Future

Some twenty one years ago I quoted an old Chinese proverb that “Prophesy is dangerous—especially when it concerns the future” and noted that it was “not so very long ago that those who claimed to be able to see into the future were given a show trial and then burned at the stake”. These days it is only the expert’s reputation that is burned.

Each year, The British Journal of Educational Technology carries out a survey of the key issues in educational technology as perceived by a sample of learning technologists. This takes the form of a simple questionnaire asking respondents to select their five top issues from a list of about 40 alternatives. Some of these are technologies, others are techniques. 

The survey goes to the members of the BJET board and the reviewer panel, to those who have submitted papers to the Journal, and to several educational technology online fora, such as IT Forum. The simplified results are shown in figure 1 overleaf.

The top ten in the 2011 survey were:

• Mobile learning
• Creative learning
• Social Networking.
• Assessment
• Learning environments
• Learning design
• Web 2.0
• Creative learning
• Self-organizing learning and
• Quality For comparison

 The top six in 2010 (again in descending order) were:

• Collaborative learning
• Web 2.0
• Learning design
• Mobile learning
• Social networking
• Assessment
• Learning environments
• Computer mediated communication
• Virtual worlds and
• Self-organizing learning

References:

•        Dienstag, J. (2006). Pessimism: Philosophy, ethic, spirit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

•        Facer, K. (2011). Learning futures: Education, technology and social change. London, UK: Routledge.

•        Moore, G.A. (1991). Crossing the Chas. London, UK: Harper Collins.

•        Johnson, L., Smith, R., Willis, H., Levine, A., & Haywood, K. (2011).The 2011 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium.

•        Rushby, N. J. (1990). What the future of educational technology may or may not hold. Interactive Learning International, 6(1), 1- 4.

•        Rushby, N. J. (2010). Editorial: Topics in learning technologies. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(3) 343-348.

•        Rushby, N. J., & Seabrook, J. E. (2008). Understanding the past: Illuminating the future. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(2), 198-233.

•        Santayana, G. (1905) The life of reason or the phases of human progress. New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons. Retrieved from http://ia600502.us.archive.org/23/items/thelifeofreasono00santuoft/thelifeofreasono00santuoft.pdf

•        Selwyn, N. (2011) Editorial: In praise of pessimism—the need for negativity in educational technology. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(5), 713-718.

•        Xie, J., Sreenivasan, S., Komiss, G., Zhang, W., Lim, C., & Szymanski, B. K. (2011). Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities. Physical Review E, 84(1), 011130. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.84.011130

•        Tetlock, P. E. (2005) Expert political opinion, how good is it? How can we know? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.