The future of learning?

Part of last week's tasks was to look at the horizon report 2012.

Since Sylvia introduce them to me last year in H807, I have been looking at these and it's always interesting to compare to other research going on, like the Towards Maturity Benchmarking. (what's interesting is that both organisations have used videos alongside the reports this year.)

Horizon 2012 Key Trends

People expect to be able to work, learn, study whenever and wherever they want to.

• The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based, and our notions of IT support are decentralised
• the world of work is increasingly collaborative, +driving changes in the way student projects are structured.
• The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators
• Education paradigms are shifting to include online learning, hybrid learning and collaborative models
• There is a new emphasis in the classroom on more challenge-based and active learning.

Technologies to watch

• mobile apps
• tablet computing
• gesture based computing
• the internet of things

Interestingly if you look back over the Horizon report, you will find many of the trends are the same - which means we are still talking and thinking about the same things. In 2011 electronic books and mobile technology were the technologies to watch, and you can see how these have moved on to apps. Game based learning has also been on the horizon since 2005 in some shape or form, alongside the challenge of digital literacy. It makes one wonder what we have been doing to improve digital literacy if it has been a challenge for over five years.

I also took a wider look at the future of learning and what innovation may be. I came across a number of resources on the European Commission Institute for prospective technologies.

The future of Learning 2010 is a vision from Teacher of what learning will look like. There are some interesting insights in the report including:

• Learning objectives to focus on competencies rather than knowledge
• learning to be tailored to the needs of individual
• learning to be more active and connected to real life
• technologies to be an integrated part of learning and life
• teachers to become life-long learners themselves.

Challenges echo some of those in Horizon. Education needing to respond to the needs of economy and society, with teachers being encouraged to be part of implementing change, where organisations allow innovation to happen in education. More knowledge needed around ICT as already impacting changes in learning and policies need to be better linked to developing practices.

The competencies talked about were:

• traditional basic skills
• communication skills
• digital competence
• transversal (learning to learn, innovation and creativity)
• social and civic skills

The new elements included more problem solving and ability to express effectively, as well as being able to respond to change and establish identity, of self, digitally and culturally, and more inks to environment and nature.

It's interesting that establishing and developing oneself, living and working with others and coping with change seem to be prime focus - areas that probably sit comfortably in the life-long learning sector.

We can't say that technology isn't changing the way we learn. We have more access to information and more need to make sense of it - but in an increasingly social online world, it's interesting that core personal and identity development seems to be a key driver in the perceptions of teachers. It's also interesting that some of this echoes the practices of some breakaway educational movements like that of Montessori.