Six areas of emerging technology are likely to have a significant impact on higher education within the coming five years, according to a report that seeks to identify new technology that will influence teaching and learning in the future.
In their “2009 Horizon Report,” the authors defined six technological areas to watch: mobile devices; cloud computing, or the use of large clusters of networked servers; the use of geocoded data; “personal Web” tools that customize online experiences; semantic-aware applications that help create context in information gathering; and smart objects that give ordinary objects the power to recognize their physical location and respond appropriately.
The report also notes that some of the technologies highlighted are already being used regularly in the K-12 world. The report was published last month by the Austin, Texas-based New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative of Boulder, Colo.
