Current ICT trends as identified by The Horizon report 2010

The Horizon Report is written in collaboration of The New Media Consortium, the Educause Learning Initiative and An Educause Program. Each edition of Horizon describes six emerging technologies or practices that are likely to enter mainstream use on campuses from one to five years. Th reports also include a critical trends and challenges that will affect teaching and learning over the same time frame. The key current trends that are listed in Horizon Reports are identified by Advisory Board researches who rank key trends that are currently affecting the practice the practice of teaching, learning and creative enquiry as the foundation for their later work.
The following four trends are described by The report as the key drivers of technology adoptions for the next five years:

The first and the highest ranked key trend
'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' (Horizon Report, 2010, p3).

This key trend calls for institutions being considered of the issues implemented by using information technology and making its users aware of its pitfalls as well as advantages by educating users about the accessibility and conditions of use of Internet documents. Executive Summary of the Educating the net generation Handbook identifies a plagiarism as one of the possible pitfall of Web 2.0 technologies and states that ' students were less clear about the conventions for attribution and acknowledgment material published using new media, or about the rights to re-use material produced by themselves and others' (Educating the Net Generation, 2009, p5).

The second most important key trend
'People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want to' (Horizon Report, 2010, p4).
This trend indicates the needs of contemporary students who expect to be educated on flexible time bases through 'an easy and timely access not only to the information on the network, but to their social networks that can help them to interpret it and maximize its value' (Horizon Report, 2010, p4). The expectation of accessibility of information is underlined by the ability to learn in a flexible mode. E-learning technologies that are used to deliver learning on demand can be accessed from online any time and anywhere. However, as the Education the net generation states, educators need to provide 'more flexible access to and opportunities for both informal, formative self-assessment by students and informal, formative assessment by teachers' (Educating the net generation, 2009, p5).

The third key trend
'The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based, and our notions of IT support are decentralised.' (Horizon Report, 2010, p4)

This trend identifies the expectation of ICT users having ability to access their information on a go via a 'browser-based software that is device-independant' (Horizon Report, 2010, p4). Many Web 2.0 technologies fulfil this expectation trough use of learning management systems capable of containing a variety of resources as wells the ability to store files.

The fourth trend:
'The work of students is increasingly seen as collaborative by nature, and there is more cross- campus collaboration between departments' (Horizon Report, 2010, p4)
This trend identifies the need for collaboration between academics and students and across multiple campuses which arises from the challenges facing the world as multidisciplinary (Horizon Report, 2010, p4). From the teacher
Mayes in Groundhog Day again identifies Web 2.0 technologies as a learning tool which promotes horizontal learning because because it involves the development of a sharing culture (Mayes, 2007, p4).

References

Educating the Net Generation:A Handbook of Findings for Practice and Policy. (2009).
Retrieved June 28 2010. From www.netgen.unimelb.edu.au/downloads/handbook/Sec3Investigation.pdf

Mayes, Groundhog Day again, a keynote presentation at JISC's 2007 Innovating e-Learning 2007: Institutional Transformation and Supporting Lifelong Learning online conference. Retrieved June 28 2010. From http://www.online-conference.net/jisc/content2007/Mayes/Mayes%20-%20groundhog%20day.pdf

Analysis of learning styles and ICT

Analysis of learning styles questionnaire and how it might affect how you learn or teach generally and in ICT learning environment in particular. Do you agree with your profile?

I have used a questionnaire to find out what type of learner I'm for the first time and I was a bit surprised by the outcome of also being a kinesthetic learner. I wouldn't go as far as disagreeing with the outcome of the questionnaire in 'VARK a guide to learning styles' but it made me think how much this type of questionnaire can be or is accurate. If I were to believe in the outcome to be correct, to accommodate my learning as well as teaching style I would have to make some changes. For example being a visual learner I prefer to learn from a visual text. I have learnt to overcome the 'shortage' of academic papers depicted visually by converting them into imagines to make a better sense of them. If necessary I use digital technology to 'interpret' or rather 'translate' a content from verbal to visual language. To accommodate my 'preference' for kinesthetic learning the guide suggests that I need to use more hands-on activities to intake information and use case studies or real life situation to learn more efficiently.

One thing is to accommodate my learning style which does not affect anyone else than me, however, as a teacher using a preferred teaching style can negatively impact students' learning. To avoid accomodating the learning needs of students with similar preferences as teacher's, teacher need to cater for all learning styles by using multiple and multimodal teaching styles. In this way teachers not only cater for learners with dominant style preferences but also for those who are multimodal learners.

To cater for all types of learners in ICT environment can be challenging due to the required level of computer competency for the student as well as the teacher. Most importantly, regardless what tool is used to accommodate the learning style(s), digital technology or traditional ways, learners need to develop skills that enable them to select, prioritise and construct knowledge.

Wordle of this reflection



Fleming, N., and Baume, D. (2006) Learning Styles Again: VARKing up the right tree!, Educational Developments, SEDA Ltd, Issue 7.4, Nov. 2006, p4-7.

Fleming, N., Vark: a guide to learning styles. (2001)
Accessed 1 June 2010. www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=kinesthetic#