From a recent chat with friends, I found an NPO called New Media Consortium (NMC) that did an annual report to summarize the trends, challenges and technologies that are likely to have impact on teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in the following few years. I was so curious about whether their predictions were reliable that I read their very first report from 2004. The Horizon Report 2004 identified 6 technology trends: learning objects, scalable vector graphics (SVG), rapid prototyping, multimodal interfaces, context-aware computing, and knowledge webs.
Learning Objects
A learning object is a collection of content files, practice items, and assessment items that are combined based on a single learning objective. Learning objects were designed to reduce the cost of learning, standardize learning content, and to enable the reuse of learning content by learning management systems. Due to these characteristics, learning objects are now often used in distance education, mainly in STEM subjects. Some other subject areas that reusable learning objects are involved include Biology, Chemistry, Physics, medicine, social sciences, business, etc.
Back to the time when this issue of Horizon Report was published, the idea of using learning objects had started to be carried out. It now has become so ubiquitous that learners, even teachers and instructional designers, may not be aware of using learning objects during the learning processes.
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
SVG is an open standard for the description of 2D graphic using the eXtensible markeup language (XML). It is also an image format that supports interactivity and animation. SVG holds the graphical information necessary to render an image in a text that contains a sequence of commands that is used to draw the image. The most significant advantage of SVG over bitmap images (e.g., .jpeg, .gif, .png) is that SVG images never lose the resolution. SVG images are composed of fixed sets of shapes, whereas bitmap images are composed of fixed sets of pixels, and therefore we will not see the pixels when scaling an image. In addition, since SVG is in nature a text file and the size of a SVG image file is usually much smaller than the same image of the bitmap format, they are easily edited and stored. So, you will find most of the web images are in SVG format.
Besides the vast use of SVG images in websites in general, the most common application of SVG in the educational fields is in geographic information systems (GIS) to produce maps that are scalable and interactive. Also, in computer sciences, graphic design, and all types of engineering, SVG is an inevitable topic for it is extensively used in the practice of these areas. SVG is important in today’s internet-dependent world, yet it can be field-specific when it comes to studying it.
Rapid Prototyping
The term rapid prototyping refers to technologies that construct physical objects from 3D digital content. It can quickly fabricate a scale model usually via 3D printing or additive layer manufacturing technology. The development of rapid prototyping is based on the advantage of 3D physical models over 2D pictures. Models and prototypes make excellent visual aids for communication and testing ideas. Horizon Report predicted that rapid prototyping would likely find the way into broad use in learning and teaching within the following 2-3 years, which is about ten years to today. Since then rapid prototyping has been extended from just industrial engineering into software engineering to try out new business models and into instructional design as a design strategy. And, due to the drop of the cost of 3D printers (as cheap as a few hundreds US dollars), many university campuses are able to provide free 3D printing services for students. In addition, rapid prototyping manufacturing can benefit medical schools, especially in orthopedics subject, to achieve the bone re-construction with the help of computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Multimodal Interfaces
Multimodal interfaces, which is referred to as the way through which natural modes of communication with the virtual and physical environment can occur. This implies that multimodal interfaces enable a more free and natural communication, interfacing users with automated systems in both input and output. This technology had been in wide use in simulation and gaming even before this report was written.
Right now, multimodal interfaces are prevalently applied in mobile devices, thinking about your smartphone: the AI assistants or the speech-to-text transcription apps all utilize the multimodal interaction technology. also, gesture recognition enables humans to communicate with machines naturally without any mechanical devices. For example, you can control the cursor on the computer screen by just pointing a finger at it, instead of pressing keys on the keyboard. Multimodal interfaces are used not only in transmitting multi-dimension information but also help people with difficulties in one modality to interact through another modality. For example, in a visual interface and keypad, a word may be quite difficult to type but very easy to say. This technology is more frequently found being used in informal learning environments, such as science and technology museums.
Context-Aware Computing
The next logic step following multimodal interfaces is context-aware computing, which is the technology used on devices that can interpret such contextual information and use it to aid decision-making and influence interactions. The key questions that context-aware computing can solve are: where are you, who are you with, and what resources are nearby. Since it’s closely related to multimodal interfaces, this technology is as well broadly used in mobile devices nowadays. For instance, an iPad switching the orientation of the screen, maps orienting themselves with the user’s current orientation and adapting the zoom level to the current speed, and switching on the backlight of the phone when used in the dark. Context-aware computing is a very good potential tool to support personalized learning, when more and more people realized the importance of learner-centered learning. However, it is also able to facilitate collaborative learning. An important finding in the literature from 2012 to 2014 is that many museums adopted ubiquitous location-based systems using mobile devices, which help to strengthen social ties when students work collaboratively.
Knowledge Webs
One of the two technology trends that Horizon Report predicted would spread into the educational fields in the following 4-5 years is knowledge webs. Knowledge webs are regarded as a strategy to gather, validate, organize, represent, navigate, and share knowledge. The world is interlinked, so the people and the knowledge in the world are also interlinked, and became a web, like a database and a gigantic community of data users who are also data providers.
Resource description frameworks (RDF) and RDF site summary (RSS) were hot when the Horizon Report was written. Now they are outdated. So many more social interactive methods emerged in the recent 10 years as information sharing platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, which everyone is familiar with. This is probably the most rapidly developed and influential trend among the six that almost changes the way of living, inevitably including learning, of a generation. E.g., students interact with teachers through LMS, shared notes with friend who miss the class through Dropbox. Many teachers even design class activities around these technologies.
The development of technologies, especially computers and the internet, is not matched up with the development of educational tools using these technologies. Moreover, even though the trends mentioned above were all used extensively in teaching and learning, would they be able to convert into good learning outcomes? This, after all, is the question we should ponder.
Further Readings:
http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/32/378
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9928622
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4437958/pdf/atm-03-S1-S12.pdf
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.98.1958&rep=rep1&type=pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjet.12424/abstract