Horizon report is out: gesture based learning is in

With the weekend coming up, the 2011 Horizon report is a good read (40 pages), or you can also access it through the educause link (click on the pdf-logo near the end of the page).

The New Media Consortium has an annual habit of looking at contemporary, emerging and future trends in education. And lets face it: education is being redesigned on a weekly basis by now, so it is good to stay on top and pick out those topics that might interest you.

So what do they see as hot educational innovations to watch out for?

Time-to-Adoption: One Year or Less
Electronic Books
Mobiles

Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years
Augmented Reality.
Game-Based Learning.

Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years
Gesture-Based Computing.
Learning Analytics.

The thing I am looking forward to is the gesture-based computing. Yes, a bit like X-box Kinect, SixthSense, ... which to me erases yet another middle man that keeps us from learning close to the body and brain. So, I see this as a big learning enabler.

The learning analytics fit in closely with our global move forward to a semantic web, where the data gathered from all of us (in this case as a learner) pushes our learning capacity, because it will filter out those learning bits we need the most (or those that the learning/teaching algorithm will think we need the most). The Learning analytics are closely linked to the almost finished course of LAK, that I wrote about earlier.

All of the above mentioned learning technologies are all provided with links for further reading, so give it a go.

Some of the challenges mentioned in the report are also important for today's learners:

1. Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline andprofession;
2. Appropriate metrics of evaluation lag behind the emergence of new scholarly forms of authoring,publishing, and researching;
3. Economic pressures and new models of education are presenting unprecedented competition to traditional models of the university;
4. Keeping pace with the rapid proliferation of information, software tools, and devices is challenging for students and teachers alike.

It is a nice and inspiring read.