NMC Horizon Report Overview

What is the Relevance for Teaching, Learning or Creative Inquiry?

According to NMC Horizon Report: 2013 K-12 Edition, there will be a dramatic impact over the next five years to come in education worldwide due to six emerging technologies or practices applied in learning, that will create a change on teaching, learning and creativity and these are: Cloud Computing, Mobile Learning, Learning Analytics, Open Content, 3D Printers and Virtual Remote Laboratories. Schools and educators must begin understanding and being part of this transition to understand the needs of the 21^st Century Learners. These technologies or practices will occur on a time frame of three horizons: 1) near-term, 2) mid-term and 3) far-term.

Near-term which will happen in a length of months, in which students develop their learning, playing and working around cloud computing and mobile learning. Mobile learning with tablets and phones have grown in schools to provide a one to one learning to support students learning acquisition inside and outside the class. This is frankly what we see today in our school campus, how children choose and decide upon a huge number of apps, which will be the best according to their learning needs. According to ICT’s Facts and Figures Report at the end of 2012, 6.5 billions of accounts where registered in the mobile market and for 2013, there are 3.4 billion users; which means that there are more mobile users that desktop users (Horizon Report:2013 K-12, p.16). On the other hand, educational publishers are designing interactive educational materials for mobile devices and also e books and magazines have gained a significant space. Mobile devices provide a rich library of content, video, videoconference tools, high-resolution cameras, game platforms and fast web browsers and easy emails. As for cloud computing it offers schools and organizations solutions to store, to have conferences and collaboration and for suite management of programs as computer solutions.

Mid-term horizon will occur in time frame of two or three years and it focuses on Learning Analytics and Open Content. This stage will track the behavior of users online to observe the repetitive patterns to make predictions on the students spending habits. Therefore, Learning Analytics is important for educators and researchers to understand student’s communication and interaction with online courses and texts. Students are learning the benefits of it when they engage on the learning platforms and track the data to make an individual learning experience. As for Open Content, it has benefitted students, educators and schools by providing open sources to increase learning by enriching the curriculum, lesson plans and teaching strategies of develop and developing countries. Flipped classrooms is a great example of how teachers all over the world, create videos or develop content to share with colleagues. Another example is Creative Commons, which provides resources that can be shared and distributed openly online. This openness has created a huge network of education collaborators who share and create and feel more confident to make their own educational resources.

Far term horizon, which will happen in a time frame of four or five years, based on remote laboratories to give school access wireless networks to make scientific experiences more accessible to schools. It also promotes inquiry learning with no limitations and increases students confidence by allowing to work at their own pace and interest. Also the 3D Printers are a valuable tool for teaching and learning by promoting the inquiry process for any discipline and students are able to create and learn the concepts on designing, programming on engineering and science models.

Now that you know were the 21^st Century Learners are heading too, it is time for you to reflect and get ready to be part of it!

References

New Media Consortium.(2013).Horizon Report,K-12 2013, Edition. Retrived from HZ NMC Horizon Report:http//www.nmc.org/pdf/2013-horizon-report-k12.pdf

Assignment 8-1 #EDC601