I decided to take a look at what futurists are thinking about these days. I picked out the Institute for Alternative Futures and focused on Provocative Forecasts of Uncertainty and Opportunity (PDF file) This looks at what the state of education might be like in 2021.
The Future of Education
What I am looking for are phrases or terms that might be domain names and might be hot education topics of the future.
“This anticipatory learning requires both objective and subjective learning.”
Interesting phrase “anticipatory learning” but it’s already taken as a domain name.
Distance Learning
The idea of distance learning is already in our colleges and universities and it’s only time before it becomes established in our secondary and primary schools. Terms like virtual schools and e-schools are already being talked about. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a good term that was available as a domain name. Can you?
“These lessons will also be integrated with the outside environment and community through the combination of textual learning and wireless education”
“Wireless education” sounds interesting but again someone’s already there. It doesn’t seem to be my night.
Fun Learning Tools
“It will mean opening up schools to such learning technologies as wikis, blogs, virtual worlds, games and simulations and being willing to follow students into these alternative environments”
Hmm, maybe the mean old headmaster won’t be such a big deal anymore. I came up with names like edGames, eduGames, eduwiki, virtuEd, and eduSim but no joy.
Educational Alerts
PDAs and cellphones are already everywhere and becoming much more powerful. Here is one way they could be used.
“This will provide students with automated alerts for homework, extracurricular activities and other school events. Parents will also have their memorizers linked to school databases to pre-arrange student absences as well as monitor student grades, attendance and other important information.”
Would they also yell at the kids for me if they are late or leave an assignment to the last minute? An alert where the volume is turned up to max and and a voice shouts at them. It would work particularly effectively if they happen to be with their friends!
Ok, well I tried memorizer, eduAlert, eHomework, e-homework, eStudent and e-student without any luck. But, wait, e-embarrass.com is available. Perhaps for that embarrassing alert about late homework? Ok, maybe thats pushing it.
“A better phrase for the future of individualized learning could be called a `dynamic learning system’. “
DynamicLearning and IndividualLearning, though awkward names, were already taken.
Student Security
“Three schools in New Jersey have already implemented a pilot project to test iris scanning to control access to the schools to teachers, parents and staff”
I tried StudentSecurity but it was already gone. Student security though is already a big deal and on many parents and educators minds. Can you come up with generic names that embody this concept?
Detention
So you may ask what the point of this post was. Firstly I do think education is going to be very important in the future and while my little jaunt tonight may not have been productive, you may be more inventive. Secondly it shows that you should set a high standard and not jump on the first available name. Domaining, predictive domaining is risky and by keeping a high standard for domain names, you will strike out more often than you will succeed. Sometimes you also have to be in the right mindset.
So let me know if you have spotted any interesting education domain names of the future.
