Bookmark it! | My Bookmarks Emerging Technologies & Innovation Study Guide How to find trends with emerging technologies and innovation Emerging Technologies & Innovation Study Guide Learning Objectives At the end of this topic, you should be able to:

• Determine your broad area of research interest.

• Construct a plan for finding a topic using online search engines and library access to databases to locate articles of interest in your broad area of research interest

• Locate articles to further refine your area of interest to focus on a particular specialist topic.

• Interpret, evaluate and synthesize an overview of recent trends in application of emerging technologies and innovation.

Reading 3 Critcical Thinking Primer You may need to refine your thinking skills as an independent and reflective thinker. Dr Joe Lau from The University of Hong Kong has an open courseware primer and free publications on Critical Thinking which can help you at http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/critical/.

1 Introduction and Topic Selection Topic Activity 2 Topic Selection Read the notes in this section and post a blog entry on your on your results in selecting a topic from tracking and 'brainstorming' the trends with emerging technologies and innovation in your chosen field of ICT.

Task 1: Identify at least three broad areas of interest using one or other methodology and write them down.

Task 2: After selecting one of these, refine the topic area until you arrive at a point where you can nominate a working topic area for the review. You may have to repeat this process a number of times until you are satisfied with the result.

Task 3: In about a paragraph or two, explain why you believe that this might be an appropriate topic area. In this section and with Topic Activity 2, you will go on a journey and explore the breadth of the ICT field, examining your own knowledge, skills, interests and expertise gained from the workplace and/or study in other subjects in the course.

Then you will use that personal journey as a preliminary investigation which should result in you deciding on a specific area to investigate as part of this subject.

Topic selection has to be made quickly as it will affect your project planning and project success. Let us begin your journey by looking at all the ways that you can get started in finding out about the current and future trends with emerging technologies and innovation.

The use of questions will help you to think critically Three questions that are frequently asked are:

1. Where do you start?

2. How do you refine a topic area?