New Media Consortium's Top 10 'Metatrends' Shaping Educational Technology

The New Media Consortium is well known for their annual Horizon Report which looks at "emerging technologies for teaching, learning, research, creative inquiry, and information management": http://www.nmc.org/horizon-project

At the end of January, 2012, they gathered 100 educational thought leaders to mark the tenth anniversary of the Horizon Project, and asked the question "what will be the role of technology in the next decade?"
 http://www.nmc.org/news/download-communique-horizon-project-retreat

The top 10 items were:

1. The world of work is increasingly global and increasingly collaborative. As more and more companies move to the global marketplace, it is common for work teams to span continents and time zones. Not only are teams geographically diverse, they are also culturally diverse.
2. People expect to work, learn, socialize, and play whenever and wherever they want to.Increasingly, people own more than one device, using a computer, smartphone, tablet, and ereader. People now expect a seamless experience across all their devices. 
3. The Internet is becoming a global mobile network — and already is at its edges. Mobithinking reports there are now more than 6 billion active cell phone accounts. 1.2 billion have mobile broadband as well, and 85% of new devices can access the mobile web. 
4. The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based and delivered over utility networks, facilitating the rapid growth of online videos and rich media. Our current expectation is that the network has almost infinite capacity and is nearly free of cost. One hour of video footage is uploaded every second to YouTube; over 250 million photos are sent to Facebook every day.
5. Openness — concepts like open content, open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information — is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world. As authoritative sources lose their importance, there is need for more curation and other forms of validation to generate meaning in information and media. 
6. Legal notions of ownership and privacy lag behind the practices common in society. In an age where so much of our information, records, and digital content are in the cloud, and often clouds in other legal jurisdictions, the very concept of ownership is blurry. 
7. Real challenges of access, efficiency, and scale are redefining what we mean by quality and success. Access to learning in any form is a challenge in too many parts of the world, and efficiency in learning systems and institutions is increasingly an expectation of governments —but the need for solutions that scale often trumps them both. Innovations in these areas are increasingly coming from unexpected parts of the world, including India, China, and central Africa. 
8. The Internet is constantly challenging us to rethink learning and education, while refining our notion of literacy. Institutions must consider the unique value that each adds to a world in which information is everywhere. In such a world, sense-making and the ability to assess the credibility of information and media are paramount. 
9. There is a rise in informal learning as individual needs are redefining schools, universities, and training. Traditional authority is increasingly being challenged, not only politically and socially, but also in academia — and worldwide. As a result, credibility, validity, and control are all notions that are no longer givens when so much learning takes place outside school systems.
10. Business models across the education ecosystem are changing. Libraries are deeply reimagining their missions; colleges and universities are struggling to reduce costs across the board. The educational ecosystem is shifting, and nowhere more so than in the world of publishing, where efforts to reimagine the book are having profound success, with implications that will touch every aspect of the learning enterprise.

The Future of Technology?

Microsoft released a video earlier this month entitled Productivity Future Vision - it is 6 minutes long but worth watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0

Placed 5-10 years in the future, much of the video looks quite fanciful. However, many have pointed out that 10 years ago there was no YouTube, no Gmail, Google Maps, or Google Docs, no Skype, Facebook or MySpace, and certainly no iPhone, iPad, or Android tablets. Think how we might have viewed a video chat on a wifi tablet to an iPhone in 2001 - conducted by two Form II students.

An earlier "vision" video from 2009 begins with some interesting ideas about international collaboration in the classroom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5X2PxtvMsU

Wireless, always connected, built for collaboration, and touch surface interfaces both large and small dominate these visions of the future.

Five characteristics of an effective 21st-century educator

Just in time for the start of the new school year, eSchoolNews has a list, generated by their readers, of the five most important characteristic for 21st Century educators: http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/09/09/five-characteristics-of-an-effective-21st-century-educator/

1. Anticipates the future.
2. Is a lifelong learner.
3. Fosters relationships.
4. Can teach and assess all levels of learners.
5. Is able to discern effective vs. non-effective technology.

It's good that there are no software-specific goals here: laundry lists of "Knows PowerPoint"- or "Knows Twitter"-type of goals are extremely short sighted.

Perhaps it's related to #2, but I would add something about the ability to find, assess, and use information. As the role of the classroom teacher includes more and more individualized instruction, and as the world's knowledge-base continues to grow at a rapid pace, this will become more important. One of our teachers recently described guiding a student through an independent study, and how the student was finding and referencing the latest research and publications in the subject area. Much of this information did not exist when the teacher was completing his PhD, so this was really a new area for both the student and the teacher.

Dean of Faculty Kevin Mattingly places emphasis on making Lawrenceville a place where teachers can learn. This may be the most important characteristic for a 21st Century educator.

Report has good blended learning advice

An August, 2011 report from the management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group titled Unleashing the Potential of Technology in Education calls for the creation of a "closed loop instructional system" to best employ technology in education.
The report focuses a great deal on the economics of edtech, but also offers these steps:

• Establish educational objectives focused on twenty-first century skills
• Develop relevant curriculum offerings by using opensource content (provided by higher education institutions, among others)
• Deliver [some] instruction virtually
• Embed frequent [formative] assessments with real-time, continuous feedback
• Provide appropriate intervention with immediacy and customization (based on the assessments)
• Track outcomes through data-management systems

The full report can be read here: http://www.bcg.com/expertise_impact/PublicationDetails.aspx?id=tcm:12-81207

New report questions students' grasp of technology

We've mentioned the concept of a "digital native" before - a student who has grown up immersed in technology in all different forms. For many, there is a tendency to think that because they are "natives," our students really understand technology and put it to good use.
A new report that questions this assumption was released this week by the Education Development Center (http://www.edc.org/) and the Nellie Mae Education Foundation (http://www.edviewpoints.org/). The report, titled Integrating Technology with Student-Centered Learning, covers a number of topics, including the use of technology to individualize education (a theme in the book Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen), but also draws the conclusion that many students are underprepared to utilize technology in their post-high school experience. One telling statistic: 43 percent of the surveyed students felt unprepared to use technology in their college and work lives.
Better used, the report concludes, there are three very important roles for educational technology in today's schools:

• Help diagnose and address individual learning needs.
• Develop the skills essential for life in a 21st century global society.
• Provide a more active learning experience, including transferring some responsibility for learning to the student.

The full report is available here: http://www.nmefdn.org/uploads/Integrating%20Tech%20with%20SCL.pdf

State Educational Technology Directors Report Released

The State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) in the professional group for public school technology leaders in all 50 states. Earlier this month they released their 8th annual report on educational technology trends, subtitled State Leaders Leveraging Technology to Transform Teaching and Learning. A quick synopsis is here: http://www.setda.org/c/document_library/get_file?folderId=6&name=DLFE-1313.pdf

They have 4 primary areas of focus in the report, with links to examples of innovative programs around the country:

• Preparing All Students for College and 21st Century Careers
• Developing and Scaling Innovative Learning Models (including online and blended learning)
• Supporting Educator Effectiveness (including Professional Learning Communities/Communities of Practice and Technology Coaches/Mentors)
• Building a 21st Century Infrastructure for Equity, Innovation, and Improvement (including data system interoperability)

The full report is here: http://www.setda.org/web/guest/2011nationaltrends

Thoughts About Tomorrow's Tech & Today's Skills

After Saturday's session at Alumni Weekend, an alum sent me this post from Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired Magazine (I've been a subscriber since issue 1.03) and author of the New Rules for the New Economy: http://www.kk.org/kk/

Some great ideas here about considering technological skills as a continuum, and not a specific program or device to be mastered. But in particular his statement that "You will be newbie forever" speaks to the need for life-long learning skills. Some of his points:

If you are in school today the technologies you will use as an adult tomorrow have not been invented yet. Therefore, the life skill you need most is not the mastery of specific technologies, but mastery of the technium as a whole -- how technology in general works. I like to think of this ability to deal with any type of new technology as techno-literacy. To be at ease with the flux of technology in modern-day life you'll need to speak the language of the technium, and to master the the following principles:

• Anything you buy, you must maintain. Each tool you use requires time to learn how to use, to install, to upgrade, or to fix. A purchase is just the beginning. You can expect to devote as much energy/money/time in maintaining a technology as you did in acquiring it.
• Technologies improve so fast you should postpone getting anything until 5 minutes before you need it. Get comfortable with the fact that anything you buy is already obsolete. Therefore acquire at the last possible moment. 
• You will be newbie forever. Get good at the beginner mode, learning new programs, asking dumb questions, making stupid mistakes, soliticting help, and helping others with what you learn (the best way to learn yourself).
• Often learning a new tool requires unlearning the old one. The habits of using a land line phone don't work in email or cell phone. The habits of email don't work in twitter. The habits of twitter won't work in what is next.
• Take sabbaticals. Once a week let go of your tools. Once a year leave it behind. Once in your life step back completely. You'll return with renewed enthusiasm and perspective.
• Tools are metaphors that shape how you think. What embedded assumptions does the new tool make? Does it assume right-handedness, or literacy, or a password, or a place to throw it away? Where the defaults are set can reflect a tool's bias.
• What do you give up? This one has taken me a long time to learn. The only way to take up a new technology is to reduce an old one in my life already. Twitter must come at the expense of something else I was doing -- even if it just daydreaming.
• Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs.
• The risks of a new technology must be compared to the risks of the old technology, or no technology. The risks of a new dental MRI must be compared to the risks of an x-ray, and the risks of dental x-rays must be compared to the risks of no x-ray and cavities. 
• The proper response to a stupid technology is to make a better one yourself, just as the proper response to a stupid idea is not to outlaw it but to replace it with a better idea.
• Nobody has any idea of what a new invention will really be good for. To evaluate don't think, try.
• The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful.

The Future of the Textbook

This is something that we've mentioned before, but here are three good videos showing different options for the 21st Century textbook:

IDEO, the famed design company offers three ideas about how textbooks could change: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLSdzGDxqVU

Inkling has a number of "books" out now, and in March received funding from McGraw-Hill and Pearsons, two of the largest textbook publishers, as well as a number of venture capital companies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKYyd4Ne5uQ

Push Pop Press garnered a lot of buzz after this presentation at TED, and just released their version of Our Choice by Al Gore: http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_matas.html

What Year are we Preparing our students for?

An excellent and thought provoking question posed at TEDxNYED last month by Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Executive Director of the Curriculum Mapping Institute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsUgj9_ltN8

TED talks are short by design, this one is about 16 minutes long and worth watching. Some of her statements:

• Most schools are preparing kids for 1991.
• We have a new type of learner, we need a new type of classroom.
• We can do dumb things with a Smartboard.
• We need new forms of school.

She argues for "upgrades," strategic replacements of "dated content, skills, and assessments." But the perquisite will be the development of rubrics for assessing blogs, podcasts, wikis, and other digital media.

Unplugging from Tech - What Happens?

Amherst College did a brief "unplug" earlier this month, urging their students to take a least a little time away from their constant immersion in media: https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/news/news_releases/2011/03/node/305293

Similary, there was a "World Unplugged" study involving 1,000 students in ten countries on five continents:   http://theworldunplugged.wordpress.com/

Some interesting results from their study:

• A clear majority in every country admitted outright failure in their efforts to go unplugged for just 24 hours.
• Media "addiction" may not be a clinically diagnosed afflication, but students reported cravings, anxiety and depression duirng this period.
• Being tethered to digital technology 24/7 is not just a habit, it is essential to the way they construct and manage their friendships and social lives. For many of them, going without media for 24 hours "ripped back the curtain on their hidden loneliness."
• Mobile phones function both as this generation’s Swiss Army knife AND its security blanket. Students wrote that mobile phones are at the literal center of their lives: going without made it seem like they had "lost part of themselves."
• Across the world, students depend on personally programmed music to actively regulate their moods.
• Students chose from a variety of communications mediums based on their audiance: Facebook and texting to communicate with friends, email for their professors and jobs.

Perhaps most imprtantly, many students admitted that they were not really aware of how much time they actually spent on to social networking, and how poorly they actually were able to multi-task. If nothing else, such self-awareness is probably the most important gain from an experiment such as this.