2010 Horizon Report

The 2010 Horizon Report predicts that within the next year, mobile devices will become more utilized in the classroom. As early last year, I was already observing students downloading their textbooks in electronic format so they could view the course material on their mobile phones.

Open content is also supposed to become "mainstream" within the next 12 months. I've actually used open content such as that found MIT's OpenCourseWare and the Kahn Academy to help me in my classes. I have the benefit of looking at this prediction from two different angles, one as a private university adjunct professor and student, the other as a former student of a state university. At the state university level, yes I do see open content becoming more popular. I've taken several classes within the past two years at the University of Colorado that utilized publically available online material (including material the instructor's have made freely available on their websites) as their main course material. However, at the private university level this has not been my experience. This could be because private universities are more limited by copyright restrictions, and courses are more standardized.

In 2 to 3 years, electronic books are predicted to be used more by university courses.With the number of students who travel for work and students who are in the military, I'm really surprised that electronic textbooks have not yet become a REQUIREMENT for most courses. I hope this becomes "mainstream" much sooner.

The key trend that seems to be pushing both the technologies of open content and electronic books is the growing demand to work and learn remotely.

Gesture-based computing is set for widespread adoption in 4 to 5 years, according the report. I'm blown away and quite impressed with the accomplishments that Microsoft has made with its Kinnect game system. The fact that it's worked so flawlessly is frankly just amazing to me. It should only be a matter of time for their engineers to adapt the technology as a regular computer interface. What's even more encouraging is how cheap the Kinnect system is $150. Within 5 years, I can envision a replacement to the mouse for under $100 and I expect Microsoft to be the market leader for such a device. This could also start a new trend of end users requiring larger monitors (50+") so they have more space in order to efficiently move and manipulate objects on the screen.