2008 Horizon Report

Greg Black's summary of emerging technologies interests me in two ways. As a summary of the emerging technologies, it shows its age and remains current. What I mean is, those emerging technologies are becoming ubiquitous in society circles of young people (so Greg was right), but still only beginning to gain a foothold in education circles, certainly in the primary/intermediate context where I work. I'll deal with each one in turn from this perspective.

Grassroots video popularised predominantly by Youtube is in my view consumed by a far greater majority than it is produced. Mark Treadwell argues that disappointingly few young people even know how to upload to Youtube (sorry, can't reference that, he said it on a recent PD day!). I think it will take more exposure to the medium both in terms of having more cameras in schools, and familiarising kids with uploading before the consumption/production ratio is more balanced. Teachers can accelerate this process by "owning" the technology themselves and uploading their own work or that of their students themselves - maybe to safer venues like teachertube.com

Collaborative Webs - I'm not sure I truly understand the term yet. If it's referring to Facebook style social network/ideas exchange then I'd be keen to see this one develop. Certainly in the UK there is a thriving forum section run by the TES in which ideas are exchanged. I have a feeling that what Greg is talking about is more complex than this - will need to look into this further!

Mobile Broadband - I agree with Greg in that the possibilities for this are mind-boggling. Rennaissance Education (Apple Suppliers) were talking about using iPod Touches in classrooms as a cheap but valuable portal to the web - you could get 5 of them for every single Macbook laptop which means 4 extra kids are online and able to type/interact in the virtual space. If you take this idea on to smart phones like the iPhone or Blackberry, or onto portable gaming devices like the PSP there are yet more applications. I do feel though that we then have to ensure that what students are doing in the virtual space is safe. What is clear is that portable devices have a strong future role to play not least as a way of optimizing the yearly spend on ICT hardware.

Mashups - just had to do a quick look-around to get my head around this one. The example I was directed to by google was Panoramio, the application that allows people to upload their images to the google Earth application so that they become geographically tagged. I'm also thinking that when you paste a google map into an email giving someone directions that's probably a mashup too - is it? I'm trying to think of other applications of this, particularly in a primary education setting - would love to hear if anyone knows of any in progress.

As an interesting footnote to all this, I see that the 2009 report has moved towards a more collaborative and connected set of emerging technologies - especially Collaborative Environments, Online COmmunication Tools and Cloud Computing. These are all aspects which I am really interested in pursuing both in the EDPROFST714 paper and in my own professional practice. Google Apps covers much of this, but I'm beginning to think that I'd like to widen my focus to include these ideas more - I just don't know if 3000 words is enough!