The Horizon Report highlights the key technologies destined to transform education in the coming years. Published by the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, the report offers an interesting picture of education in the near future. As a board member for NMC, I worked on the version for higher education, but for the first time, NMC this year also created a version centered on K-12 education, and the results are fascinating. "Technology is increasingly a means for empowering students, a method for communication and socializing and a ubiquitous and transparent part of their lives," claims the report. Technology may have isolated kids in the past, the writers argue, but now it can be a key means for student learning. This point also suggests the fluidity among communicating, socializing and learning; these activities are no longer necessarily separate. The report is not naive - it also highlights key challenges: many schools don't have basic technical infrastructures and teachers often don't have much experience with various technologies. In California, there are several initiatives designed to combat these challenges. I sat in on a session hosted by the James Irvine Foundation last week as participants from various schools and a group called ConnectEd: The California Center for College and Career worked together on ideas for a curriculum that will teach media arts, both critically and as a set of skills for use in the job market. Transforming education faces daunting obstacles, and the need for engaged students with access to technologies demands creative solutions. The NMC reports offer some of these solutions. You can find both reports and information on how they were created here.
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This report is also interesting in relation to the findings of Mimi Ito's Digital Youth project, which focused on the ways that kids are using these technologies for informal learning outside the classroom as much as (sometimes more than) inside formal educational settings. I would be curious to know how or if the curricula suggested by NMC seek to integrate with the elusive realm of informal, peer-based learning.