The Horizon Reports
The Horizon Reports are a project of the New Media Consortium (NMC). Published annually since 2002, each edition of The Horizon Report introduces six emerging technologies or practices that members believe are likely to enter mainstream use, particularly in higher education settings, within the five years following each report.
The reports describe the identified technologies and cover key trends and challenges that will affect current practice over the same time frame. Each report offers examples and readings that suggest practical models as well as examples of innovative work going on among learning-focused institutions.
In 2008, the Horizon Reports expanded to include K-12 settings and museums, and in 2011, the reports broadened once again to include an international perspective with its special edition Technology Outlooks.
The reports are created by a multinational, interdisciplinary advisory board of 40-50 individuals who are technology experts within and outside of higher education. Each report is licensed under Creative Commons attribution-only license, and can be freely distributed. To access all Horizon Reports and supplementary materials, create a free account at the New Media Consortium website.
Horizon Report Navigator, App, and iTunes U
In addition the annual reports (most of which are included in this resource), the New Media Consortium now has the Horizon Report Navigator, a social media platform that allows users to find and discuss the Horizon Report’s vast catalog of articles, research, and projects related to emerging technology.
For quick access on your mobile device, there is the NMC Horizon EdTech Weekly app. The NMC also has an extensive collection of resources at iTunes U.
Horizon Report – 2010 K-12
The NMC Horizon Report 2010 K-12 Edition discusses these six emerging trends for K-12 education in three adoption horizons:
One Year or Less
Cloud Computing
Large clusters of networked servers are making inexpensive, offsite storage a reality. The ability to have multi-user applications and multi-processor computing is changing how we think about computers, software, and files.
Collaborative Environments
Since collaboration across geographical and cultural boundaries has become more common in the workplace, educators are increasingly giving students the opportunity to work in these environments to develop essential teamwork and collaboration skills.
Two to Three Years
Game-Based Learning
Research continues into all types of games to understand their potential for learning: goal-oriented games, social game environments, non-digital games, games developed expressly for education, and commercial games. More educators now recognize how games can support development of collaboration, problem-solving, communication, and other key skills.
Mobiles
Internet-capable mobile devices will soon outnumber computers. Already, mobiles are users’ first choice for accessing online content. As access to devices continues to grow, the implications for teaching and learning will be great.
Four to Five Years
Augmented Reality
Also called “blended reality,” augmented reality is the ability to add a computer-assisted contextual layer of information to the real world. An example might be a museum that provides a tablet for visitors to use while exploring the exhibits with additional images and multimedia content about exhibit items.
Flexible Displays
Eventually, we will see thin screens that can be embedded in books and magazines or integregrated into all kinds of objects.
Open Horizon K12 Report 2010.pdf
Horizon Report – 2011 Higher Ed
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The NMC Horizon Report 2011 Higher Ed Edition, available as a PDF below, discusses these six emerging trends in three adoption horizons:
One Year or Less
Electronic Books
E-books challenge the very definition of reading with audiovisual, interactive, and social elements which enhance the informational content of books and magazines.
Mobiles
Internet-capable mobile devices will soon outnumber computers. Already, mobiles are users’ first choice for accessing online content. As access to devices continues to grow, the implications for teaching and learning will be great.
Two to Three Years
Augmented Reality
Also called “blended reality,” augmented reality is the ability to add a computer-assisted contextual layer of information to the real world. An example might be a museum that provides a tablet for visitors to use while exploring the exhibits with additional images and multimedia content about exhibit items.
Game-Based Learning
Research continues into all types of games to understand their potential for learning: goal-oriented games, social game environments, non-digital games, games developed expressly for education, and commercial games. More educators now recognize how games can support development of collaboration, problem-solving, communication, and other key skills.
Four to Five Years
Gesture-Based Computing
Intuitive, gesture-based user interface design is just beginning to take hold. The new generation is accustomed to tapping, swiping, and other gestures in order to interact with information.
Learning Analytics
The wealth of data collected from students on a daily basis is a powerful resource for improving learning. The promise of learning analytics is the ability to personalize the learning experience to meet students’ individual needs.
Open 2011 Horizon Report.pdf
Open 2012-Horizon-Report-HE.pdf
Open 2012-Horizon-HE-Shortlist.pdf
Open 2012-Horizon.HE-Preview.pdf
Horizon Report – 2010 Higher Ed
The NMC Horizon Report 2010 Higher Ed Edition, available as a PDF below, discusses these six emerging trends in three adoption horizons:
One Year or Less
Mobile Computing
The network-capable devices students carry with them offer great potential as collaboration and communication tools for educational settings. Faculty and technology staff are already experimenting with educational uses of mobile devices.
Open Content
In direct response to the rising cost of education, more schools and organizations are offering free and openly accessible educational content online.
Two to Three Years
Electronic Books
E-books challenge the very definition of reading with audiovisual, interactive, and social elements which enhance the informational content of books and magazines.
Simple Augmented Reality
The ability to access augmented content is now available to anyone. With laptops and smart phones, users will soon be able to access augmented reality easily.
Four to Five Years
Gesture-Based Computing
Intuitive, gesture-based user interface design is just beginning to take hold. The new generation is accustomed to tapping, swiping, and other gestures in order to interact with information.
Visual Data Analysis
A new way of looking at large amounts of data that enables us to access more sophisticated models and visual representations. Currently, visual data analysis is still an emerging field.
Open 2010-Horizon-Report.pdf
Horizon Report – 2009 Higher Ed
The NMC Horizon Report 2009 Higher Ed Edition, available as a PDF below, discusses these six emerging trends in three adoption horizons:
One Year or Less
Mobiles
Internet-capable mobile devices will soon outnumber computers. Already, mobiles are users’ first choice for accessing online content. As access to devices continues to grow, the implications for teaching and learning will be great.
Cloud Computing
Large clusters of networked servers are making inexpensive, offsite storage a reality. The ability to have multi-user applications and multi-processor computing is changing how we think about computers, software, and files.
Two to Three Years
Geo-Everything
It is now possible for data to be coded with physical coordinates. Many devices can now determine location and code that to photographs, videos, and text-based data.
The Personal Web
Users are increasingly able to manage the ways they manage and view online content. Personalized start pages, RSS aggregators, and widgets all help to personalize our interactions with the Internet.
Four to Five Years
Semantic-Aware Applications
These applications could enable searches to provide results based on the context of online content rather than simply keywords. This could make searching for online content easier and more efficient than ever before.
Smart Objects
Smart objects are physical objects that have the ability to “know” certain information. QR codes, RFID tags, smartcards, or smart chips can link an object to a wealth of virtual information.
Horizon Report – 2008 Higher Ed
The NMC Horizon Report 2008 Higher Ed Edition, available as a PDF below, discusses these six emerging trends in three adoption horizons:
One Year or Less:
Grassroots Video
Video producation is no longer reserved for highly trained professionals. Videos are ubiquitous and with the accessibility of editing and distribution tools, video is now a leading mode of personal communication.
Collaboration Webs
With social networking tools, web applications, and collaborative workspaces, gathering in the virtual world has become commonplace. Our professional networks and day-to-day interactions now include colleagues from across the globe.
Two to Three Years:
Mobile Broadband
Mobile devices have become essential tools, bringing the whole of the Internet into the palm of our hand. Mobiles store our digital lives–with calendars, email, video, photos, and more. The prevelance of mobiles and the infrastructure to satisfy it will continue to grow in coming years.
Data Mashups
Web applications that combine data from more than one source are becoming common on the Internet. Geotagging, the practice of adding geographical metadata like latitude and longitude or placenames to images, websites, or other media, is gaining popularity. Other mashups include interactive charts or maps, GPS enabled cameras, and embedded annotations.
Four to Five Years:
Collective Intelligence
An example of explicit collective intelligence is Wikipedia, where knowledge is gathered and recorded by many people. Implicit collective intelligence are systems that examine patterns to reveal new knowledge–a data mining program like Amazon.com’s “recommended for you” feature is one example.
Social Operating Systems
The next generation of social netoworking systems are social operating systems. These place people and relationships at the center of the informational network. Early examples include Xobni and OpenSocial.
Open 2008 Horizon Report.pdf
Horizon Report – 2007 Higher Ed
The NMC Horizon Report 2007 Higher Ed Edition discusses these six emerging trends in three adoption horizons:
One Year or Less
User-Created Content
Smaller tools and increased access have made user-generated content easy to create and share. The popularity of videos, blogs, photos, books, and more indicate a new trend toward authorship.
Social Networking
Connection to social networks is becoming the main reason students log in these days. With the potential to connect colleagues and reach students where they are, social networking has immediate value in educational settings.
Two to Three Years
Mobile Phones
Our phones have become the gateway into our lives. With improving software and the increasing speeds of cellular connections, we will soon need to consider the educational potential of these devices.
Virtural Worlds
These environments present us with a place to collaborate, role-play, and explore in ways only limited by our imagination.
Four to Five Years
New Scholarship
Bouyed by increased access to research materials, the ability to collaborate at a distance, and the possibility of electronic publishing, the ways we research and publish academic scholarship is changing.
Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming
Combining the popularity of Massively Multiplayer Games with the educational potential of Serious Games, Massively Multiplayer Educational Games are drawing increasing interest in the educational community.
Horizon Report – 2006 Higher Ed
The NMC Horizon Report 2006 Higher Ed Edition discusses these six emerging trends in three adoption horizons:
One Year or Less
Social Computing
Using computers to facilitate interaction and collaboration is becoming more commonplace, enabling us to work with colleagues from across the world.
Personal Broadcasting
Emerging out of blogging and websites is the popularity of broadcasting video and audio in the form of podcasts and video blogging.
Two to Three Years
The Phones in Their Pockets
Just over the horizon, students will have access to educational content via their cell phones, as network speeds increase and phone software advances.
Educational Gaming
While educational gaming is not new, new technologies are creating complex, interactive environments, making immersive educational gaming just over the horizon.
Four to Five Years
Augmented Reality and Enhanced Visualization
Three-dimensional representations of large data sets will change the way we see the world. Augmented reality adds a layer of information over what we see in the real world, offering additional ways of understanding what we see.
Context-Aware Environments and Devices
On the rise are devices that respond to voice, motion, and other subtle signals. The computing part will fall away as computers become more responsive to human.
Horizon Report – 2005 Higher Ed
The NMC Horizon Report 2005 Higher Ed Edition discusses these six emerging trends in three adoption horizons:
One Year or Less
Extended Learning
Post-secondary courses are becoming more hybridized, as learning takes place beyond the classroom using new tools of communication and collaboration. Integration of online instruction, traditional instruction, and study groups is becoming more common.
Ubiquitous Wireless
Connectivity to wireless is increasingly available and desired. Schools are beginning to recognize access to wireless as a necessity for all.
Two to Three Years
Intelligent Searching
Tools to make searching more efficient and helpful are becoming available. Specialized search tools, desktop searching, and new interfaces are examples.
Educational Gaming
While educational gaming is not new, new technologies are creating complex, interactive environments, making immersive educational gaming just over the horizon.
Four to Five Years
Social Networks and Knowledge Webs
These tools allow people to connect with each other to build and share information. Technology is bringing people together, giving communities of practice the opportunity to collaborate and learn together.
Context-Aware Computing/Augmented Reality
How we interact with computers is changing. Context-aware computing refers to computers that customize the user experience by reading contextual clues. Augmented reality is the addition of contextual information to enhance a user’s experience.
Open 2005 Horizon Report.pdf
Horizon Report – 2004 Higher Ed
The NMC Horizon Report 2004 Higher Ed Edition discusses these six emerging trends in three adoption horizons:
One Year or Less
Learning Objects
Learning objects are digital resources that are used to support learning. They include simulations, electronic calculators, animations, tutorials, text entries, websites, bibliographies, audio and video clips, quizzes, photographs, illustrations, diagrams, graphs, maps, charts, and assessments.
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
SVG is a way of creating 2D graphics using XML. It has more advantages than the commonly used JPG and GIF formats. It produces crisp, clear output on any display and stays smooth when zoomed. SVG has potential for great use in the sciences and engineering, particularly cartography and geography.
Two to Three Years
Rapid Prototyping
Rapid Prototyping is essentially 3D printing; it is the ability to create three-dimensional physical objects from digital data files. It is already in wide use in the field of industrial engineering. Prototyping technologies have potential for use in architecture, engineering, art and design, mathematics, and science.
Multimodal Interfaces
We are moving toward interactions with technology that involve multiple senses. Computer design is moving away from the emphasis on visual interactions with exploration into visual, auditory, haptic, olfactory, and flavor pathways.
Four to Five Years
Context Aware Computing
This refers to the ability of computers to interpret contextual information without user input and use it to aid decision making and influence interactions. A simple example of this is a computer screen that changes the display contrast or brightness to match the lighting conditions. Another example could be music or video streams that automatically pause when voice is detected.
Knowledge Webs
These are resources that aid communities of practice to share, create, analyze, validate, and distribute existing and emerging knowledge.
Horizon Report – 2012 Higher Ed
The Horizon Report 2012 Higher Education Edition discusses six emerging trends in three adoption horizons:
One Year or Less
Mobile Apps
This is the fastest growing dimension in the mobile space right now. Educational institutions are creating apps for educational and research needs across the curriculum.
Tablet Computing
Seen as a great tool for one-to-one computing as well as a budget-friendly replacement for cumbersome and expensive equipment used for fieldwork and other research tasks.
Two to Three Years
Game-Based Learning
Research continues into all types of games to understand their potential for learning: goal-oriented games, social game environments, non-digital games, games developed expressly for education, and commercial games. More educators now recognize how games can support development of collaboration, problem-solving, communication, and other key skills.
Learning Analytics
The wealth of data collected from students on a daily basis is a powerful resource for improving learning. The promise of learning analytics is the ability to personalize the learning experience to meet students’ individual needs.
Four to Five Years
Gesture-Based Computing
Intuitive, gesture-based user interface design is just beginning to take hold. The new generation is accustomed to tapping, swiping, and other gestures in order to interact with information.
Internet of Things
Progress continues into the development of smart objects. We will continue to see objects with connectivity features, from lab equipment to refrigerators.
You can read a summary of the report in the Horizon Report 2012 Preview: Higher Education Edition (PDF).
Open 2012-Horizon-Report-HE_0.pdf
Open 2012-Horizon.HE-Preview_0.pdf
Horizon Report – 2011 K-12
The NMC Horizon Report 2011 K-12 Edition (browse flipbok version here or download the PDF) discusses these six emerging trends for K-12 education in three adoption horizons:
One Year or Less
Cloud Computing
Large clusters of networked servers are making inexpensive, offsite storage a reality. The ability to have multi-user applications and multi-processor computing is changing how we think about computers, software, and files.
Mobiles
Internet-capable mobile devices will soon outnumber computers. Already, mobiles are users’ first choice for accessing online content. As access to devices continues to grow, the implications for teaching and learning will be great.
Two to Three Years
Game-Based Learning
Research continues into all types of games to understand their potential for learning: goal-oriented games, social game environments, non-digital games, games developed expressly for education, and commercial games. More educators now recognize how games can support development of collaboration, problem-solving, communication, and other key skills.
Open Content
In direct response to the rising cost of education, more schools and organizations are offering free and openly accessible educational content online.
Four to Five Years
Learning Analytics
The wealth of data collected from students on a daily basis is a powerful resource for improving learning. The promise of learning analytics is the ability to personalize the learning experience to meet students’ individual needs.
Personal Learning Environments
PLEs refer to student-designed spaces that allow students to have more control over how they learn. Students can choose their own content to match their personal learning style and pace. PLEs are still in the theoretical stage, but are expected to gain more interest and development in coming years.
Open 2011-Horizon-Report-K12.pdf
Horizon Report – 2009 K-12
The NMC Horizon Report 2009 K-12 Edition discusses these six emerging trends for K-12 education in three adoption horizons:
One Year or Less
Collaborative Environments
Since collaboration across geographical and cultural boundaries has become more common in the workplace, educators are increasingly giving students the opportunity to work in these environments to develop essential teamwork and collaboration skills.
Online Communication Tools
Instant messaging, online chats, and desktop video conferencing are entering into the educational realm as time-saving communication tools.
Two to Three Years
Mobiles
Internet-capable mobile devices will soon outnumber computers. Already, mobiles are users’ first choice for accessing online content. As access to devices continues to grow, the implications for teaching and learning will be great.
Cloud Computing
Large clusters of networked servers are making inexpensive, offsite storage a reality. The ability to have multi-user applications and multi-processor computing is changing how we think about computers, software, and files.
Four to Five Years
Smart Objects
Smart objects are physical objects that have the ability to “know” certain information. QR codes, RFID tags, smartcards, or smart chips can link an object to a wealth of virtual information.
The Personal Web
Users are increasingly able to manage the ways they manage and view online content. Personalized start pages, RSS aggregators, and widgets all help to personalize our interactions with the Internet.
Open 2009-Horizon_Report-K12.pdf
Horizon Report – 2012 K-12
The NMC Horizon Report 2012 K-12 Edition discusses these six emerging trends for K-12 education in three adoption horizons:
One Year or Less
Mobile Devices & Apps
Mobile devices are becoming increasingly valued tools in the learning setting. More schools are rethinking bans on mobile devices and implementing “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) programs. Apps are the fastest growing aspect of the mobile space, with potential impact in every discipline.
Tablet Computing
Seen as a great tool for one-to-one computing as well as a budget-friendly replacement for cumbersome and expensive equipment used for fieldwork and other research tasks. Tablets are also seen as have less potential for distraction than mobile phones for use in learning situations.
Two to Three Years
Game-Based Learning
Research continues into all types of games to understand their potential for learning: goal-oriented games, social game environments, non-digital games, games developed expressly for education, and commercial games. More educators now recognize how games can support development of collaboration, problem-solving, communication, and other key skills.
Personal Learning Environments
PLEs refer to student-designed spaces that allow students to have more control over how they learn. These are personal collections of tools and resources that support learning both in and out of school environments. Students can choose their own content to match their personal learning style and pace. PLEs make the learning environment portable, networked, and personally relevant.
Four to Five Years
Augmented Reality
Also called “blended reality,” augmented reality is the ability to add a computer-assisted contextual layer of information to the real world. An example might be a museum that provides a tablet for visitors to use while exploring the exhibits with additional images and multimedia content about exhibit items.
Natural User Interfaces
The way we interact with computational devices is changing. Now, with touch screens and voice recognition, interactions are becoming more intuitive. Natural user interfaces offer the potential for increased accessibility for students with autism, blindness, deafness, and other special needs.
Open 2012-horizon-report_k12.pdf
