Educause

Educause
http://www.educause.edu/

Educause is a non-profit that is devoted to advancing higher education using information technology. In addition to the Horizon Reports, to be described later, they also manage the .EDU domain for the Department of Commerce. They are aimed primarily at the institution level and their membership is campus level. In other words participating members are colleges more than individuals. They collect “core data” from these participating institutions and crunch that significant amount of data and then share that with their members, and share summary stats with the public at large.

Because their information is as strong and valuable as any in the field there are a collection of examples below. They generate yearly summaries, The Horizon Report, describing where educational information technology is now and what the “six key trends” that will be of greatest import in the coming years. The work is arguably the best source of summative/predictive information generated by leaders in the field.

Below are several exemplary documents. These reports try to “identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching and learning.” These reports do more than cover the obvious, further they add links and background data on each of the technologies mentioned and even share how they imagine these will enter into actual classes…

These reports may serve as a centerpiece of one’s academic compass in regards to educational technologies. However, they can tend to diverge into areas that seem off the radar to be different each year.

next: Educause continued