Gerry White of the Australian Council for Education Research, believes that the Web 2.0 pantheon, social networking and mobile technologies are increasingly being used in education.
Mobile technologies such as MP3 players, digital video recorders, mobile phones, wireless networking, etc have enabled “affordances”, including “podcasts, vodcasts, peer-to-peer networking, content syndication, blogs and moblogs, photoblogs, wikis, tag clouds, smart cards and voice over IP” (2008).
There has also been an explosion in search engines in different formats (2008). We now have Google, Bing, Wikipedia and various academic search engines such as Academic Search Premier. According to White, “The power of search engines to access information has lead to quick and easy information retrieval on almost any topic and, with the right skills, relevant, authoritative and accurate information can be gained” (2008). At the moment, most students rely in engines like Google and Wikipedia to search for information. The main task of educators is to redirect students to using academic search engines, such as EBSCO and eBrary, etc.
Open source software has allowed students and teachers to access a wide variety of programs that are useful for education. These include specialised programs such as Moodle and Manhattan (on course management).
Ironically, another recent trend is the growth of research into ICT trends and their application to education. Such research will hopefully help bring clarity to a plethora of ICT applications and programs.
Reference: Gerry White (2008). ICT Trends in Education. Australian Council for Educational Research. http://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=digital_learning
Simon, I was interested to read your last paragraph. It is difficult for a novice like myself to make sense of everything that is available in ICT for application in education. It would be good to have some clarity about this topic and hopefully guidelines about the various programmes available.
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