By Jim Rosso

Created by an international group of education leaders who have been involved with education technology for many years, the annual Horizon Report identifies technology trends and challenges related to education. For the second year, the New Media Consortium, in collaboration with the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and supported by HP, has created a K-12 edition of the report that looks at technologies that are likely to have a significant impact on teaching, learning, research, and creativity in K-12 schools.

The authors looked at six technologies that are viewed as having the potential of a great impact on pre-college education over the next one to five years—with estimates of how long it might take for widespread adoption to occur. For example, cloud computing and collaborative environments are anticipated to be mainstream within a year, while augmented realities and flexible displays won't be in the mainstream for at least four years. Included within the report are links to schools and projects that are currently working with each of the technologies. Here's an overview:

Time-to Adoption: One Year or Less

• Cloud Computing—"The 'cloud' refers to surplus computing resources available from specialized data centers, each often hosting thousands of servers that power the world's largest websites and web services. Growing out of research in grid computing, cloud computing transforms once-expensive resources like disk storage and processing cycles into a readily available, cheap commodity." Schools have dramatically increased their use of cloud-based applications but can be expected to continue to extend their use to include computation, research, and collaborative resources.


• Collaborative Environments—"Collaborative environments are online spaces where the focus is on making it easy to collaborate and work in groups, no matter where the participants may be." This technology provides educators and students the opportunity to learn remotely and be part of learning communities that reach beyond geographic boundaries.

Time-to Adoption: Two to three years

• Game-based learning—"The interest in game-based learning has accelerated considerably in recent years, driven by clear successes in military and industrial training as well as by emerging research into the cognitive benefits of game play." The research today reminds the education world that game-based learning has great potential for K-12 education.


• Mobile Devices—"The available choices for staying connected while on the go are many—smart phones, tablets, laptops, and over the coming year, the iPad and Slate PC will herald a new class of devices that blend the functions of all of them. … The age at which students in the developed world acquire their first mobile device is dropping, and by secondary school, nearly every student has one." From simple applications such as Twitter or cell phone polling apps to GPS and scientific data collection, we can expect such devices to be more widely used in the classroom in the years to come.

Time-to Adoption: Four to five years

• Augmented Reality—"While the capability to deliver augmented reality experiences has been around for decades, it is only very recently that those experiences have become easy and portable." Augmented reality consists of the convergence of three technologies—GPS, video, and pattern recognition. "Augmented reality has strong potential to provide both powerful, contextual, in situ learning experiences and serendipitous exploration and discovery of the connected nature of information in the real world." While much of the research in this area currently takes place in the higher education world, the Horizon Report authors expect it will translate easily to K-12 settings.


• Flexible Displays—"Computer displays continue to develop in ways that are enabling whole new categories of devices." Computer screens become thinner and thinner and more capable of being embedded in books, attached to desks and walls, and integrated with all kinds of objects. While using these in schools seems many years away, many companies are interested in the possibilities of touch-based interfaces and flexible displays.

Key Trends and Critical Challenges

Understanding the role and future of technology is a process of understanding the trends. Each Advisory Board identifies key trends that are currently affecting the practice of teaching, learning, and creativity. Here are some key conclusions from this year's report.

• Technology is increasingly a means for empowering students, a method for communicating and socializing, and a ubiquitous, transparent part of student lives.


• Technology continues to profoundly affect the way we work, collaborate, communicate, and succeed.


• The perceived value of innovation and creativity is increasing.


• There is increasing interest in just-in-time, alternate, or non-formal avenues of education such as online learning, mentoring, and independent study.


• The way we think of learning environments is changing.

Here are some of the challenges that the authors expect to be relevant to how schools deal with the technology opportunities over the next five-year period

• Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession.


• Students are different, but educational practice and the materials that support it are changing, only slowly.


• Many policy makers and educators believe that deep reform is needed, but at the same time, there is little agreement as to what a new model of education might look like.


• A key challenge is the fundamental structure of the K-12 education establishment.


• Many activities related to learning and education take place outside the walls of the classroom—but these experiences are often undervalued or unacknowledged.

By aligning trends and challenges it is possible to create a picture of what may be possible in the next five years with theese six new technologies. Can the K12 establishment catch up to all that the students are discovering?

Source: Horizon Report—K-12 Edition