Technology Trends and Gartner's Hype Cycle

I found this diagram of Gartner's hype cycle in a blog entry about cloud computing and the Tech Crunch blog.

Essentially, industries, companies and people go through the 5 stages of: 1) heh, this is cool, 2) yeah, we all think this cool, 3) woah, we were sold down the river, 4) no, come to think of it, used in the right way, this can be good and finally 5) this has become part of what we do." (Source: Buzz Canuck)

Where are ePortfolios along this continuum? I think Higher Ed is generally in stages 2 and 3... what needs to help move into stages 4 and 5? In my opinion, K-12 is just entering the cycle. I found a couple of online publications by the New Media Centers Consortium that outline emerging technologies:

• The Horizon Report - 2009 Edition (Higher Education)
  One year or less: Mobiles and Cloud Computing
  Two to Three Years: Geo-Everything and The Personal Web
  Four to Five Years: Semantic-Aware Applications and Smart Objects
• The Horizon Report - 2009 "First Ever" K-12 Edition
  One year or less: Collaborative Environments and Online Communication Tools
  Two to three years: Mobile Devices and Cloud Computing
  Four to five years: Smart Objects and The Personal Web

It is interesting to note that the NMC sees K-12 following higher education in some technologies that I think are going to have a big impact on ePortfolios: Cloud Computing and The Personal Web. It is encouraging that Collaborative Environments and Online Communication Tools are imminent adoptions in K-12 (already adopted in higher education), and I believe both of these technologies are essential to an ePortfolio 2.0 environment.