The future of education: on the Horizon.K12 report

The NMC Horizon Report 2011 K-12 Edition, informally known as the Horizon.K12, is this massive international collaborative report that not only produces a snapshot of education trends and challenges across the world, but operates as a wiki. In order to focus the vast scope of material, the report returns just five key trends, five critical challenges and 6 practices to be aware of over in the next year, over two, and after five years. 

While it is a fairly dense, technical document - it is actually quite approachable and appears in reflection to be a great resource - so much so that I'd make the suggestion that this might be better as required reading prior to taking a course on the Internet or Technology in the today's classroom. Most handily, each section of the document is wonderfully referenced and includes detailed links regarding further reading, organizations that are implementing each trend mentioned and useful websites that the every-day pre-service teacher might utilise this upcoming semester. 

www.nmc.org

[While I found several familiar faces in the references, Northwestern Universities 'iLab Central' holds heavy promise as being a great resource for students in schools that may not have a developed science program or simply lacking some of the more expensive tools.]

I was often impressed by the forward thinking of the report, reflected in comments on digital literacy ..."[sic] is less about tools and more about thinking, and thus skills and standards based on tools and platforms have proven to be somewhat [short-lived] (p. 5)", and open content that I felt were not only inherently truthful statements, but also ones that I want to become a part of solving; such as: "Many believe that reward structures that support the sharing of work in progress, ongoing research, and highly collaborative projects, along with a broad view of what constitutes scholarly publication, are key challenges that institutions need to solve (p. 22)."

One of the more transformative ideas within the Horizon.K12 was the concept of Learning Analytics, which when paired with Personal Learning Environments, appears to me to represent the future relationship between educator and student. As classrooms shift from the one-size-fits-all, teacher-centered lecture-methodology to that of the differentiated, inquiry model, the role of teachers (I feel) will increasingly be that of the guide. We are all well aware that the best teaching happens in a one-on-one environment, but outside of highly funded private contexts that situation is unattainable for (the 99% of) students. Yet with increased learning analytics of student behaviour, the ability of a single teacher to first understand, and then guide the learning of individuals students appears to be ever more possible.  In Σ, as knowledge becomes ever more accessible to all students via advances in technology, connections to the internet and the rapid expansion of content a la open-source resources and creative commons, our role as knowledge-holders will decrease exponentially. That does not mean that we will be replaced 'hole(s) in the walls', but rather our role will be to teach ways of learning and critical skills needed to to sift and make meaning of all that information.

Perhaps we should be a litte skeptical about Mitra's Hole in the Wall ideas: ow.ly/izh4L
— Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann) March 8, 2013

[For those that don't feel like reading through the report, "Learning analytics loosely joins a variety of data gathering tools and analytic techniques to study student engagement, performance, and progress in practice, with the goal of using what is learned to revise curricula, teaching, and assessment in real time. Building on the kinds of information generated by Google Analytics and other similar tools, learning analytics aims to mobilize the power of data-mining tools in the service of learning and embrace the that dynamic learning environments can generate (p. 7)."]

Ps. Not related to the above, but I'd like touch on something that I found amazing:

WHO from Bangladesh is reading my blog? From Indonesia? From Venezuela?