Emerging trends - my review

"In this respect, the fundamental pattern oflearning and innovation using social tools – find -> remix-> share – seems ideally suited to the way most youngpeople like to discover and make sense of the worldaround them, which is reason enough for an optimisticview of their likely impact." - Lee Bryant, Becta 2007 http://partners.becta.org.uk/page_documents/research/emerging_technologies07_chapter1.pdf

I've been searching around the Net, and I found a list of interesting articles about emerging trends in the use of technology for learning, reported by Becta. (EDUCAUSE also wrote an article in this Becta's publication!)

Among the articles on emerging trends reported by Becta are:

• Emerging Trends in Social Software for Education
• Learning Networks in Practice
• The Challenge of New Digital Literacies and the 'Hidden Curriculum'
• How to Teach with Technology: Keeping Both Teachers and Students
• Comfortable in an Era of Exponential Change
• Games in Education
• Ubiquitous Computing

* You can download the PDFs of these articles and more at http://partners.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=rh&rid=13768.

My interest lies on the last two titles - "games" and "ubiquitous". It may be easier to think of a way to teach a younger students (i.e. primary school, high school) using games and ubiquitous - games as a way to teach the concept or relate to theory via metaphor; ubiquitous as a more practical way for their history and geography research papers (we have that in our high school here). But what about educating (or providing a condusive environment for learning to) the undergraduates?

I also came across new terminology that is worth a research. A lot more to read on these:

• augmented reality
• mapping mashups
• interactive tables
• interactive papers
• collective intelligence
• ... and many more...

So what will the future trend going to be? More virtualised, more metophoric in concept, more creative, more socialised, more collaboration of all 5 senses (or 6? Hehe...), more 3-dimensional... Probably that's what the new generation of learners would crave for, something that serves their 5 senses. It would make them remember more on what they've learnt.
(Hold on a minute, did I include sense of 'smell' in that 5? Ops! Sorry about that. Should be only 4 then...)

In other words, back to square one - IT infrastructure. If we have at least broadband and RFID, it will be a start to go virtual almost everywhere anytime. We can even implement the 'interactive table' WITHOUT the 'table', or without computers even. That's what I think the future would be. Probably I watched too much of futuristic movies (who doesn't?) and the ideas may be way ahead of our 'near future' capabilities, but hey... it's a start. Starting with 'wireless', retrieving and sending files from anywhere at anytime in any format, etc...

PS: I read a lot about students spending much time in "Second Life" (an online virtual reality game) and how they learn a lot from 'there'. I tried to download and install yesterday, so I will spend time trying that out, too! ... If I have some nick of time for it. Hhmm...

Whatever 'sense' I have left (including non-sense?), that's what I use to learn and teach,
- Sha at Teaching and Learning
10 Dec 2008