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The 2010 K12 Horizon report is out today and there an some very interesting insights inside. The report is the product of the work of the New Media Consortium and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN). You can take a look at the full report as well as add you own comments on the reports website.
Looking at the key trends identified in the executive summary one really stood out to me, “The perceived value of innovation and creativity is increasing. Innovation is valued at the highest levels of business and must be embraced in schools if students are to succeed beyond their formal education.” The main point that I draw from this is that the factory model of education no longer cuts it. We have moved from being an industrial nation to a nation of innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs. It is no longer acceptable to provide a cookie cutter education that produces cookie cutter workers for our factories. As educators we must start to examine the structures that we have set up and determine if they are still valuable in our rapidly changing world. As the report identified,”A key challenge is the fundamental structure of the K-12 education establishment.”
One point where I think the Horizon report may have missed the mark is in its predictions on flexible displays. Horizon sees flexible displays being integrated into textbooks in 4-5 years. I would like to suggest that instead we will see the death of the traditional textbook in the next 5-7 years. Textbooks are simply becoming too inflexible and non-dynamic to be relevant in 21st century education, and the technology to move to dynamic texts is here right now. Ipads, iPods, netbooks, kindles, sony readers, nooks, etc are all solutions right now. What we need is for textbook writers to change the way that they think about textbooks. Otherwise, students and educators will find other resources that provided an integrated rich multimedia experience.
There is plenty more to look at in this report, so feel free to comment and let us know what you think.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010, 9:00 am and is filed under News and Commentary.
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Horizon 2010 K12 Edition is out
The 2010 K12 Horizon report is out today and there an some very interesting insights inside. The report is the product of the work of the New Media Consortium and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN). You can take a look at the full report as well as add you own comments on the reports website.
Looking at the key trends identified in the executive summary one really stood out to me, “The perceived value of innovation and creativity is increasing. Innovation is valued at the highest levels of business and must be embraced in schools if students are to succeed beyond their formal education.” The main point that I draw from this is that the factory model of education no longer cuts it. We have moved from being an industrial nation to a nation of innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs. It is no longer acceptable to provide a cookie cutter education that produces cookie cutter workers for our factories. As educators we must start to examine the structures that we have set up and determine if they are still valuable in our rapidly changing world. As the report identified,”A key challenge is the fundamental structure of the K-12 education establishment.”
One point where I think the Horizon report may have missed the mark is in its predictions on flexible displays. Horizon sees flexible displays being integrated into textbooks in 4-5 years. I would like to suggest that instead we will see the death of the traditional textbook in the next 5-7 years. Textbooks are simply becoming too inflexible and non-dynamic to be relevant in 21st century education, and the technology to move to dynamic texts is here right now. Ipads, iPods, netbooks, kindles, sony readers, nooks, etc are all solutions right now. What we need is for textbook writers to change the way that they think about textbooks. Otherwise, students and educators will find other resources that provided an integrated rich multimedia experience.
There is plenty more to look at in this report, so feel free to comment and let us know what you think.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010, 9:00 am and is filed under News and Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.