8+-+Meta+Trends

=Week 8 - Meta Trends=


 * Resources:**
 * Final Project #8-1: Final Draft of Multimedia II Resources
 * Videos and Readings

It is important to keep up with trends and technology tools and uses in order to enable your students to function in their highly tech rich world. Technology has created a fast moving world with ever changing potential. It is hard to grasp all the tools and trends available and incorporate them into instruction. Many of these future trends will concern some use of or combination of multimedia products so it is important to look forward and recognize what tools are on the horizon and prepare for their uses.
 * Background/Rationale:**

Technology trends change rapidly. For example, in the past few years cloud-computing has come to be a valuable way to collaborate. Uses for tablet computers, cell phones and hand-held devices are expanding. 3D and augmented reality tools are improving to help us create life-like moving images. Globalization and communication are commonplace using today’s video-conference tools. Television-on-demand is available and gaining presence. Books are turning digital. Artificial intelligence and smart machines are evolving to assist us with mundane tasks. Social connections are changing communication context and creating strong long lasting bonds between friends. What do these advancements mean to us as educators? How can we present our curriculum using these evolving elements? How can we best prepare our students for the world of their future, one that does not yet exist? As educators we must address these issues and bravely embrace new technologies, experiment, fail and learn their uses so that we can prepare our students.

Daniel Pink and other visionaries write about future trends. Karl Fisch has created a commencement speech on what the future world might look like. We need to look to those with broader views to help build our own understanding of the future.

It is important to reflect on what methods you will use to help you stay up-to-date in a rapidly changing world. What nuggets and tools learned throughout this course will you carry forward with you to apply to your instruction? How will you serve as a change agent for your peers?

At the end of this Learning Topic, you will be able to:
 * Learner Outcomes**
 * Synthesize research on the future trends in education (activity 1)
 * Evaluate what learning will look like in future decades (activity 2)
 * Express lessons learned through audio and visual representation (activity 3)