NMC Horizon Project (draft)

The NMC Horizon Project is a 12-year effort established in 2002 that annually identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact over the coming five years in every sector of education in some 65 countries around the globe. Each of the three global editions of the NMC Horizon Report— higher education, K-12 education, libraries, and museums  — highlights six trends, challenges and emerging technologies that are likely to enter mainstream use within their focus sectors over the next five years.

Every report draws on the considerable expertise of an international expert panel that first considers a broad set of important trends, challenges, and emerging technologies, and then examines each of them in progressively more detail. A significant amount of time is spent researching real and potential applications for each of the topics that would be of interest to practitioners. For every edition, when that work is done, each of these interim results topics are written up in the format of the NMC Horizon Report. The final topics selected by an expert panel are those detailed here in the NMC Horizon Report: 2014 K-12 Edition.

      I.         Aspects of the Horizon Report

A.   Key Trends Accelerating Educational Technology Adoption in Schools

a.     The NMC Horizon Project model derived three meta-dimensions from the CCR framework that were used to focus the discussions of each trend and challenge:

1.     Policy

2.     Leadership

3.     Practice.

B.    Rethinking the Roles of Teachers

a.     Teachers are no longer the primary sources of information and knowledge for students when a quick web search is at their fingertips.

b.     It is up to teachers to reinforce the habits and discipline that shape life-long learners.

c.     To ultimately foster the kind of curiosity that would compel their students to continue beyond an Internet search and dig deeper into the subject matter.

d.     Further Reading:

                                          i.         Edcamps: Remixing Professional Development go.nmc.org/profess 

                                         ii.         How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses

go.nmc.org/radical

                                       iii.         Moving Education into the Digital Age: the Contribution of Teachers’ Professional Development

go.nmc.org/moving

                                       iv.         Supporting Teacher Competence Development for Better Learning Outcomes

go.nmc.org/support

                                         v.         Towards Teacher-Led Design Inquiry of Learning

go.nmc.org/inqui

                                       vi.         The Uncomfortable Truth About Personalized Learning

go.nmc.org/plearn

C.    Shift to Deeper Learning Approaches

a.     A major component of this trend is the rise of students who are learning important lessons by creating projects, products, and services that directly benefit the world around them.

                                          i.         For example, eighth-graders at The Option Program at Seward, a Seattle alternative public school, are learning about their community by volunteering at local social-service organizations.