The New Media Con­sor­tium (NMC), “an inter­na­tional com­mu­nity of experts in edu­ca­tional tech­nol­ogy,” accord­ing to its web­site, pub­lishes a “Hori­zon Report” every year that augurs the future of edu­ca­tional tech­nol­ogy in higher edu­ca­tion. To make their pre­dic­tions, the NMC con­vened an “inter­na­tional” advi­sory board. The report reads:

The group engaged in dis­cus­sions around a set of research ques­tions intended to sur­face sig­nif­i­cant trends and chal­lenges and to iden­tify a wide array of poten­tial tech­nolo­gies for the report. This dia­log was enriched by a wide range of resources, cur­rent research, and prac­tice that drew on the exper­tise of both the NMC com­mu­nity and the com­mu­ni­ties of the mem­bers of the advi­sory board.

The authors of the report break down their prophe­cies into three time frames: the near-term, mid-term and long-term. As they do each year, they iden­ti­fied two tech­nolo­gies for each time frame based on their per­ceived “adop­tion horizon:”

• Near-term: Mobile appli­ca­tions and Tablet computing;
• Mid-term: Game-based Learn­ing and Learn­ing Analytics;
• Long-term: Gesture-based Com­put­ing and the Inter­net of Things.

While a dis­cus­sion of the report and its pre­dic­tions would be appro­pri­ate at this point, I have decided instead to write my own Hori­zon Report. Rather than speak with experts, I have decided to dig out a crys­tal ball from the closet. (Brief aside: the crys­tal ball made it on the NMC Hori­zon Report some­time in the Mid­dle Ages, but the pub­lish­ers of the report were exiled from the region and labeled heretics and idol­aters. The next Hori­zon Report was not pub­lished for some seven cen­turies. True story.)

Here are the pre­dic­tions for the near, mid and long-term based on the ball’s wisdom:

Near Term

Air

No, not the Mac­book Air; I mean the stuff with oxy­gen and nitro­gen. I believe air remains a cru­cial medium for the edu­ca­tional envi­ron­ment. Cer­tainly, the NMC Report is cor­rect to iden­tify mobile com­put­ing devices as a trend­ing tech­nol­ogy. Yet, con­sider the mobile com­put­ing device with­out air. Not only does air allow the stu­dents and instruc­tors to remain con­scious through­out class by means of res­pi­ra­tion, but the unique medium enables sound waves and light waves/particles to pass through it, such that the sound and light ema­nat­ing from the mobile device can be expe­ri­enced as such. Obvi­ously, the adop­tion hori­zon for air is now, like right now, lest we… (cough)… find our­selves… (cough)… with­out the abil­ity to check our friends’ Face­book sta­tuses… (cough)… on our iPhone.

A Brain

Research says that a per­son with­out a brain has a hard time with higher level cog­ni­tive func­tions, like those iden­ti­fied in Bloom’s tax­on­omy (*see my rig­or­ous cita­tions at the end of this arti­cle). Good news for you: the fact that you are read­ing this makes you an early adopter of brain tech­nol­ogy, accord­ing to one ver­sion of the tech­nol­ogy adop­tion graph. You may even be an “inno­va­tor” in the adop­tion of brain tech­nol­ogy, but, as an inno­va­tor, you would never call your­self one. Plus, there’s no rea­son why a  tech­nol­ogy adop­tion fore­cast­ing report would need to appeal to its read­ers’ desire to feel as though they have access to priv­i­leged information.

Mid Term

Lan­guage

Human lan­guage has always been a tricky tech­nol­ogy; even just pin­ning down what it is and how it works puts us in a sticky wicket (I refer you to the last half cen­tury of Con­ti­nen­tal phi­los­o­phy and lin­guis­tics). But, I am propos­ing that it will be an impor­tant tech­nol­ogy in the mid term. To be clear, I am not propos­ing that lan­guage will be adopted because some­thing like shared mean­ing is only pos­si­ble because of it. <haughty chuckle> No, instead, I pro­pose that lan­guage as a per­for­mance of ges­tures between instruc­tors and stu­dents will become an impor­tant tech­nol­ogy for the ris­ing for-profit uni­ver­si­ties around the country.

As for-profits begin to gorge them­selves on a greater share of the higher edu­ca­tion mar­ket, they will need to increas­ingly pro­vide evi­dence of learn­ing. Lan­guage as some­thing per­formed orally is one way. For exam­ple, if they put a per­son in front of a class of qui­etly lis­ten­ing stu­dents and have them lec­ture, what more evi­dence would you need? I mean, that’s the quin­tes­sen­tial scene of learn­ing in higher edu­ca­tion. Also, writ­ing, as another per­for­mance of lan­guage, will be impor­tant. For exam­ple, cre­at­ing a syl­labus that fol­lows the tra­di­tional con­ven­tions of the genre will allow for-profits to prove learn­ing. If it walks like a uni­ver­sity and, more impor­tantly, talks like a university…

Indoor Space

It turns out the avant-garde of infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy is down­right piti­ful in a fight with water (Think: that time your mobile dropped out of your pocket into the toi­let). So, any kind of pre­cip­i­ta­tion really puts a damper on teach­ing with tech­nol­ogy. Also, since the trusty codex has decided to stage a last ditch effort at rel­e­vance in the new mil­le­nium, I can’t leave it out of the dis­cus­sion. Dear Codex, your pages are flimsy and pulpy, eas­ily swollen by Seat­tle rains. (This leads us to the next tech­nol­ogy.) Hence, archi­tec­tural shel­ter will be an impor­tant tech­nol­ogy for teach­ing and learn­ing in the next 3 years. Until William Gibson’s “cyber­space” becomes a real­ity (at which point we won’t need to learn because we will be immor­tal beings of dig­i­tal data), we are stuck with the roof and wall.

Long Term

Water­proof Books

For­get the Kin­dle and the Nook, I project that in 5 years the water­proof book will be the hottest thing since the open access move­ment in an Amer­i­can reces­sion. Inside sources tell us that Apple is work­ing on what R&D is call­ing the “iBook Aquatic,” a rev­o­lu­tion­ary water­proof book. I would have given “water­proof books” a shorter adop­tion hori­zon, but I know that Apple will lock it up with dra­con­ian licens­ing agree­ments, hence, fore­stalling its wide­spread adop­tion. Much like its plans announced recently to enter the eText­book mar­ket, Apple will find ways to make the water­proof book a com­pletely closed tech­nol­ogy teth­ered to other Apple prod­ucts. How­ever, I see their mar­ket­ing team mak­ing com­mer­cials with attrac­tive young white peo­ple in urban areas, which should break open the mar­ket in the next 5 years.

Brain Implants

If you read the last half cen­tury of research in cog­ni­tive sci­ence and its sis­ter dis­ci­pline, learn­ing sci­ence, you’ll find that one thing we know to be true is that learn­ing involves expe­ri­enc­ing stim­uli out­side of the body and trans­mit­ting that expe­ri­ence via sen­sory chan­nels into the brain. Once we do that, the brain works its magic and we learn. There may be some other steps that I’m for­get­ting. In any case, this “exterior-to-interior” model of cog­ni­tive pro­cess­ing is cru­cial to under­stand­ing how learn­ing works. Hence, the log­i­cal con­se­quence of under­stand­ing this exterior-interior dynamic is sub­vert­ing the nat­ural sen­sory chan­nels and just crack­ing open that thing ourselves.

Yes, I believe brain implants will rev­o­lu­tion­ize learn­ing in the long term. Why spend so much time with other peo­ple when you can, in essence, down­load the knowl­edge into your brain? Fur­ther­more, the trend in higher edu­ca­tion toward com­modi­tiz­ing knowl­edge so that it is mea­sur­able as a sta­tis­tic – so that we can pro­vide evi­dence to our increas­ingly finnicky state gov­ern­ment fun­ders — works toward the brain implant model of edu­ca­tion. What bet­ter way to find an absolute cor­re­spon­dence between dol­lars and knowl­edge than to make knowl­edge mea­sure­able in the form of data and sell that brain implant data at dif­fer­ent prices, cor­re­spond­ing of course to mar­ket demand? Of course, the mar­ket demand will dif­fer by sub­ject with some sub­jects receiv­ing the tap of the “invis­i­ble hand” more than oth­ers. Let’s put it this way, I wouldn’t throw money at the brain implants that teach you about Paulo Friere’s “bank­ing” con­cept of education.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_Taxonomy