Significant new technologies

Significant new technologies

Technology	How long used for educational purposes by my organisation	How long used for educational purposes by me
Cloud computing	X	X
Mobile/cell phone	X	X
Open content	2 years	2 years
Tablet computing	2 years	2 years
Game-based learning	X	X
Learning analytics	X	X
New scholarship	X	X
Semantic applications	X	X
Augmented reality	X	X
Collective intelligence	3 years	3 years
Smart objects	X	X
Telepresence	X	X

3 technologies I would like my organization to adopt

Mobile ‘phones

·      Great tools, increasingly ubiquitous, and the organization does not have to buy them a learners increasingly have their own.

·      For English language learning they offer some innovative new pedagogical approaches – e.g. take a photo representing a classic English idiom and post to the class blog for peer-review and comments from fellow learners.

Game-based Learning

·      Most of my students are children or teenagers.

·      The male ones do nothing but play computer games.

·      My efforts to inspire them in the joys of reading are not gaining much traction.

·      Therefore I would love to channel their enthusiasms for gaming towards things that will help them learn.

·      I’m not so interested in simulating real-life environments, I’m more interested on how your average teenager with a passion for Halo inadvertently improves his English whilst playing.

Learning Analytics

·      This whole area intuitively excites me.

·      I think I read somewhere that it already applies quite well in language learning environments.

·      Well, I haven’t used them at all, so I’d like to learn more – seems very useful if it enables students to identify which areas they are weak in, and to focus on improving those areas.