Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

4.16.10 | The “2010 Horizon Report K-12 Edition,” released by the Consortium for School Networking and the New Media Consortium with support from HP, names six “emerging technologies or practices” likely to enter mainstream use by the educational community over the next one to five years. They are:


• One Year or Less: Cloud Computing
• One Year or Less: Collaborative Environments
• Two to Three Years: Game-Based Learning
• Two to Three Years: Mobiles
• Four to Five Years: Augmented Reality
• Four to Five Years: Flexible Displays

“The way we think about learning environments is changing,” the authors write. They argue that students are learning more outside the classroom, and are doing so informally with the help of technology and mentors. More students are also engaging in independent study. They continue:

There is a tremendous opportunity for schools to work hand-in-hand with alternate sources, to examine traditional approaches, and to reevaluate the content and experiences they are able to offer.

The Horizon report argues that educators need to embrace the “growing importance of innovation and creativity as professional skills.”

Chock full of examples, each section includes an overview of the technology; its relevance for teaching, learning and creative expression; and suggestions for further reading. The online version of the report is easy to navigate, and readers are invited to add comments. Don’t miss it.

Most fun is reading the projections for the “far-term” horizon and the experimental examples from research and practice that may be coming our way very soon.

One of the technologies named in the report is augmented reality, or AR, which the authors explain as the “blending (augmenting) virtual data — information, rich media, and even live action — with what we see in the real world, for the purpose of enhancing the information we can perceive with our senses.”

Examples of how AR might be used for learning include: 3-D globes that pop up on the pages of a book about the earth, mobile games, virtual field trips, and interactive student-authored story books. [See “Views from the Vanguard of Using Mobile Media for Learning” at Spotlight.]

Flexible displays, another far-term technology named in the report and described as a kind of “electronic paper,” has potential uses for robotics, science and textbooks: “Thin screens will eventually be embedded in books, attached to desks and walls, and integrated with all kinds of objects.”

The Horizon report also has an interesting section on the policy and structural challenges K-12 schools face in adopting these technologies and readying students to embrace technological innovation.

Educators can request a free toolkit, designed to “foster a dialogue at educational institutions about how emerging technologies can improve learning in K-12 education,” or participate in the K-12 wiki at the New Media Consortium’s site.