According to the 2007 Horizon report, while user-created content and social networking are already facts of life on campuses across the world, mobile phones and virtual worlds will also be widely used in higher education by 2010.
Released today by The New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE program, this report is definitely a must-read as it offers a good picture of the current trends and technologies that are going to deeply impact the world of higher education:
“To create the 2007 Horizon Report, the 27 members of the 2007 Advisory Board engaged in a comprehensive review and analysis of research, articles, papers, and interviews; discussed existing applications and brainstormed new ones; and ultimately ranked the items on the list of more than 100 candidate technologies that emerged for their potential relevance to teaching, learning, and creative expression. The 2007 Advisory Board included representatives from eight countries: the US, Canada, the UK, Switzerland, Italy, Australia, Japan, and China. Most of their work took place online over fall 2006, using a variety of collaboration tools, notably a special wiki site dedicated to the project.”
This 32-page report is available as a free PDF file under a Creative Commons license, which means that you can print it and makes copies for your VP’s and President.
What really makes this report a great resource is the way the highlighted technologies are presented:
- an overview
- why they are relevant to teaching, learning and creative expression
- current examples in different institutions (with links)
- online resources for further reading
I really think this is a great tool for any of those trying to make the case for user-created content, social networking, mobile phone or virtual worlds on their campus.