Shortlist 2c

From Horizon Project

2008 Short List [edit] Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less Webware Collaborative Workspaces Simple Video Capture and Sharing Community Tagging [edit] Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years Mobile Geotagging Socially-Centered Virtual Worlds Scholarly Mashups [edit] Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years Collective Intelligence Social Operating Systems Open Education Resources Alternative Interaction Devices [edit] Key Trends Growing use of Web 2.0 and social networking tools is changing our ideas of scholarly contribution and community Increasing globalization continues to affect the way we work, collaborate, and communicate The notions of collective intelligence and mass amateurization are pushing the boundaries of scholarship As the amount and variety of content increases, it is becoming more difficult to filter the noise to find the signal Smaller, more powerful devices are offering increased access and portability The gap between students’ perception of technology and that of faculty continues to grow The environment of higher education continues to change, with a growing trend toward open innovation [edit] Critical Challenges Academic review and faculty rewards are increasingly out of sync with new forms of scholarship Assessment of new forms of work continues to present a challenge to educators and peer reviewers There are significant shifts taking place in scholarship, research, creative expression, and learning, and a need for innovation and leadership at all levels of the academy There is a growing need for formal instruction in 21st-century literacies, including information literacy, visual literacy, and technological literacy Higher education is facing a growing expectation to deliver services, content and media to mobile and personal devices The renewed emphasis on collaborative learning is pushing the educational community to develop new forms of interaction and assessment

Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years

[edit] Socially-Centered Virtual Worlds

The intersection of virtual worlds and social networking is an increasingly interesting space. Social networking sites on the flat web have become very popular because of the ways they connect people with others who share their interests (whether professional or social), and we are beginning to see similar kinds of activities taking place in virtual worlds. As the platforms continue to develop, we can expect to see many more. The tools that sites like MySpace and Facebook offer—widgets that let you see multimedia updates from your friends, pull in their blog feeds, or create a public dialog that persists over time—will find their way into virtual worlds in the next few years. These tools will create a kind of “3D Facebook” that will combine the connective power of social networking with the engagement of a virtual world.

Increasing integration between virtual worlds, the flat web, and desktop applications contributes to this trend. Sun Microsystems’ MPK20 is a virtual workplace that brings social networking, document editing, web browsing, and other software functions into a 3D meeting space. Looking ahead, the next generation of virtual worlds will provide tools that tell people what their friends are doing, allow conversations to persist over time, and make it easy to author and pull in little widgets that connect people to their peers and friends as well as to documents and information elsewhere online.

[edit] Relevance for Teaching, Learning & Creative Expression

• Online conferences and symposia could pull in resources from around the Internet, as well as creating session archives that persist over time.
• Students in hybrid distance learning courses—part virtual world, part flat web—could meet in a virtual space and collaborate on documents right then and there.
• Links between traditional, 2D documents like PDF files and exhibits set up in 3D spaces could allow learners to move back and forth between them seamlessly.

[edit] Examples

• Skoolaborate is a global project that uses a mix of technologies (blogs, LMS, wikis and virtual worlds) for collaborative learning: http://www.skoolaborate.com
• Victoria University’s Melbourne 2051 project combines traditional writing with digital storytelling in the form of a virtual world setting built by students: http://www.melbourne2051.com
• Qwaq builds virtual workspaces for businesses: http://www.qwaq.com

[edit] For Further Reading

MPK20: Sun’s Virtual Workplace
(Sun Microsystems Website, 2007)
This page describes Sun’s virtual workplace, MPK20, how it came about, and how it is used within the company. http://research.sun.com/projects/mc/mpk20.html

Studio Wikitecture: Opening Architecture
(Ryan Schultz, Studio Wikitecture, 2007)
This is the blog for the Second Life group Studio Wikitecture, an urban planning and architecture interest group that is collectively building a 3D wiki in Second Life. Of particular interest is the October 31, 2007 post on the kick-off of Wikitecture 3.0. http://studiowikitecture.wordpress.com/

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[edit] Discussion

Add your thoughts, suggestions, examples to add here, and indicate who wrote it-- e.g. [Alan]