NMC Horizon Report: 2013 K-12 Edition

The NMC Horizon Report: 2013 K-12 Edition was created by the New Media Consortium, a recognized worldwide community of technology experts in charge of researching the emerging technology to be used in the classroom and their impact on teaching. According to the 2013 report there will be six technologies divided into adoption horizons or timeframes that it will take them to create a change on teaching, learning, creativity and become mainstream. The first horizon assumes a time to adoption of 1 year or less. The second horizon assumes a time of adoption of 2 to 3 years and the last horizon assumes a time of adoption of 4 to 5 years.

Horizon 1 technologies include: cloud computing and mobile learning. Cloud computing is a solution to store information without using any memory space in your devices. It promotes and allows having conferences and collaboration. Mobile learning is done by the use of BYOD and the use of apps to support students learning inside and outside the class. It is common to see that the publishing houses have included sites to interactive learning online. Most schools are in this horizon and they are the basic steps to innovate education.

Horizon 2 includes: Learning Analytics and Open Content. During this horizon there will be an analysis of the behavior of users online to observe the repetitive patterns in order to make predictions on how students spend their time online. With this, we will be able to determine the way to better approach students. Open Content provides open sources to enrich lesson plans and teaching. This allows us to also work collaboratively with people from all around the world. Always seeking for best practices. One of the options that are already online are by having a flipped classroom using the videos posted by other teachers and also creating your own to share.

Horizon 3 includes: 3D Printers and Virtual Remote Laboratories. The first allows students to create and design. It will be very useful for programming, engineering and science models. Currently it is being used in the revolution of prosthetics in medicine. Remote laboratories will give access to make scientific experiments that are not normally done in class because it could be dangerous to students or because of time, lab resources or space restrictions. It also promotes inquiry learning and allows students to work at their own pace.

With these tools, every student will have the opportunity to collaborate, create, and share. As teachers we need to be in constant evolution, embrace the change.