T H E H O R I Z O N R E P O R T 2 0 0 8 E D I T I O N a collaboration between The NEW MEDIA CONSORTIUM and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative An EDUCAUSE Program The 2008 Horizon Report is a collaboration between The NEW MEDIA CONSORTIUM and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative An EDUCAUSE Program © 2008, The New Media Consortium. Permission is granted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license to replicate and distribute this report freely for noncommercial purposes provided that it is distributed only in its entirety. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA. ISBN 0-9765087-6-1 TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 3 O Key Emerging Technologies O Critical Challenges O Signi!cant Trends O After Five Years: The Metatrends O About the Horizon Project Time-to-Adoption: One Year or Less Grassroots Video ..................................................................................................................................... 10 O Overview O Relevance for Teaching, Learning, and Creative Expression O Examples O For Further Reading Collaboration Webs ................................................................................................................................. 13 O Overview O Relevance for Teaching, Learning, and Creative Expression O Examples O For Further Reading Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years Mobile Broadband ................................................................................................................................... 17 O Overview O Relevance for Teaching, Learning, and Creative Expression O Examples O For Further Reading Data Mashups ......................................................................................................................................... 20 O Overview O Relevance for Teaching, Learning, and Creative Expression O Examples O For Further Reading Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years Collective Intelligence .............................................................................................................................. 23 O Overview O Relevance for Teaching, Learning, and Creative Expression O Examples O For Further Reading Social Operating Systems ....................................................................................................................... 26 O Overview O Relevance for Teaching, Learning, and Creative Expression O Examples O For Further Reading Methodology ................................................................................................................................................. 30 2008 Horizon Project Advisory Board ......................................................................................................... 32 T H E H O R I Z O N R E P O R T – 2 0 0 8 1 E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing Key Emerging Technologies work of the New Media Consortium (NMC)’s Horizon The technologies featured in the 2008 Horizon Project, a !ve-year qualitative research effort that seeks Report are placed along three adoption horizons that to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to represent what the Advisory Board considers likely have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative timeframes for their entrance into mainstream use expression within learning-focused organizations. The for teaching, learning, or creative applications. The 2008 Horizon Report, the !fth in this annual series, is !rst adoption horizon assumes the likelihood of entry produced as a collaboration between the NMC and the within the next year; the second, within two to three EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE years; and the third, within four to !ve years. program. The two technologies placed on the !rst adoption The main sections of the report describe six emerging horizon in this edition, grassroots video and technologies or practices that will likely enter collaboration webs, are already in use on many mainstream use in learning-focused organizations campuses. Examples of these are not difficult to within three adoption horizons over the next one to !nd. Applications of mobile broadband and data !ve years. Also highlighted are a set of challenges mashups, both on the mid-term horizon, are evident and trends that will in"uence our choices in the same in organizations at the leading edge of technology time frames. The project draws on an ongoing primary adoption, and are beginning to appear at many research effort that has distilled the viewpoints of institutions. Educational uses of the two topics on more than 175 Advisory Board members in the the far-term horizon, collective intelligence and !elds of business, industry, and education into the social operating systems, are understandably six topics presented here; drawn on an extensive rarer; however, there are examples in the worlds of array of published resources, current research, and commerce, industry and entertainment that hint at practice; and made extensive use of the expertise of coming use in academia within four to !ve years. the NMC and ELI communities. (The precise research Each pro!led technology is described in detail in the methodology is detailed in the !nal section.) Many of body of the report, including a discussion of what it the examples under each area feature the innovative is and why it is relevant to teaching, learning, and work of NMC and ELI member institutions. creative expression. Speci!c examples are listed The format of the Horizon Report re"ects the focus of there for each of the six topics, consistent with the the Horizon Project, which centers on the applications level of adoption at the time the report was written of emerging technologies to teaching, learning, and (December 2007). Taken as a set, our research creative expression. Each topic opens with an overview indicates that all six of these technologies will to introduce the concept or technology involved and signi!cantly impact the choices of learning-focused follows with a discussion of the particular relevance of organizations within the next !ve years. the topic to education or creativity. Examples of how OGrassroots Video. Virtually anyone can the technology is being—or could be—applied to those capture, edit, and share short video clips, using activities are given. Each description is followed by an inexpensive equipment (such as a cell phone) annotated list of additional examples and readings and free or nearly free software. Video sharing which expand on the discussion in the Report, as well sites continue to grow at some of the most as a link to the list of tagged resources collected by prodigious rates on the Internet; it is very common the Advisory Board and other interested parties during now to !nd news clips, tutorials, and informative the process of researching the topic areas. videos listed alongside the music videos and the T H E H O R I Z O N R E P O R T – 2 0 0 8 3 E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y raft of personal content that dominated these sources are “mashed up” into a single tool— sites when they !rst appeared. What used to be offer new ways to look at and interact with difficult and expensive, and often required special datasets. The availability of large amounts of servers and content distribution networks, now data (from search patterns, say, or real estate has become something anyone can do easily sales or Flickr photo tags) is converging with the for almost nothing. Hosting services handle development of open programming interfaces encoding, infrastructure, searching, and more, for social networking, mapping, and other tools. leaving only the content for the producer to worry This in turn is opening the doors to hundreds about. Custom branding has allowed institutions of data mashups that will transform the way we to even have their own special presence within understand and represent information. these networks, and will fuel rapid growth among OCollective Intelligence. The kind of knowledge learning-focused organizations who want their and understanding that emerges from large content to be where the viewers are. groups of people is collective intelligence. In OCollaboration Webs. Collaboration no longer the coming years, we will see educational calls for expensive equipment and specialized applications for both explicit collective expertise. The newest tools for collaborative intelligence—evidenced in projects like the work are small, "exible, and free, and require Wikipedia and in community tagging—and no installation. Colleagues simply open their implicit collective intelligence, or data gathered web browsers and they are able to edit group from the repeated activities of numbers documents, hold online meetings, swap of people, including search patterns, cell information and data, and collaborate in any phone locations over time, geocoded digital number of ways without ever leaving their desks. photographs, and other data that are passively Open programming interfaces allow users to obtained. Data mashups will tap into information author tools that they need and easily tailor generated by collective intelligence to expand them to their requirements, then share them our understanding of ourselves and the with others. technologically-mediated world we inhabit.