2015 NMC Technology Outlook for Scandinavian Schools

The 2015 NMC Technology Outlook for Scandinavian Schools: A Horizon Project Regional Report reflects a collaborative research effort between the New Media Consortium (NMC), the Norwegian Centre for ICT in Education, The Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket), and the National Agency for IT and Learning in Denmark (Styrelsen for It og Læring) to inform Scandinavian school leaders and decision-makers about significant developments in technologies
supporting teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in primary and secondary education across Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
All of the research underpinning the report makes use of the NMC’s Delphi-based process for bringing groups of experts to a consensus viewpoint, in this case around the impact of emerging technologies on teaching, learning, or creative inquiry in Scandinavian schools over the next five
years. The same process underlies the well-known NMC Horizon Report series, which is the most visible product of an on-going research effort begun more than 13 years ago to systematically identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on education around the globe.
The 2015 NMC Technology Outlook for Scandinavian Schools was produced to explore emerging technologies and forecast their potential impact expressly in a Scandinavian school context. In the effort that took place from October through December 2014, a carefully selected panel of Experts was asked to consider hundreds of relevant articles, news, blog posts, research, and project
examples as part of the preparation that ultimately pinpointed the most notable emerging technology topics, trends, and challenges for Scandinavian schools over the next five years.
Known as the 2015 Horizon Project Scandinavia Expert Panel, that group of thought leaders consists of notably knowledgeable individuals, all highly regarded in their fields. Collectively the panel represents a range of diverse perspectives across the primary and secondary education sector. The project has been conducted under an open data philosophy, and all the interim projects, secondary research, discussions, and ranking instrumentation can be viewed at
scandinavia.wiki.nmc.org. The precise research methodology employed in producing the report is detailed in a special section found at the end of this report.
The expert panel identified nine key trends, nine significant challenges, and 12 technologies to watch. Each of the 12 key technologies are profiled, each on a single page that describes and defines a technology ranked as very important for Scandinavian schools over the next year, two to three years, and four to five years. Every page opens with a carefully crafted definition of the highlighted technology, outlines its educational relevance, points to several real life examples of its current use, and ends with a short list of additional readings for those who wish to learn more.
Following those discussions are sections that detail the expert panel’s top ranked trends and challenges, and frame them into categories that illuminate why they are seen as highly influential factors in the adoption of technology in Scandinavian schools over the next five years.
The three key sections of this report constitute a reference and straightforward technologyplanning guide for educators, school leaders, administrators, policy-makers, and technologists. It is our hope that this research will help to inform the choices that institutions are making about technology to improve, support, or extend teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in Scandinavian
primary and secondary education. Educators and administrators worldwide look to the NMC Horizon Project and both its global and regional reports as key strategic technology planning
references, and it is for that purpose that the 2015 NMC Technology Outlook for Scandinavian Schools is presented.