Technology tools that might still be on the periphery of our personal e-Learning radar screens are about to be adopted widely by those we serve, a newly released report shows. If we don’t develop an understanding of and familiarity with them now, the learners who currently turn to us for assistance may leave us behind.
Mobile computing and open content — the challenge of making as much information as openly accessible as we can — are among the technologies most likely to “have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative inquiry” within the next year, the authors of the 2010 Horizon Report tell us.
The latest annual report, the seventh in an ongoing series, provides an updated snapshot of tech tools that are “likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative inquiry on college and university campuses within the next five years.” Those reports always have an impact far beyond reaching their primary audience, and help those of us involved in e-Learning have a better grasp of where we and our learners are going.
In addition to describing the rapidly evolving impact of mobile computing — “smart phones, netbooks, laptops, and a wide range of other devices [providing] access [to] the Internet using cellular-based portable hotspots and mobile broadband cards”—and open content as “a cost-effective alternative to textbooks and others materials,” the report looks out over a five year period for documented trends.
Electronic books and simple augmented reality appear on the horizon within the next two or three years, and gesture-based computing and visual data analysis appear ready for widespread use within four or five years, the Horizon Report authors say.
One Year Horizon: mobile computing and open content
Nowhere does the Horizon Report reach us more viscerally than in documenting the influence of mobile computing and open content access in learning. For those who already see their mobile devices as indispensable tools used on a daily basis, the combination of those devices and learning opportunities is already virtually seamless. Log onto your smartphone and you immediately have access to resources provided through reliable and well-designed Websites ranging from the Smarthistory art site to online libraries and government resources on every imaginable topic. We have reached the point where just-in-time delivery of learning is often limited only by a learner’s imagination and research skills, and the entire online (virtual) world has become a classroom filled with accessible resources through Creative Commons licensing and other points of openly shared access. Bill Hogan, writing in the January-February issue of the AARP Bulletin, referred to this as FreE-Learning, and it’s something we all need to understand and use to our advantage as we reach out to those who are already taking advantage of mobile computing in learning.
Two- to Three-Year Horizon: e-Books and augmented reality
With new and improved e-Book readers seeming to appear before us at a dizzying pace, it may be hard for some to picture this as still two or three years away from maturity. What the Horizon Report authors tell us, however, is that we’re about to make a huge leap from mainstream commercial adoption into the world of e-Learning.
“While the typical electronic reader could conceivably hold the entire sum of textbooks and readings for the entirety of one’s academic experience, campuses have been slower to adopt electronic books than the general public,” they report.
Obstacles to that level of adoption are rapidly disappearing, and “a survey of current projects shows that electronic books are being explored in virtually every discipline, although full-scale movement to electronic books is still two to three years away.”
Simple augmented reality — the “concept of blending (augmenting) virtual data … with what we see in the real world, for the purpose of enhancing the information we can perceive with our senses” — is equally likely to go mainstream, they note.
Military and other applications of augmented reality tools are already in use for projects including vehicle repair by using special goggles: “The goggles demonstrate each step in a repair, identify the tools needed, and include textual instructions as well. This kind of augmented experience especially lends itself to training for specific tasks.”
Augmented books, furthermore, are also in development and may provide additional learning tools to all of us in the very near future.
Four- to Five-Year Horizon: Gesture- and visual-based computing
While “the full realization of the potential of gesture-based computing is still several years away,” we are already seeing significant movement toward new interfaces with equipment beyond the use of a keyboard and mouse.
The result for teacher-trainer-learners, according to the Horizon Report writers, is a more kinesthetic approach to e-Learning.
“Already, medical students benefit from simulations that teach the use of specific tools through gesture-based interfaces, and it is easy to see how such interfaces could be applied in the visual arts and other fields where fine motor skills come into play,” they report. “When combined with haptic (touch or motion-based) feedback, the overall effect is very compelling.”
Visual data analysis appears equally compelling in the way it might help us “understand complex social processes like learning, political and organizational change, and the diffusion of knowledge,” they write.
Not only does visual data analysis — the use of tag clouds and other visual representations of information to establish and document patterns within large amounts of information — offer promise as a learning tool, but it also “may help expand our understanding of learning itself,” they continue.
“Learning is one of the most complex of social processes, with a myriad of variables interacting in ways that are not well understood, making it an ideal focus for the search for patterns,” they explain.
Regardless of whether we believe that these various tech tools and trends will reach maturity within the projected time frame, we certainly have a lot to learn and gain from the latest in this ongoing series of reports issued collaboratively by the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. Online links provided at the end of each horizon technology description continue our own e-Learning experiences, and more completely immerse us in the information which helped shape the entire report.
