Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England

http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14394.html

I have included the link to the Horizon Project Wiki which is an important component of the Horizon Project, and the place we point folks who are deeply attuned to tech trends and emerging technology. The Horizon Project Advisory Board examined over 80 emerging technologies for the 2008 Report, and studied more than 300 reports and articles as part of its research. Many very interesting topics were looked at, and for folks really interested in the true cutting edge, what is left on the cutting room floor as the Report is created is more interesting that the report, which as you noted is aimed at non-technical readers. The final report focuses on topics that our research shows will have mainstream impact on campuses over the time frames we look at.

Every aspect of the work of the Advisory Board is captured on the wiki, and as the year unfolds, the site will continue to be the place where the interesting background can be found, and lots and lots of depth is available there through the hundreds of resources and links — and those resources are updated continuously as our Advisory Board and readers continue to tag sites with the special del.icio.us tags we’ve included in the report. Browsing those links will add insight even to a technology that may seem old.

One thing which the 5 years of doing the report have proved over and over is that colleges and universities (with some very notable exceptions) are by and large *not* early adopters. Virtually any practice, including use of a particular technology, will almost certainly gain broad use in other sectors before it takes hold in education.

That is actually a good thing, I think, as it helps ensure we use proven approaches. A good example is YouTube — it is everywhere, and everyone seems to be using it. That has been true for a while — everywhere but in education. It is going to tip this year for education we think, and so any college that is not finding ways to use it educationally is going to seem a bit behind — and indeed, many colleges are already using these approaches. Over the next 12 months, we think virtually all of them will be.

I was pleased to see that you noticed we did not include Virtual Worlds this year. It was on the list of topics examined, and it was looked at very closely — it in fact made it to the final 12. In the end however, it did not make the final cut, and so did not appear.

Far from the reason for that being that we missed that one, however, our view is that Virtual Worlds are in fact already mainstream, and the data support that view.

There are over 1300 educational islands in Second Life alone, and virtually all of them are university-owned. When you add in all the other VW platforms (Croquet, Wonderland, OpenSim and lots more), it becomes clear that VWs are everywhere.

Virtual worlds were deemed to still be *very* important in our dialogs, but not new to education anymore, and thus they did not make it into the report.

Every year we ask our advisory board (a group which is new every year) to do a “where are they now” analysis of all the past reports, and over the five years we have published it, we’ve seen things change and morph, but everything we’ve written up is found on campuses, and in use.

Our data show our track record to be very solid, although I’d be the first to say that is not at all the point of the Horizon Project. Rather our focus is to try to simplify the task of knowing what to follow among the dozens of emerging technologies coming on the scene at any given moment, using solid research methods to generate a consensus view from an international panel of knowlegeable people.

Again, kudos on a great series of podcasts!!