The Future of Education

After reading the Horizon Report 2013 (K-12 Edition) I gained new information in regards to technology and the direction it could possibly be leading education towards. It "examined emerging technologies for their potential impact on the way we teach and the way students learn. This report is almost a year old and based on their data collection, we should be in the end of the "near term horizon". I have heard of cloud computing but have no experience using it, but it does make sense for school to adopt this type of storage system. I also haven't heard of any school that use it. There are schools out there that use the BYOD approach, so we are in the midst of this. Many schools though, do allow the use of mobile devices in their classrooms if it will benefit the learning process.Two to three years away is "Mid-term horizon" findings which is "learning analytics" and "Open Content". I think seems to be accurate. As educators we do look at each student as an individual learner and customize their learning when needed. As for open content, we do have access to a lot of material that is online. Access to free resources and even courses are available online, this has never really crossed my mind, but they are out there apparently. Their findings stated that "far-term Horizon" (4-5 years away) which would now be 3-4 years away is 3D printing and virtual remote labs. This is really crazy, I wouldn't have thought that 3D printers would even be available in schools. Actually, I didn't even know that there was really such thing (shows how behind I am). I have only heard of them on an episode of Grey's when Merideth uses a 3D printer to replicate a sheep heart and attempts to transplant it (ha ha). The report stated that these types of printers would be used to illuminate the design process, build rapid prototypes and make is possible to design models. I guess this could spark interest in careers related to industry. Students would  be able to design many things using this type of equipment, which could really revolutionize the way certain skills in education are learned and taught. The other finding was that real hands on labs may be replaced? by virtual remote labs. This is pretty cool and very different. It has its advantages such as allowing students to conduct research online and have access to other resources they would not have in a classroom. I personally don't know if schools will phase out labs and I'm not even sure if that's what they are getting at in the report, but it is a cool idea. The remote lab is really something, how cool would it be for a student in the school be able to access equipment in another location.
The future of education according to the Horizon report sounds like educators have a few more skills to develop, should schools adopt these types of technologies. I think that if it goes in this direction, teaching and learning with technology is going to benefit because it gives students more opportunity to learn how to use and work with types of technologies that are out there today.