The Horizon Report reflects the likely impact of technology and education within the next five years and whether the two will work in unison or cause more issues. The technologies to soon be incorporated into classrooms are tablets, iPads, iPod touches, mobile devices, game-based learning, personalized learning environments, augments reality, and natural user interfaces. These devices and learning environments will possibly take place from next year to five years down the road. The six major trends are listed below:
1. Education paradigms are shifting to include online learning, hybrid learning, and collaborative models.
2. The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators.
3. As the cost of technology drops and school district revise and open up their access policies, it is becoming increasingly common for students to bring their own mobile devices.
4. People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want.
5. Technology continues to profoundly affect the way we work, collaborate, communicate, and succeed.
6. There is a new emphasis in the classroom on more challenge-based, active learning.
I would have to agree with these predictions. I feel that fully incorporating technology into the classroom will take time and patience from both teachers and students. Thus, the result will be beneficial.
Personally, I believe having technology with some minor restrictions are beneficial and will greatly affect how children learn. I am a visual learner so having pictures, schematics, and tables for my access whenever I want is valuable. IPads help cut the cost of textbooks and allow students to lighten the load of their textbooks. Projector screens and Smartboards allow teachers to point out specific problems or tables and write over them. Panopto allows students who are home sick or traveling for athletics to view class as if they were actually there. The possibilities are endless. The minor restrictions would be blocking social media websites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pintrest, etc.