The 2015 New Media Consortium Horizon Report K-12 Edition is now available.

Download at http://www.nmc.org/publication/nmc-horizon-report-2015-k-12-edition/

Some of the topics that you will find in the Report and that might form the basis of Learning Conversations within your work:

Technology and the relevance it has for policy, leadership and practice for schools?

Where are there solid user basis in the areas of consumer, entertainment and other industries. What are the ways for schools to apply this in their purposeful work?

What are the developments that are emerging over the next 4 to 5 years & ways that we can take notice & start thinking, questioning about, in our work?

After reading the Report, we might support progressing the understanding of it and the work of teachers and learning by considering the narrative & change knowledge for:

Individuals
Communities
our Organisation

How do we support them to see themselves in it & to want to take the necessary action to realise this?

How do we create compellong change knowledge narratives that make use of the authentic voice of learners and lead learners in the context of their own learning & improvement?

We must share opportunities of showing learning in demonstration and not just in exhibition, share the messy, the incomplete the 'not quite there' efforts as part of learning improvement

We need to avoid heavy inscription of our own experience, expertise & learnings so that the beginner is able to attribute their new knowledge & understanding to other areas of their learning

All of this is not happening in isolation:

Take a look at the thinking of Seely-Brown & Michael Wesch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiGabUBQEnM&index=26&list=PLDoJAB5mpukP6mUO...

https://www.youtube.com/user/mwesch

When we are working with Learning Design, how do we support learner ownership through doing & creating?

How are we doing this on a daily, weekly, monthly basis #24/7/28

How do we conside making 20% of what we do with Learning Design, things we couldn't or didn't do 2 years ago: renewing our teaching practice as it relates to our teaching behaviours & instructional practice?

There are some examples of good/excellent practice occuring & being networked & shared, however...?

How do we take considered action to amplify this, how do we actively connect & encourage with others to progress the #newbasics & the emerging basics that form the basis of Learner entitlement in a global curriculum?

Clusters of schools, networking, sharing, connecting, considering the long term capabilities.

Sharing the knowledge & supporting each other to apply the skills, knowledge & progressing to understanding?

Long term reflective practice.

Considering metacognition & also considering metereflection as a #newbasic

How are you progressing this, participating, contributing, sharing, creating, collaborating?

The longer we leave this, the harder it becomes to make a start.

Make a beginning today.

Key Trends Accelerating Technology Adoption in K-12 Education Pg 6 to 18 of the NMC Report

One to two years

Short Term Impact Trends: Driving Ed Tech adoption in K-12 education for one to two years:

Increasing use of Blended Learning
Rise of STEAM Learning

Science, technology, Engineering, Arts & Maths

Perceptions of online learning are becoming increasingly favourable as more schools experience the benefits of blended learning models.

These emerging models support personalised learning, resulting in more engaged, self-directed students.

Progress in learning analytics, adaptive learning, and a combination of cutting-edge digital platforms will continue to advance this trend toward integrated online learning and keep it compelling.

As a response to the focus on STEM learning at school and district levels, some education leaders believe there is the need for a more balanced curriculum that integrates disciplines such as the arts, design, and humanities into the sciences.

This notion has fostered the STEAM learning movement, in which the A stands for "Art."

The company STEAM Education expands this definition to a fundamental philosophy that all disciplines can and should relate to each other to provide students with the big picture of how a wide variety of knowledge and skill sets tie into each other in the real world.

In other words, technology use does not exclusively relate to advancing science and engineering; STEAM education is about engaging students in a multiand interdisciplinary learning context that values the humanities and artistic activities, while breaking down barriers that have traditionally existed between different classes and subjects.

Three to five years

Mid-Term Impact Trends: Driving Ed Tech adoption in K-12 education for three to five years:

Increasing Use of Collaborative Learning Approaches
Shift from Students as Consumers to Creators

Remember Prosuming

http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2010/07/03/the-shift-from-cons... consider this in the context of your teaching & lead learning work?

Google Digiloging
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OshYE0H5bRk
Futurist Anders Sorman-Nilsson

Collaborative learning, which refers to students or teachers working together in peer-to-peer or group activities, is based on the perspective that learning is a social construct.

Many educators believe that honing collaborative and creating skills in learners can lead to deeply engaging learning experiences in which students become the authorities on subjects through investigation, storytelling, and production.

Other components of this trend include game development and making, and access to programming instruction that nurtures learners as inventors and entrepreneurs.

As students become more active producers and publishers of educational resources, intellectual property issues will become a key component of K-12 curricula.

Five or more years

Long-Term Impact Trends: Driving Ed Tech adoption in K-12 education for five, or more years:

Rethinking How Schools Work & Shift to Deeper Learning Approaches

Some interesting thoughts on Integrating Technology, Pedagogy & Change Knowledge

http://www.newpedagogies.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/New_Pedagogies_for...

As learning becomes more fluid and student-centered, some teachers and administrators believe that schedules should be more flexible to allow opportunities for authentic learning to take place and ample room for independent study.

Significant Challenges Impeding Technology Adoption in K-12 Education

Thinking carefully about the things that we are able to impact?

What are the strategies that children, young people & lead educators are making use of to move around this?

#growthmindset
https://vimeo.com/53056131

#learningpit
https://vimeo.com/117364809

Solvable Challenges: Those that we understand & how to solve them:

Creating Authentic Learning Opportunities
Integrating Technology in Teacher Education

Authentic learning experiences, especially those that bring students in touch with real-world problems and work situations, are still all too uncommon in schools.

The term authentic learning is seen as an umbrella for several important pedagogical strategies that have great potential to immerse learners in environments where they can gain lifelong learning skills; these approaches include vocational training, apprenticeships, simulations, and portfolio-based assessment.

A number of schools have begun bridging the gap between academic knowledge and concrete applications by establishing relationships with the broader community; through active partnerships with local organisations, learners can experience the future that awaits them outside of school.

Teacher training still does not acknowledge the fact that digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession.

Despite the widespread agreement on the importance of digital competence, training in the digital-supported teaching methods is still too uncommon in teacher education and in the preparation of teachers.

As teachers begin to realise that they are limiting their students by not helping them to develop and use digital competence skills across the curriculum, the lack of formal training is being offset through professional development or informal learning, but digital media literacy is not yet the norm.

Difficult Challenges: Those that we understand but for which solutions are elusive:
Personalised Learning
Rethinking the Roles of Teachers

Personalised learning refers to the range of educational programs, learning designs, instructional approaches, and academic support strategies intended to address the specific learning needs, interests, aspirations, or cultural backgrounds of individual students.

Advances in online learning environments and adaptive learning technologies are making it possible to automate the processes of a learner's individual learning path, although much of the discussion of personalising learning in K-12 education is focused on redesigning how schools work; that is, emergent solutions to this challenge emphasise competency education, which is a student-centered system that overturns the traditional paradigm.

The biggest barrier to personalised learning is in condensing myriad methods and technologies into a streamlined strategy that can be implemented, scaled, and replicated throughout schools.

Teachers are increasingly expected to be adept at a variety of technology-based methods and other approaches for content delivery, learner support, and assessment; to collaborate with other teachers both inside and outside their schools; to routinely use digital strategies in their work with students; to act as guides and mentors to promote student-centered learning; and to organise their own work and comply with administrative documentation and reporting requirements.

The integration of technology into everyday life is causing many education thought leaders to argue that schools should be providing ways for students to continue to engage in learning activities, formal and informal, beyond the traditional school day.

While fully online schools are still relatively rare, an increasing number of teachers are using more hybrid and experiential learning exercises, and experimenting with social media and other ways of building learning communities.

Wicked Challenges: Those that are complex to even define, much less address:

Scaling Teaching Innovations
Teaching Complex Thinking

Schools are not yet adept at moving teaching innovations into mainstream practice.

Innovation springs from the freedom to try out and implement new ideas, yet schools generally allow for top-down changes that unfold in prescribed ways.

Scaling pedagogical innovation requires the removal of restrictive policies, adequate funding, capable leadership, and strong evaluation practices - a tall order for the majority of K-12 public schools, which are receiving fewer resources.

It is essential for young people both to understand the networked world in which they are growing up and also - through complex thinking - to learn how to use abstraction and decomposition when tackling complex tasks and to deploy heuristic reasoning to complex problems.

Mastering modes of complex thinking does not make an impact in isolation; communication skills must also be mastered for complex thinking to be applied meaningfully.

The term "Complex thinking" refers to the ability to understand complexity, a skill that is needed to comprehend how systems work in order to solve problems, and can be used interchangeably with "Computational thinking." Teaching coding in schools is increasingly being viewed as a way to instill this kind of thinking in students as it combines deep computer science knowledge with creativity and problem-solving.

Important Developments in Educational Technology for K-12 Education

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
Makerspaces

In schools, the BYOD movement addresses the same reality; many students are entering the classroom with their own devices, which they use to connect to the school's network.

While BYOD policies have been shown to reduce overall technology spending, they are gaining traction more so because they reflect the contemporary lifestyle and way of working.

Although administrators and educators have cited IT security concerns, technology gap issues, and platform neutrality as challenges to the uptake of this technology, a growing number of models in practice are paving the way for BYOD to enter the mainstream.

In this landscape, creativity, design, and engineering are making their way to the forefront of educational considerations, as tools such as robotics, 3D printers, and web-based 3D modelling applications become accessible to more people.

The driving force behind makerspaces is rooted in the Maker movement, a following comprised of artists, tech enthusiasts, engineers, builders, tinkerers, and anyone else with a passion for making things.

The foundation of the Maker movement was built on the success of the Maker Fair, a gathering that launched in 2006 and has since propagated itself into numerous community-driven events all over the world.

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years:

3D Printing
Adaptive Learning Technologies

A 3D printer builds a tangible model or prototype from the electronic file, one layer at a time, through an extrusion-like process using plastics and other flexible materials, or an inkjet-like process to spray a bonding agent onto a very thin layer of fixable powder.

The deposits created by the machine can be applied very accurately to build an object from the bottom up, layer by layer, with resolutions that, even in the least expensive machines, are more than sufficient to express a large amount of detail.

The process even accommodates moving parts within the object.

Using different materials and bonding agents, color can be applied, and parts can be rendered in plastic, resin, metal, tissue, and even food.

Adaptive learning technologies refer to software and online platforms that adjust to individual students' needs as they learn.

According to a paper commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and authored by Tyton Partners, adaptive learning is a "Sophisticated, data-driven, and in some cases, nonlinear approach to instruction and remediation, adjusting to a learner's interactions and demonstrated performance level, and subsequently anticipating what types of content and resources learners need at a specific point in time to make progress."

In this sense, contemporary educational tools are now capable of learning the way people learn; enabled by machine learning technologies, they can adapt to each student's progress and adjust content in real time or provide customised exercises when they need it.

There are two levels to adaptive learning technologies - the first platform reacts to individual user data and adapts instructional material accordingly, while the second leverages aggregated data across a large sample of users for insights into the design and adaptation of curricula.

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years:

Digital Badges
Wearable Technology

Badges are seen as a way to grant certification for formal and informal learning in the form of micro-credits, which assess learned skills based on outcomes, rather than seat time.288 Often viewed as a component of gamification, digital badges are being implemented to help track, capture, and visualise learning in a way that incentivises students.

The concept behind badging embodies historical models of recognition for personal skills and achievement, such as when a Boy or Girl Scout earns a merit badge.

One key development that has helped the progress of digital badges was the Open Badge Initiative - an open specification for badging established by the Mozilla Foundation, which enables providers and users alike to display achievements on the web, on any platform.

Wearable technology, technology refers to computer-based devices that can be worn by users, taking the form of an accessory such as jewellery, eyewear, or even actual items of clothing such as shoes or a jacket.

There are even new classes of devices that are seamlessly integrated with a user's everyday life and movements.

Smart watches from Apple, Samsung, Sony, and Pebble are already allowing users to check emails and perform other productive tasks through a tiny interface.