Technology@Wooster

The 2008 Horizon Report has just been released.  The report is a joint production of the New Media Consortium and the EduCause Learning Initiaitive and has been produced each year since 2004.  The purpose of the report is to “identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations.”

This year’s report identifies the following key emerging technologies:

• Grassroots Video
• Collaboration Webs
• Mobile Broadband
• Data Mashups
• Collective Intelligence
• Social Operating Systems

The report also identifies the following critical challenges facing learning organizations over the next five years:

• “Significant shifts in scholarship, research, creative expression, and learning have created a need for innovation and leadership at all levels of the academy.”
• “Higher education is facing a growing expectation to deliver services, content and media to mobile and personal devices.”
• “The renewed emphasis on collaborative learning is pushing the educational community to develop new forms of interaction and assessment.”
• “The academy is faced with a need to provide formal instruction in information, visual, and technological literacy as well as in how to create meaningful content with today’s tools.”

The Horizon Report identifies the following significant trends affecting the areas of teaching, learning and creative expression:

• “The growing use of Web 2.0 and social networking—combined with collective intelligence and mass amateurization—is gradually but inexorably changing the practice of scholarship.”
• “The way we work, collaborate, and communicate is evolving as boundaries become more fluid and globalization increases.”
• “Access to—and portability of—content is increasing as smaller, more powerful devices are introduced.”
• “The gap between students’ perception of technology and that of faculty continues to widen.”

Download the full report from the EduCause Learning Initiative.