NMC releases Horizon Report

The New Media Consortium recently released their "Horizon Report", which, among other things, listed the top technologies to watch in the coming years in education.

Although some of them are no-brainers (cloud computing, for example), others seem to be a bit of a stretch, while a few areas also seem to have been excluded. What do you think?

Here are the key areas, by length of time to adoption that NMC has identified:

One year or less Mobiles and Cloud Computing. Yup, this is the year of the netbook and Google Apps (among countless other cloud apps that can be applied to the classroom).

Two to three years Geo-everything and the personal web. Geotagging, Google-Earthish applications, and GPS-enabled lessons really are starting to explode and kids seem to make connections with the software and hardware very well (while actually learning something about the world around them). As the tech comes down in price and location-aware hardware becomes more prevalent, a 2-3 year timeframe makes a lot of sense here.

On the other hand, the personal web, referring to everything from social media to iGoogle-style personalized home pages, is already here. 2-3 years for adoption is simply too long and, while social media are not yet mainstream in education, I believe that they go hand-in-hand with the boom in portables and cloud computing happening this year.

Four to five years Semantic-aware applications and smart objects. The report gives a good definition of semantic-aware search:

Semantic-aware applications are tools designed to use the meaning, or semantics, of information on the Internet to make connections and provide answers that would otherwise entail a great deal of time and effort.

Obviously, this sort of search will require some pretty significant advances in computing, programming, and even organization of the Web. However, 4-5 years is an eternity in computer years. It's hard to imagine where we'll stand even in three years.

Smart objects, on the other hand, are just starting to hit the radar and 4-5 years seems completely reasonable. Again, from the report,

Think of doing a web search that reveals not pages of content, but the location, description, and context of actual things in the real world.

Unfortunately, I'm struggling to see where this could have broad applicability in education. Anyone who has seen some cool proofs of concept or educational applications, feel free to share.

So what else might be missing? What do you think should have made it to the list? I think it's going to be all about the Web, but are there innovative ways of accessing it? Creating content? Multimedia? What would an educational YouTube look like in 5 years?