640k anybody?

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
Bill Gates  in 1981

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
from 'Popular Mechanics' forecasting the relentless march of science in 1949

I would not be the the first to comment that making predictions has always been a risky business. As we approach the mid-point of 2006 it is interesting to reflect on some of the predictions that were made for e-learning in 2006 captured by the the 'e-Learn' article "E-learning experts map the road ahead". Many are fairly conservative and pick up on current trends such as RLOs and podcasts but the convictions expressed by Stephen Downes seem to be the ones that have the greatest resonance. The tyranny of VLEs is slowly being subverted by the relentless rise of Web 2.0 technologies and the inevitable leak of social software into educational settings which is disrupting the normalisation of linear content and assessment course delivery modes. Low threshold tools like blogs and wikis are leading the way and finally putting content production, ownership and sharing back where it should always be - in the hands of the learner.

Comments

[Niall Watts]

The prediction “Education over the Internet is going to be so big it is going to make email usage look like a rounding error.” was made by
John Chambers, CEO of Cisco in 2000 is a more recent prediction illustrating the same point