Wednesday, June 8, 2011

The 2011 K-12 Horizon Report: Too optimistic? | Dangerously Irrelevant | Big Think

The 2011 K-12 Horizon Report: Too optimistic? | Dangerously Irrelevant | Big Think

The 2011 K-12 Horizon Report: Too optimistic?

I asked fellow BigThink blogger Kirsten Winkler if she would join me in writing about the recently-released 2011 K-12 Horizon Report. She’s done a nice job of summarizing the six trends highlighted in this year’s report and I encourage you to perhaps read her post before you read this one. I confess that she’s more positive than I am about the state of K-12 educational technology, perhaps because of her start-up perspective.

Although the postsecondary series of Horizon Reports started back in 2004, there only have been three annual reports so far aimed at elementary and secondary educators. Like those aimed at higher (tertiary) education, the K-12 reports attempt to identify “six emerging technologies or practices that are likely to enter mainstream use in the educational community within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years” (2011, p. 3, emphasis added). Here’s what the reports have identified so far for elementary and secondary schools:

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