Review by: Reichert, Raimond (2005-02-15)

The Horizon 2005 report by the New Media Consortium in cooperation with the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative summarizes emerging technologies likely to have a significant impact on teaching and learning in higher education. Based on interviews with experts in industry, research, and education six technologies have been identified. Each technology is briefly described in the report, and its relevance for higher education is outlined. The links to concrete examples where the technologies are used in educational contexts are valuable, as are the references for further reading. The following paragraphs summarize the six technologies described in the report and gives their projected time-to-adoption horizon.

Extended Learning (one year or less). Augmenting traditional teaching and learning with communication tools used by students in their daily life – mobile phones, digital cameras, iPods, instant messaging, blogs, wikis, etc. – is a challenge to educators. There are many attempts to integrate those tools in education which illustrate that the technologies transfer more control over the learning process to the students.

Ubiquitous Wireless (one year or less). The ability to locate a cell phone geographically with great precision in combination with ubiquitous wireless internet connection has a strong influence on the social dynamics of students. These technologies are quickly becoming commonplace. However, it is still unclear what the consequences for teaching and learning will be.

Intelligent Searching (two to three years). Advanced search technology will help in finding, organizing, and sharing information. Specialized search engines such as Google Scholar enable more precise searches. Multimedia search engines allow users to search images based on image properties or to find quotes in videos (e. g. Google Video).

Educational Gaming (two to three years). The assumption is that games increase time-on-task, since they do not feel like working or learning. There are many suitable topics, for example, simulations in physics, economics, biology, or chemistry, or role-playing games in history, literature, or social sciences. Educational games were in vogue before, so it will be interesting to see if they will really become mainstream.

Social Networks and Knowledge Webs (four to five years). Blogs and wikis are increasingly used for instructional purposes. New tools for sharing information and connecting people will allow even more diverse forms of collaboration. For example, FlickR links people by topics they are interested in and could be used to link students from different institutions working on related subjects.

Context-Aware Computing / Augmented Reality (four to five years). These technologies are still quite experimental and pursue the same goal: To make the user human-computer interface more transparent in order to increase the ease of use. For example, artworks in museums could be augmented with information about their history or related artworks in other museums.

Although the selection of the six technologies may be questionable, the report raises interesting and important questions. The report offers a concise summary of technologies that may be relevant to education in the not too distant future. Further investigations and regular updates of the identified trends are necessary and would be very useful.

It would also be interesting to see a “reverse” of the Horizon report: Innovative pedagogical scenarios (i. e. learning designs) for which technology should be developed – instead technological advances for which pedagogy must be developed.