For over a decade now, the New Media Consortium (NMC) in the USA has been charting the landscape of emerging technologies for teaching, learning, and creative inquiry. Their Horizon reports series is one of the world’s leading references for tracking developing trends in the field.
Now NMC has teamed up with EC experts in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) to publish a special NMC Horizon Report Europe 2014 Schools Edition. The authoring team comprises high-profile researchers from the Joint Research Centre (JRC) Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) , the EC’s in-house service providing independent scientific advice and support to EU policy.
To support its analysis of emerging trends in European TEL, the report showcases a number of leading edge initiatives. One of these is MAGICAL, a project co-funded by the Europeran Commision under the LLP programme. MAGICAL is investigating collaborative game making as an approach for learning and particularly for fostering Twenty-First Century Skills. A key output from the project is a game authoring plaform called Magos, which gives young learners the chance to experience team-based game making.
MAGICAL’s co-funded activities have just concluded and over the coming weeks the main results and outputs will be made available to the community. Dissemination will centre on providing stakeholders with practical tools and resources for implementing educational game making. The potential reach of these efforts has certainly been extended by inclusion in the Horizon Europe Report.
