Author Description

"The NMC Horizon Report" series is the most visible outcome of the New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project, an ongoing research effort established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within education around the globe. This volume, "The NMC Horizon Report: 2013 K-12 Edition," examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative expression within the environment of pre-college education. The hope is that the report is useful to educators worldwide, and the international composition of the advisory board reflects the care with which a global perspective was assembled. While there are many local factors affecting the practice of education, there are also issues that transcend regional boundaries, questions individuals all face in K-12 education, and it was with these in mind that this report was created. "The NMC Horizon Report: 2013 K-12 Edition" is the fifth in the K-12 series of reports and is produced by the NMC in collaboration with the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), with the generous support of HP's Office of Global Social Innovation. The six technologies featured in "The NMC Horizon Report" are placed along three adoption horizons that indicate likely time frames for their entrance into mainstream use for teaching, learning, or creative applications in the K-12 environment. The near-term horizon assumes the likelihood of entry into the mainstream for schools within the next twelve months; the mid-term horizon, within two to three years; and the far-term, within four to five years. On the near-term horizon--that is, within the next 12 months, are two related but distinct categories: cloud computing and mobile learning. These two sets of technologies have become a pervasive part of everyday life in much of the world, and are gro