New Media Consortium Names 10 Top ‘Metatrends’ Shaping Educational Technology

Nick DeSantis, The Chronicle of Higher Education

A group of education leaders gathered last week to discuss the most important technology innovations of the last decade, and their findings suggest the classroom of the future will be open, mobile, and flexible enough to reach individual students—while free online tools will challenge the authority of traditional institutions.

The retreat celebrated the 10^th anniversary of the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project, whose annual report provides a road map of the education-technology landscape. One hundred experts from higher education, K-12, and museum education identified 28 “metatrends” that will influence education in the future. The 10 most important, according to a New Media Consortium announcement about the retreat, include global adoption of mobile devices, the rise of cloud computing, and transparency movements that call into question traditional notions of content ownership concerning digital materials.

Larry Johnson, the consortium’s chief executive, said the meeting was important because it brought together groups from three different education sectors that don’t often collaborate. He said the retreat intended to “drive a conversation around how to think about the future.” More…

Image courtesy of Brett Jordan (Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo)  via The Chronicle