TechCrunch put out a list of technologies that they believe will “Rock” 2011.  Anyone in education already knows that it takes a bit longer for the next big thing to really hit our world.  However, there are a couple trends (if not actual predictions) worth keeping an eye on in the years to come…

1- Mobile/Social Technology and Distance Education- You will find that almost everything is going mobile.  With Android and the iPad the highlights of 2010, this trend will only continue.  Right know Universities are just starting to think about how to use mobile technologies to their advantage, but from the outside it only looks like a marketing strategy as every school seems to have a FaceBook page and Twitter feed, but no clear strategy for how to use them.  What we don’t see is a commitment to making the mobile world part of the learning experience.  Will this be the year companies begin building out social tools and apps that can enhance the educational experience?  If done right, this can mean as much for the brick and mortar campuses as it will the distance classrooms.  Everyone knows that there are rich discussions taking place outside the classroom, but thus far the efforts to bring these discussions into the academic world have been disjointed and have created an inauthentic experience leaving the burden on the students to create content.  At some point, someone will figure out how to create a user experience for the student that feels no different from what they do every day on their other favorite social platforms.  The key will be to make it accessible i.e. mobile and meet the students where they truly are.

2- Following our Interests, Not our Friends- One of the hot new companies out there is called Quora, whose goal is to let people not only follow other people, like we do on Facebook etc… but also follow topics and trends.  Imagine that you don’t just follow Joe to see what he is up to, but you can also follow posts on your favorite topics, such as Technology and Information.  This way you don’t have to follow Joe if you don’t want to, but instead just follow the things that Joe talks about that interest you.

Whether or not the company succeeds, they have brought forward an exciting new concept in the way we operate on the Internet, which will focus as much on our interest trends as it does our social ones. 

Now think about this for education… what if in an online classroom, the instructor can begin tagging lectures and discussion points by topic, aligned with the learning objectives and outcomes for the course?  What if these students could organize and “follow” these topics in a way that is intuitive for them?  In a classroom this could unlock a new way for students to learn information that is not only in sync with they learning style, but again, meets them in a medium which they can more easily identify?

Again, this is all food for thought, but the new year will bring new ideas and hopefully someone is already working on pushing these new technologies into a world of education that can surely use them.  Like in the tech world in general, we are always on the verge of the next great thing.  Why can’t we say the same thing when it comes to the world of Education Technology?