Top Ranked Challenges Across Three NMC Horizon Research Projects
Technology Outlook for Singaporean K-12 Education 2012-2017
NMC Horizon Report 2012 K-12 Edition Technology Outlook for Australian Tertiary Education
2012-2017
Digitization is not enough; textbooks need to be reinvented.
Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession.
Economic pressures and new models of education are bringing unprecedented competition to
the traditional models of tertiary education.
K-12 must address the increased blending of formal and informal learning.
K-12 must address the increased blending of formal and informal learning.
Appropriate metrics of evaluation lag behind the emergence of new scholarly forms of authoring,
publishing, and researching.
Learning that incorporates real life experiences is not occurring enough and is undervalued when
it does take place.
The demand for personalised learning is not adequately supported by current technology
or practices.
Most academics are not using new and compelling technologies for learning and teaching, nor for
organising their own research.
The Singaporean panel of experts saw doors opening in K-12 to more online, hybrid, and
collaborative learning models. These emerging models foster teamwork, communication, and
both informal and peer-to-peer leaning. Just as the advisory board believes the ways in which
students learn are changing, they also acknowledged the evolving role teachers. With a constantly expanding universe of online resources at students’ disposal, it is the responsibility of teachers to become guides and help them navigate the abundance of content and relationships.
Horizon Project advisory boards in general have agreed that trends like these and the full list on page 17 are clear drivers of technology adoption; the Singapore group especially saw such a
linkage. At the same time, these panels of experts also agree that technology adoption is often
hindered by both local and systemic challenges. Many challenges impacting technology uptake
are grounded in everyday realities that often make it difficult to learn about, much less adopt, new tools and approaches.
The need to transform textbooks, for example, continues to dominate conversations in Singapore
about improving learning experiences in K-12 education; there is a common belief that merely
digitizing or making the print versions of textbooks available online will not adequately meet these demands. There is a great deal of innovation taking place within publishing companies to
address this challenge, but the results are not yet pervasive in schools.