The Knowledge Tree: Connecting Intelligence
The 14th edition of The Knowledge Tree just came out yesterday and focuses on the organisational applications of Web 2.0 technologies, in terms of connecting intelligence for organizational transformation and the clever use of open source tools to promote organizational learning.
The Horizon Report: 2007
The 2007 edition of the Horizon Report – issued by the New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative serves as a research-oriented collection of emerging technologies which are deemed to have an impact on higher education in the near future. To identify the relevant technologies, first, key trends in higher education were reviewed. The following six trends emerged:
(1) The rapid change of the environment of higher education refers to declining budgets, rising costs, fewer student enrollments, increasing demand for distance education and the rather new competition from the for-profit sectors.
(2) Increasing globalisation allows students to access more resources and to meet more perspectives. Additionally, skilled workers from Asia influence the way we work, collaborate and communicate.
(3) Although the so-called digital natives grow up with continuous access to the internet, information literacy should not be taken granted. Especially, the skills of research, evaluation, and critical thinking are missing.
(4) Due to the possibilty of digital expression of scholarship and the trend towards more collaboration, the standard of peer-reviewed paper publications will decline. Instead, other models of academic review and faculty will slowly emerge.
(5) Accordingly, the question what constitutes an expert in a field has to be reconsidered since a trend towards mass amateurization and collective intelligence can be identified.
(6) The views of students and faculty what should be considered technology are also increasingly different from each other.
Notable “new technologies to watch” for 2007 include:
(1) User-generated content (ie: blogs, wikis, podcasts, photostreams, etc.)
(2) Social networking
(3) Mobile phones
(4) Virtual worlds
(5) New scholarships and emerging forms of publications
(6) Massively multiplayer games
Download the entire report [pdf] here
Distance education journals and readings
Distance education clearinghouse
http://www.uwex.edu/disted/journals.html