The Horizon Report is published annually and “identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within education around the globe.”
The Higher Ed version will be out later in the year. The 2 are basically similar except the HE version tends to assume that universities are going to be more ambitious (no comment).
http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2011-Horizon-Report-K12.pdf
Here are their thoughts on what is upcoming.
Near term (12 months)
- Cloud
- Mobile
Second Adoption Horizon (2-3 years)
- Game based learning (perpetually talked about but to date only implemented in niches)
- Open Content
Far Horizon (4 -5 years)
- Learning Analytics (quite a hot topic at the moment)
- Personal Learning Environments (PLE – Stephen Downes hobby horse)