Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 42 seconds
So this week Bryan Alexander is leading ideation on what people think #FOEcast should be like (start here) … I don’t have a lot of time to blog, so I’m copying some text I had written in the Slack team (for background, the Slack team was created right after NMC went dark, and includes people who were part of that community/network in some way or another).
So I was writing on Slack that I felt we should take a critical look at the values behind what we do when we forecast edtech trends.
So apologies for keeping the text really informal as in Slack, but time is tight. I Was asked if I had specific critiques:
I do. I think definitely transparency over process (which is partially there) but also things like checking each year against prev year forecasts… And values behind choices. How do such reports influence choices in edu, and is this what we mean to do?
[Bryan confirmed what I had assumed – higher ed IT folks were influenced by NMC Horizon reports. A lot of what I say next has most probably been said in some form or another by Audrey Watters, probably more critically]
Which bothers me. Because I had no opportunity to really clarify [when voting for NMC] that even though I see something looming on the horizon, I want to share cautions and objections. I mean, they would be in the discussion forum and perhaps in articles i link and in a section i was gonna write.. But when someone sees a summary and see trend X, does it make IT Higher ed folks decide to invest in it? The thing is, is foecast about what we think is going to happen or what we think *should* happen, and in what ways does the reporting itself influence decision-making to fulfill our prophecies.. And so how should *that* influence how we do it? (sorry, no time to blog)
And finally, a response from Taylor Kendall, with this video