I’d never heard of the New Media Consortium before, but they claim a mission to “advocate and stimulate the use of new learning and creative technologies in higher education.” Anyway, their 2006 Horizon Report identifies the following trends among those shaping the role of technology in education:

• Dynamic knowledge creation and social computing tools and processes are becoming more widespread and accepted.
   
• Mobile and personal technology is increasingly being viewed as a delivery platform for services of all kinds.
   
• Consumers are increasingly expecting individualized services, tools, and experiences, and open access to media, knowledge, information, and learning.
   
• Collaboration is increasingly seen as critical across the range of educational activities, including intra- and inter-institutional activities of any size or scope.
   

The above is largely a confirmation of the incredible growth in internet use/communications dependency that that we’ve seen in the past couple years, but they do follow it up with some more detail (and if you read the PDF, a few examples):

• Social Computing. The application of computer technology to facilitate interaction and collaboration, a practice known as social computing, is happening all around us. Replacing face-to-face meetings with virtual collaboration tools, working on a daily basis with colleagues a thousand miles away, or attending a conference held entirely online is no longer unusual. An interesting aspect of social computing is the development of shared taxonomies — folksonomies — that emerge organically from like-minded groups.
   
• Personal Broadcasting. With roots in text-based media (personal websites and blogs), personal broadcasting of audio and video material is a natural outgrowth of a popular trend made possible by increasingly more capable portable tools. From podcasting to video blogging (vlogging), personal broadcasting is already impacting campuses and museum audiences significantly.
   
• The Phones in Their Pockets. A little further out on the horizon, but rapidly approaching, the delivery of educational content and services to cell phones is just around the corner. Among the keys that will unlock the true potential of this technology are improved network speeds, Flash Lite, and video: as new features that take advantage of the capabilities of these appear in phones, barriers to delivery of educational content will vanish.
   
• Educational Gaming. A recent surge in interest in educational gaming has led to increased research into gaming and engagement theory, the effect of using games in practice, and the structure of cooperation in gameplay. The serious implications of gaming are still unfolding, but we are not far away from seeing what games can really teach us.
   
• Augmented Reality and Enhanced Visualization. Currently in use in disciplines such as medicine, engineering, and archaeology, these technologies for bringing large data sets to life have the potential to literally change the way we see the world by creating three-dimensional representations of abstract data.
   
• Context-Aware Environments and Devices. Advancements in context-aware computing are giving rise to devices and rooms that respond to voice, motion, or other subtle signals. In the ultimate application of these technologies, the “computing” part simply disappears, leaving an environment transparently responsive to its human occupants.
   

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As part of a larger message to faculty returning from winter break, our CIO offered this summary of how he sees advancing internet use affecting higher education:

Are you familiar with blogs and podcasts? Google them, or look them up in Wikipedia. Some of you may already be using these new tools. Others may think these terms are the latest in a sea of techno-jargon. Regardless, your millennial students — the NetGens — are using these new technologies — along with the ubiquitous cell phone — more and more. Google is a first step in most research and you’ll be seeing more references and quotes from Wikipedia. They have more access to more technology than our generations could have ever dreamed of… and more of it is coming right to their cell phones! I’m not suggesting that you suddenly change your teaching processes, but you should be aware of how this generation gets and interacts with information. And to know them is to understand better how to work and communicate with them. Help them to be discerning with the wealth of information they have.

There are lots of studies and research written on our students today. Here are some of my own observations, as a parent and teacher.

• Students’ span of attention may be short, but their capacity to absorb more information and multitask is significant.
   
• Google is the first point in their research. Wikipedia is fast becoming a knowledge base of choice.
   
• This generation of students has vast amounts of information at their fingertips and phone, but they tend to trust too much of what they find as valid.
   
• Students tend to spend more time on their phones and text messaging than they do in email.
   
• Students walk to classes with their MP3 players in their ears. They walk out with cell phones dialed.
   
• They spend significant time online and connected, yet they know or care little about the underlying technology.
   
• They share personal information far more readily in blogs, Facebook.com and other web sites.
   
• Sales of watches are declining because young people have clocks on their cell phones.
   
• All the above are generalizations. Not all students are as ‘wired’ as we assume. We need to be mindful that some students come from homes where there is no internet, no computer and no cell phones.
   

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In recognition of the divisive and increasingly meaningless nature of x.0 monikers — think library 2.0 and the web 2.0 that inspired it — I’m doing away with them.

When Jeffrey Zeldman speaks with disdain about the AJAX happy nouveaux web application designers and the second internet bubble (and he’s not entirely off-base) and starts claiming he’s moving to Web 3.0, then it’s a pretty clear sign that we should give up on trying to version all this.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s something big going on, but it doesn’t respect version numbers and it isn’t about AJAX or social software. And as much as designers and developers want to take credit, we cant. I’m not the first to say it, but let me repeat it without the baggage of these x.0 monikers: people are making the internet a part of their daily lives and in doing so it is changing us. With or without a label, that’s what we need to talk about.

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It turns out that the Pew Internet and American Life Project sort of keeps a blog. Here are some points from a November 2004 post by project director Lee Rainie regarding “surprising, strange, and wonderful data:”

• The vast majority of most Internet users (80%) and many non-users (about 40%) expect that they will be able to find reliable information online when it comes to news, health care information, e-commerce, and government. They also report they would turn first to the internet when they have questions about health, news, government resources, and products. (Source: Survey September 2002) [emphasis added]
   
• A third of online adults and a fifth of online teens say they use the internet to get information that is sensitive or embarrassing to discuss with another person.
   
• As they gain more experience online, Americans become more serious in their internet use. Over time, they use the internet more for work, they spend more money on e-commerce, banking, and auctions, they pursue more activities, and they are more likely to use emails to for serious purposes such as expressing worries or seeking advice. (Source: Survey March 2001)
   
• Between 30%-40% of internet users begin their hunt for health information, government services and political information using a search engine. (Source: Multiple surveys 2002-2003)

The above findings seem to scare many librarians, but I claim they suggest a bright future for libraries. Think about it, these folks probably would never have thought to use a library for these questions anyway, but search engines and the internet give us a way to reach them even when they aren’t specifically thinking of using our services.

The real risk, and the reason we have to move quickly to recognize these trends and serve these users is in this point:

• Three-quarters of those who get health information online do not regularly check the source, sponsorship or timeliness of the material they find online. (Source: Survey June-August 2001).

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