NMC Horizon Report > 2013 Higher Education Edition

What is happening with technology in today's education? "The NMC Horizon Report > 2013 Higher Education Edition is a collaborative effort between the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE Program. This is a ten year program to analyze what trends are coming up in education."

This edition of the report gives us six trends that experts from EDUCAUSE and other predict will be the leading trends.  They even give us the time span in which these technologies will be common place.

After being in many years of education, one thing is clear.  George Saltzman from Abilene Christian College put it best, "Popular culture leads educational technology trends."  Think about it.  The Internet opened up to educators and scientists first.  It had many years with just amazing content, no ads, alien blogs, pictures of cats, etc.  It also have very few users.  The day the Internet was unleashed by NSF to the public, it went crazy with developers and users.  Educators have had generations of youth leading the way.

I clearly remember people taking bets on what day Amazon would go bankrupt, "Who would buy a book online?"  and faculty pooh pooing at the idea that someone would take a class completely on line, "It will never happen."  Now we have MOOCs nipping at our heels, "Who would take a non accredited course on line?".  Well enterprising people who want to learn or retool and not pay the high tuition of college.  That is some of what George discussed today.

So how do we get technology into the hands of students?  By teaching them to use it as a tool, not the teachers.  Surveys show that most teachers use their computers to find information, answer questions, and find resources for their lessons.  Lets have students do that!

This report is very good reading.  Click here to get the shortened version.