The NMC today released the first in a new series of regional and sector-based Horizon Reports with the Horizon Report: 2008 Australia-New Zealand.  The new series is a product of the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project, an ongoing research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within higher education around the globe.

This volume is the first in a new series of regional reports, and examines emerging technologies as they appear in and affect higher education in Australia and New Zealand in particular.

In defining the six selected areas—Virtual Worlds & Other Immersive Digital Environments; Cloud-Based Applications; Geolocation; Alternative Input Devices; Deep Tagging; and Next-Generation Mobile—the project drew on an ongoing discussion among knowledgeable leaders and practitioners in Australia and New Zealand business, industry, and education, as well as published resources, current research and practice, and the expertise of the NMC community itself. The Horizon Project’s Australia-New Zealand Advisory Board probed current trends and challenges in post compulsory education as they uniquely are expressed in Australia and New Zealand, explored possible topics for the Report, and over several rounds of rankings and dialog, selected the final technologies.

The Horizon Report: 2008 Australia-New Zealand Edition (304K, 32 pp) is available now on the NMC website at:  http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2008-Horizon-Report-ANZ.pdf The 32-page report is free, and has been released with a Creative Commons license to facilitate its use, easy duplication, and broad distribution.