Article 7

Haywood, K., Johnson, L, Levine, A. & Smith, R. (2010) Key Emerging Technologies for Post Secondary Education.  Horizon Report, 2010.

Key Emerging Technologies for Post Secondary Education

Summary:

Authors Laurence F. Johnson, Alan Levine, Rachel S. Smith and Keene Haywood summarize the 2010 horizon report in their article titled “Key Emerging Technologies for Post Secondary Education.”  The authors begin by identifying key trends in the field of educational technology that were identified by the horizon report.  These key trends include the abundance of information via the internet, people’s expectation to be able to work and go to school whenever and wherever they happen to be, the presence of more and more “cloud based” applications that can be accessed on any computer and the fact that student work is more and more collaborative in nature.  The authors then go on to describe the challenges identified in the horizon report.  These include the changing role of universities, how people are able to publish scholarly work, increased need for digital media literacy in all fields and industries and the hardships that intuitions are facing in the current economic environment.  Lastly the authors describe the key technologies to watch as identified by the horizon group.  These technologies are ones that will be instrumental in the field of post secondary education in the next five years.  These include mobile computing, open content, electronic books, simple augmented reality, gesture based computing and visual data analysis. 

Response:

As an educator in the field of adult education it is important to be up to date with the new technology.  We must be fluent in the language of technology and how it is being used to advance the field of adult education.  We must also find a balance between getting overly excited and enthusiastic about new technology and using technology in an appropriate way to aid in the learning process.  I believe very strongly that technology must augment our instruction not replace it.  We need to learn how to incorporate new technologies into the classroom that will enhance the learning process and we must do this in a proficient way.  There is no use in utilizing technology in the classroom if we can’t use it effectively.