What's on the Horizon?

Each year the New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project publishes a report discussing new technologies that will impact education. The 2006 Horizon Report was a collaboration between NMC and EDUCAUSE and the results are well worth reading. Download your copy here from EDUCAUSE.

From the report, the technologies to watch include,

1. Social Computing
   
2. Personal Broadcasting
3. The Phones in their Pockets
4. Educational Gaming
5. Augmented Reality and Enhanced Visualization
6. Context-Aware Environments and Devices

Social Computing (collaborative online tools) and Personal Broadcasting (podcasting and video blogging) are already exploding and this report describes the "time to adoption" as one year or less, so the time is now. Further, within two to three years, the Phones in their Pockets (enhanced mobile devices) and Educational Gaming (simulations, virtual worlds, social play and others) will become widely adopted tools for education.

Read this report and then think about "where do you want to go?" It's a much different world online that it was just a few short years (maybe months?) ago. And, remember this was last year's report.