The 2010 horizon report

The annual Horizon Report seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have considerable impact on teaching, learning, and creative expression within higher education. The seventh edition in this annual series is again a collaboration between the NMC and ELI. Each year, the Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on campuses within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years. “Campus leaders and practitioners across the world use the report as a springboard for discussion around emerging technology,” noted Larry Johnson, chief executive officer of the NMC. “As this is the seventh year of the report, it also offers an opportunity to look back at the overarching trends over time. What we see is that there continue to be long-term channels along which technology appears to be unfolding. These have affected, are affecting now, and will continue to affect the practice of teaching and learning in profound ways for some time.” More than 100,000 copies of the 2009 Horizon Report were distributed in print and electronically last year. According to ELI Director Malcolm Brown, “Identifying the key emerging technologies for learning is vital in a time in which all planners are forced to make very careful choices about investments in technology. The Horizon Report goes beyond simply naming technologies; it offers examples of how they are being used which serves to demonstrate their potential. Finally, the report also identifies the trends and challenges that will be key for learning across all three adoption horizons. This makes the Horizon Report essential for anyone planning the future of learning at their institution.” In defining the six selected areas for 2010 — mobile computing, open content, electronic books, simple augmented reality, gesture-based computing and visual data analysis — the project drew on an ongoing discussion among experts in business, industry, and education, as well as published resources, current research and practice, and the expertise of the NMC and ELI communities. The Horizon Project’s Advisory Board probed current trends and challenges in higher education, explored possible topics for the report, and ultimately selected the technologies to be profiled