Tuesday February 19, 2013, 11:18 am

Will These 6 Technologies Change the Education Landscape Forever?
These gadgets are likely to impact the way college kids learn.
By Andrew Freeman
February 12, 2013
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Future of Tech in Higher Education
Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
Tablet Computing
Big Data and Learning Analytics
Game-Based Learning
3D printing
Wearable Technology

Future of Tech in Higher Education
Future of Tech in Higher Education

Technology is consistently evolving to provide us with more efficient ways to learn and complete our work. It might be hard to believe that not too long ago students were still using slide rulers instead of scientific calculators.

While it’s easy to look at a cool new device and see the promise it offers, not every type of technology that makes its way into the classroom turns out to be as useful or as cheap as predicted.

To give us all a bit more guidance when it comes to education technology, The New Media Consortium (NMC) released its 2013 Higher Education Horizon Project report, which details six of the most promising new technologies that will impact the future of teaching and learning in higher education.

Click through the gallery to learn more about the emerging technologies in education.
Photo: Yagi/Getty Images

Tuesday February 19, 2013, 1:19 pm
noted, thanks !

Tuesday February 19, 2013, 1:52 pm
You are welcome Roger!

Tuesday February 19, 2013, 4:39 pm
Will the technology encourage college kids to think, or is it just another way to memorize stuff for the test!

Tuesday February 19, 2013, 4:43 pm
Good question Christine. Many college classes these days have team projects/assignment requiring students to be able to communicate their thinking to their peers.

Tuesday February 19, 2013, 4:53 pm
Hm, I do not endorse all of them, 3D in e.g. Bio seems great though. Action taken and it seems awkward having to ask the US for world standards in education!

Tuesday February 19, 2013, 5:03 pm
You cannot currently send a star to Angelika because you have done so within the last week

Tuesday February 19, 2013, 9:50 pm
interesting

Monday February 25, 2013, 10:20 am
Some of these technologies are potential game-changers, but they have to be used correctly.

Big data and analysis only go so far. Different schools have different standards and different students. The same goes for teachers. Drawing data from everywhere may assume equality of things that really aren't equal, whether because they are assumed to be unimportant, or because nobody knows how to include them in a model. Just because something can be counted does not mean it counts, and the reverse is also true.

Massively open online courses are potentially very, very useful, but only for material that can generally be understood without asking questions, or as a great resource for teachers. The point of a teacher is to assist a student in learning the material. If that assistance were unnecessary, students could just learn out of a book. I have seen that work, but it is relatively rare.

Simulation-based learning is definitely useful, but it is vital not to get lost in making it a game. I help to run a Model U.N., where students play the parts of representatives of different governments to international organizations. They discuss topics which they are given, and try to promote the interests of their governments. The plan is to have them learn about current affairs, challenges in politics, conflict-resolution, debating, and problem-solving, and it works. At the same time, I once taught swimming in a place where every lesson was required to be a game. That didn't work. (When my supervisor was absent, I would teach a regular lesson, and students said they liked it because they would actually learn something.)

Household additive manufacturing printing is a potential game-changer across the entire economy. Factories may no longer be needed for many small products. It can do wonders for shop-classes and many other things, but I don't know if it will really revolutionize education.

Tablets and wearable technology can also be used to great effect, especially in conjunction with games, special courses, learning-assistance (which could potentially allow kids who are currently considered disabled to operate in regular classes), and communication. However, just like having computers in the classrooms didn't make everything better, if these new computers are not used properly, they won't either.

Monday February 25, 2013, 11:10 am
The model UN program's evaluation do indicate it to achieve educational results along with greater understanding of other cultures.
Many on-line courses have ongoing chat rooms, one on one video sessions and other student teacher interactions built-in. Plagiarism control is emerging as a major downside trend.

Monday February 25, 2013, 6:59 pm
Schools have been catching up with plagiarism: I used to teach sections of a course which required that all papers be submitted online. They are stored in a database. The school has scripts which (after all papers for the semester are submitted) automatically recognize and search for copies of distinctive sets of phrases in each submitted paper with a Google search restricted to the database. The hits in the database are counted, and the ones that get too many hits in other papers, or too high relevance-ratings in their hits, are checked by professors. They also do online searches for large segments of the paper, and if any turnn up hits with too high relevance, those are also checed.

That does not catch everyting, though. In the MUN which I help to run, a chair recently submitted a background-guide for posting online which was obviously plagiarized. She had copied and pasted bits and pieces from somewhere without removing citation-references, so there were things like "[5]" and "[25]" out of order in the guide, with no corresponding footnotes or endnotes. I couldn't find distinctive phrases online, though, so had she removed the references, I would not have caught the plagiarism.

Monday February 25, 2013, 7:05 pm
Quite true Stephen--for papers there are now software that will flag possible nonoriginal, but that doesn't capture students using other recent students' work or work for on-line chats where a student can be pasting from a blog on the topic where the brevity interferes with certainty.

Monday March 4, 2013, 7:20 pm
ty

Monday March 4, 2013, 7:23 pm
You are welcome G d