Horizon Report

Reading the NMC's Horizon Report was the first report of its kind that I had seen. Something that surprised me was that the time frame given for many of the trends were stated to be in the future, although if asked, I would have said these some of these trends were already here: cell phones, cloud computing, geotags, etc.

One thing that was interesting was the prediction that by the year 2020, most people will use their cell phones to connect to the internet. This development would be an interesting twist to the concern that computer technology is accentuating the gap between the haves and have-nots in the world. While it maybe true that access to the internet via personal computers may be limited to the wealthy, internet access via cell phone might not be. It appears that cell phones are much more accessible financially than personal computers, and as with everything, as the price comes down, cell phones that act as personal computers might eventually end up in the hands of less wealthly people who currently do not have access to actual computers. This all means that the internet and all the connectivity that goes along with it might become part of more and more people's lives.

As for the cloud and the idea that computers will no longer be the physical repositories for computing power, storage space, applications, etc, I experienced this at a company in the US where work could be done from home with a remote access client. The client logged into a work station or network of computers in a company building, and allowed me to use the computer network to run the applications that I ran at work. Essentially, all the activity was happening on the workstation at the office, but the graphic interface was being broadcast over the internet onto my screen. What I could do was a function of the power of the computer I was logged into. If the internet connection was fast, I could see everything at home as it came up on the workstation I was logged into. It's essentially what Remote Assistance is on the Windows platform. Perhaps the difference between now and the future is that this style of computing will pervade all applications and tasks.

While I will be interested now to follow the development of these technologies and the future horizon reports, I'm more interested in seeing the Horizon Report for K-12 education, whenever it is finally released.