Title of Study:  The Horizon Report: 2009 K-12 Edition

Author(s): The New Media Consortium

Summary: This report examines the potential impact of six emerging technologies on K-12 teaching and learning over the next five years.  Current examples of the use of each technology are provided, as well as suggested reading for those who want more information on specific topics.  The report also researched 30 key trends affecting K-12 teaching and learning and ranked them as to their likely impact in the next five years.  Finally, a list of 30 critical challenges was identified that stand in the way of schools integrating new technologies into the established structures of the teaching and learning environment.

Sponsoring entity(s): New Media Consortium through a grant from Microsoft

Date conducted: 2009

Location of the study: This study can be accessed through The New Media Consortium website.

Setting(s) addressed:

• Classroom
• Anywhere, anytime learning

Targeted population(s):

• K-12 education
• Post-secondary education

Primary sources of evidence used in the study or report:

• Ongoing conversation among knowledgeable people in business, industry and education
• Review of published and current research
• Advisory Board of international experts in education and technology

Primary Technology Application(s) Addressed:

• Online collaboration tools
• Online communication tools
• Mobile devices
• Internet content and tools

Major education topic(s) addressed:

• Educational technology

Major findings/conclusions:

The six technologies most likely to influence K-12 education in the next 5 years include:

• Collaborative environments where students and teachers communicate, share information and work together are widely used in post-secondary education, and are likely to be integrated into the mainstream of K-12 education over the next year.
  
  
  
• Online communication tools allow synchronous or asynchronous communication based on text, voice or video, and can be used from computers or mobile devices.  These tools are already widely used for social interaction, and are likely to be integrated into the mainstream of K-12 education over the next year.
  
  
  
• Mobile devices, which are becoming ubiquitous outside of the classroom, will probably become important in K-12 education in 3-5 years.
  
  
  
• Cloud computing resources, which support collaborative work, social networks, media sharing and other applications, will probably become important in K-12 education in 3-5 years.
  
  
  
• Smart objects that exist in both the real world and virtual world are currently used by government and business, and are starting to appear in appliances aimed at consumers, but common use in K-12 schools is probably several years away.
  
  
  
• The Personal Web, a set of tools for tagging, aggregating, updating and keeping up with content for the purpose of creating customized, personal web-based environments, will probably not enter K-12 education for several years, until policies and tools to fine-tune filtering of content and tools has moved forward.

Practical implications of the findings:

• To permit widespread K-12 use of these new technologies, new tools will be needed for filtering the content and tools students have access to during school hours.  A fine-tuning will be necessary to allow useful tools and content while still blocking objectionable content.
  
  
  
• While the six technologies studied give a good prediction of what to plan for in the near future, the discussion of current trends, and particularly the discussion of critical challenges help identify where K-12 education is missing the mark today in educating the millennial generation for the workplace of the 21st Century.

Reviewer Comments:

As the Advisory Board discussed the technologies reviewed, the themes of assessment and filtering arose repeatedly.  The reasons for this are that the technologies reviewed make conventional assessment methods difficult.  Also, filtering to limit the kinds of online content and tools students have access to during school hours would block some of the technologies studied.