uptake to adopt in our teaching and learning. It also gives educators new to a technology or concept a brief overview of how it relates to our context.

Looking at the Mobile Computing section, this seemed to resound with me most, perhaps because I've been using my own devices to access the internet for my own learning. The report mentions 3 areas that smart phones might be used:

1. An alternative method of accessing resources - which in Edge Hill University's case would require a complete change in the way our own resources are prepared and distributed. Roger C. Shank thinks that real learning wouldn't take place and that this would not be worthwhile. However this might be down to personal preference as I've not had a problem reading books on my iPod Touch, and can see room for Microlearning activities where they are relevant.
2. A way of connecting students to each other and the institution - See the iPhone project at ACU and the project in Houston for examples.
3. For fieldwork - perhaps ideas along the line of Walking Through Time.

While there are some cases where using mobile devices in learning are appropriate now, the Morgan Stanley 'Mobile Internet Report' expects internet access on mobile devices to overtake PC access within 5 years. So while we can use mobile devices in appropriate situations, we're not dealing with a situation where students all want to access everything on their phones right now.

[image by James Nash (aka Cirrus)]


This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

The Museum of Learning Technology: Open Day Displays

We created a display for our open day this week and a couple of people asked for a digitised version. So here it is. It looses a little without the supporting materials, but I might try to add them later.

The idea of the displays was to approach issues and ideas around our work in a simple and entertaining way, using as few words as possible. That's more difficult than we imagined. Let us know what you think. Is it worth creating more resources like this as introduction to specific topics? Even with my drawing skills not stretching beyond stick figures?

They're best read full screen.

Firstly, the whole display...

Museum of Learning Technology

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Then in 4 sections...

The Museum of Learning Technology: Part One - The Past

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Museum of Learning Technology: Part Two - The History of Writing

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Museum of Learning Technology: Part Three - The Present

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Museum of Learning Technology: Part Four - The Future

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Adaptations that I would like to see in my classroom

Trawling through an archive of my e-learning masters course I found my thoughts about hopeful improvements within the next 10 years. Here’s what I said in 2006:

Adaptations which I would like to see in my classroom and may be financially and technically possible in the next 10 years (briefly, as I think most are aware of my ideas):

• Thin client, cheap laptop, robust technology.
• Increasing use of VLE, especially the forum feature – encouraging students to learn from each other.
• Project based learning – less discrete subject and more ‘joined up’ (is that word making a come back, please) teaching and learning.
• Use of variety of software, away from monolithic Microsoft towards other commercial and open sourced provision.
• Get the kit to become more of an assistant than a hindrance:
• currently we:

• need to type, I want to see voice recognition;
• we need to look at small screens, I want to see wearable displays giving a complete field of view;
• we rely too much on text, I want to see multimedia used to it’s proper conclusion;
• we have to say “Wait whilst my computer boots up”, I want to have a
  turned on instantly available source of information, as accessible as a piece of paper in my pocket.

… how far do you think we’ve come?

I think the above brings to mind that

1. There has been some movement in thin client, but perhaps not as much as I’d like;
2. The VLE forum is being challenged by the “small parts” model (utilising other web based social tools, as well as phone technologies); and
3. Open source is becoming more mainstream (look at cheap netbooks operating systems).
4. It also highlights that we have far to go with the human-machine interface (to lower that barrier), more use of multimedia and a machine that switches on when you ask it to, not 5 minutes later when it feels like it.

On the latter point, consider the OLPC, (this from their discussion of power usage page):

"Resume on our system is extremely fast: even without any serious attempt to optimize resume, we can resume from RAM in 160 milliseconds (mid-April, 2007). We are still determining the minimum resume time, as a 63ms delay we thought was required has a workaround in the Geode. B3 and later systems are probably similar to the GX. We will work in the future to further speed resume. Note that for most uses, 100ms is considered at the edge of human perception (e.g. typing).”

So, if OLPC can do it …

Thanks for reading – thoughts and comments sought.

David (image by mangee)