Six Technologies to Watch According to the 2010 Horizon Report

The Horizon Report has been published every year since 2002 through a collaboration between the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. It lists six technologies that educators should consider adopting/deploying/begging their IT department to make accessible. The report suggests that the first two be adopted within a year, the second pair within two - three years and the last pair within four - five years. I've summarized this year's report for my educator friends.

1. Mobile computing, including laptops, netbooks, smart phones. On the fly access to information and tools for education, business, productivity, etc. has become the norm for millions of people, especially younger generations.
2. Open content, including open access to dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, even free courses that can be taken through OpenCourseware at MIT. Open content makes collaboration easier and more affordable. Why collaborate? To paraphrase Richard Miller as he put it at a recent lecture at UCA, two of us together are smarter than one of us alone. When we allow everyone access to vital information, we have a greater capacity to understand the world and change it for the better. Check out SmartHistory (art history), Looking for Whitman (literature), Creative Commons, Teachers without Borders, and Folksemantic.
3. E-books, obtainable through devices like Amazon's Kindle or Sony's Reader. This goes back both to mobile computing and open content. The devices make it possible to obtain textbooks, novels, poetry collections, etc., wirelessly, on the go allowing greater access (there's that word again) to information. With more and more books becoming part of the public domain and being offered openly, there is also the potential for saving money, the environment, and the backache of toting heavy textbooks between classes.
4. Simple Augmented Reality. This is a fancy term for a simple act: layering virtual data on top of the real world to "enhanc[e] the information we can perceive with our senses" (p. 21). An example of AR would be the GoodFood application downloaded to the Palm Pre. Using the Pre's GPS, GoodFood can pinpoint the location of restaurants, provide reviews, and even link to the restaurant's Web site. Educational AR sites include Wikitude, Metaio (publisher of print books that, once purchased can be accessed online. Pointing a webcam to the book allows user to access features like pop-out globes), Google's Skymap, ARIS Mobile Media Learning Games.
5. Gesture-based computing. Gesture based computing is more natural and allows for better interaction than keyboard/mouse-based computing. It is, therefore, easier to learn and can make computers and mobile devices more accessible for younger children. Firefox currently has a gesture-based add-on called "MouseGestures" that makes surfing more productive.
6. Visual data analysis. This has been around for a long time. Take, for example Excel, which can convert data in a spread sheet into a pie chart or bar graph, giving us the ability to see trends and patterns. However, VDA has gone into hyperdrive with 3D visualizations, animations, etc. which make the vizualized data better, more automatic to generate, and more meaningful. Check out: Many Eyes, Wordle, Flowing Data, and Gapminder.