"The Horizon Report," an annual guide to tech trends, comes out next week. And it’s predicting a new technology king: open content.

After failing to make last year's “Technologies to Watch” list, the open-content movement now joins mobile computing as the two trends most likely to enter mainstream learning in the next year, says the report, from the New Media Consortium and Educause.

“Far more than a collection of free online course materials, the open-content movement is a response to the rising costs of education, the desire for access to learning in areas where such access is difficult, and an expression of student choice about when and how to learn,” the report says.

When it comes to mobile devices, the report notes that gadgets like smartphones and netbooks are already taking hold on many campuses, whether as tools for fieldwork or storage for reference materials. But the authors caution that concerns over privacy, classroom management, and access need to be dealt with before their use becomes widespread.

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