News Story

KMi experts predict the Future of Education

Fridolin Wild, Wednesday 8 Feb 2012

On January 24-26, one hundred distinguished thought leaders from around the globe have convened in Austin/Texas on invitation of the New Media Consortium (NMC) to predict the Future of Education.

Within this three day retreat, thought leaders around the globe reflected and exchanged ideas around technology use in learning and connected emerging trends and metatrends, notions of renewal and transformation, and required action.

For the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute and the EU funded TELmap and STELLAR projects, Paul Lefrere and Fridolin Wild have been participating in this prestigious think tank.

“With downloads at nearly one million, readership of easily 1.5 million in over 100 countries, and 27 translations in the past ten years, the NMC Horizon Report series serves the higher education, K-12, and museum communities across the globe in their desire to understand the impact of emerging technologies on their chosen field or discipline”, as Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium, states.

With a wealth of input from these three days, the new Horizon Report is currently under construction; it will have an additional focus reflecting over the 10 year period covered by previous NMC’s Horizon reports.

A small insight into one of 28 meta-trends screened: In times where libraries reinvent themselves and the publishing industry experiences a seismic shift, openness is the new imperative. As the first communique from the retreat states (see below for the link), “openness – concepts like open content, open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information – is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world”.

Given this, it seems that the Open University may very well be the most important asset in the UK’s higher education landscape 🙂