The latest edition of the Horizon Report is now available for your browsing/reading pleasure. This is a joint publication from The New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. The technologies forecasted along with their time to adoption include:
- user created content (1 year or less),
- social networking (1 year or less),
- mobile phones (2 to 3 years),
- virtual worlds (2 to 3 years),
- new scholarship and emerging forms of publication (4 to 5 years), and
- massively multiplayer educational gaming (4 to 5 years)
The executive summary identifies several trends and challenges impacting higher education. "Information literacy increasingly should not be considered a given." [page 4] I agree with this statement, but would like to know who really considers information literacy a given in the first place? We try our best to teach students how to use our resources, but we know we don't reach everyone and even the ones we do reach are not always receptive to learning because it's all free on the web anyway.
The authors continue, "Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the information literacy skills of new students are not improving as the post-1993 Internet boomlet enters college." [page 4] Yep. The continual challenge we face is helping our students straddle the digital and analog worlds during information research. We are also challenged to help faculty understand that their students do not approach research the same way that they did 10-20 years ago when they were in college.
I enjoy reading/browsing this report. However, I am always concerned about how I can really apply any of these technologies locally.
