The 2011 Horizon Report from Educause again provides some clear indicators for key trends and drivers for technology in education. As ever the report outlines key trends, critical drivers and short and long term forecasts as well as providing an excellent set of resources for each of the identified trends. But if you haven’t time even to read the executive summary here are the main points.

Key trends (building very much on previous years):

*The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators in sense-making, coaching, and credentialing.
*People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want.
*The world of work is increasingly collaborative, giving rise to reflection about the way student projects are structured.
*The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based, and our notions of IT support are decentralized

Critical Challenges:
*Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession.
*Appropriate metrics of evaluation lag behind the emergence of new scholarly forms of
authoring, publishing, and researching.
*Economic pressures and new models of education are presenting unprecedented competition to traditional models of the university.
*Keeping pace with the rapid proliferation of information, software tools, and devices is challenging for students and teachers alike.

Technologies to watch:
*electronic books – as they develop they are changing “our perception of what it means to read”
*mobiles – “increasingly a user’s first choice for Internet access”

Second Adoption Horizon (technologies expected to gain widespread adoption in 2 to 3 years from now).
*Agumented reality
*Game-based learning

Far term horizon (technologies expected to gain widespread adoption in 4 – 5 years from now)
*Gesture based computing
*Learning analytics