What's coming up on the horizon?

I look forward to reading the Horizon Report every year and just managed to read the 2011 edition yesterday.  The report looks at emerging technologies and their potential impact on teaching, learning and creative inquiry - for a school that believes in the inquiry process it's important reading.

Here are the trends and challenges identified in the report:

• Our roles as educators are being challenged by the abundance and availability of resources on the internet - we are no longer the knowledge providers.
• People expect to be able to work, learn and study whenever and wherever they want.
• The workplace is becoming more collaborative - as educators we need to reflect on the way we are structuring student projects to prepare them for this world of work.
• The technologies we use are now mostly cloud-based - which is leading to a redefinition of the concept of technical support.
• Digital media literacy continues to rise in importance as a key skill in every subject and profession - however there is still no real agreement about what digital literacy skills should be taught, especially as digital technologies are changing faster than curriculum development.
• Assessments are lagging behind new ways of authoring, publishing and researching - there is no real agreement on how to evaluate blogs, multimedia and web 2.0 presentations.
• User-created content is exploding and teachers and students are finding it challenging to keep pace with the rapid increase in information. We need more effective tools for finding information and for organising it.

Photo:  Looking across the Zugersee towards Mt Pilatus