Game changers in the Training Zone

This week, ahead of my speech at the Learning Technologies Conference I recorded a 10 minute podcast interview for the Training Zone. You can listen by clicking on the embedded link below. If the link below doesn't work for you, try this one. My interview is at 18.45 in the podcast. To give you a taste of what was discussed, here is some of what I said in an excerpt from the transcript:

Q: What are the big technological developments we can expect to see implemented in 2013?

Steve: I think there are several that we have to look at as changing practice. I'm talking about disruptive technologies, things that will change probably forever - irrevocably - what we do in the workplace and in learning in particular. So for instance, one of the big developments I'm seeing happening right now is the move from keyboards and mice to touch screens and maybe even non-touch technologies.

One of the examples I've seen recently at the CES - the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas - it was reported that there was a new touch screen device which goes 'lumpy' when you want to put a keyboard up on it. The keyboard actually appears but it's through crystallisation within the screen. The keys are actually surrounded by raised areas so that people with visual impairment for instance can use the touch screen tablet. So there are really practical developments coming out which I think are going to improve working conditions for lots of people with visual impairment.

But I think for all of us touch screen technology is already revolutionising the way we do things. Some people say that you will never see the death of the computer keyboard, but I'm not so sure. I think that in a few years time maybe our grandchildren are going to sit on our knees and say 'did you really have to touch a computer to make it work?' So I think touch screens and non-touch technologies, things like the Xbox 360 Kinect, technology with a depth camera and an infra red camera, I think is going to change forever the way we interact with technology. We are going very quickly towards the Tom Cruise Minority Report data manipulation.

I think another big development is going to be larger screens, flatter screens, in fact screens that are flexible. Screens that you can stick onto any surface so that you can make the whole of the wall of your office or your workplace into a television screen which doubles up as a computer screen and for data manipulation. And I think this is coming, I think it is going to be quicker than we think as well, these are some of the developments we are looking at.

I think ultimately, the biggest game changer which has been going on for some time now, is mobile learning. Using your own personal devices to access learning, access peer groups, access social networking, access the ability to create and share content, anywhere and everywhere. As we're talking I'm watching citizen journalism going on, on the television in front of me. This London helicopter crash that has happened. Most of the pictures the BBC are actually presenting at the moment are from people who were on the scene at the time with their mobile devices. I think we're going to see that impact a whole lot more. Those are some of the trends I see happening.  

The TrainingZone podcast - January by Trainingzone on Mixcloud

Game changers in the Training Zone by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Telling your story

Blogs are not simply about text. They can also encompass hyperlinks, sounds, videos, and images. Blogging is also about telling your story. Today I was involved in teaching a session for a BA group on the use of digital photography and communication. Specifically, the session focused on images as narrative, and all of the group managed to create some impressive and in some cases stunning image sequences. I used images from a trip with my students to the Gambia in 2009 to present my own example of a narrative at the beginning of the session. I thought I would share it with you here on my blog. I hope you find it interesting.

This image is of a man looking out over the sea, in a coastal village in the Gambia. Poverty is commonplace here, given that the Gambia is one of the poorest countries in Africa. One of the few jobs most young Gambian boys can do is fishing. It's a dangerous, low paid job, and this image depicts some of the boats they use to launch themselves out to sea.

This image is of children collecting firewood for the compound cooking fires. There is no electricity or gas in most parts of the Gambia, so open fires are the most common means of cooking. Children also fetch water, sometimes from several kilometers away from their villages, and because of the necessity for this work, they often miss school. As a visiting group, my colleagues and I, along with our students, saw the need and raised money for a new well to be sunk in the village. The children don't have to walk 4 kilometers each time they needed to fetch a pail of water anymore. Now they can go to school.

I took this image of a young girl sat in a village compound. I couldn't resist capturing the photo, because it was so iconic and representative of the children in this part of the world, and it conveyed innocence and hope. I showed her the image on my digital camera, and she was shocked but delighted. She clearly recognised herself, but I don't think she had seen a camera before, and probably not an image of herself anywhere else other than in her reflection.

I decided to use a reworked version of the picture of the young girl in a blog post called 'What Price Education?' to hammer home the message that every child deserves a good education. In the Gambia, children can only go to school until they are 11 years old, because the state only funds primary education, and it's very basic. There are few secondary schools, and children can only attend them if their parents can afford the fees. Very few can. As a result, Gambian children are some of the most disadvantaged children in the world. I couldn't think of a better was to use the image than in a manipulated front cover of the National Geographic magazine. It was very easy to do. Using PowerPoint, I created a yellow background, and a smaller blue background for the frame, and then placed the image above. Finally, I chose appropriate coloured font styles to mimic the familiar National Geographic livery. I saved the image as a .jpeg file and then uploaded it to the blog like any other image. I hope you like the images and that in some way, they speak to you.

 Photos by Steve Wheeler


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We need a rethink

There's a very useful and refreshing article by Tom Barrett in this week's TES Magazine entitled 'Education needs to plug into Web 2.0'. Never before have I read an article that I agree with so completely. Those of us who are immersed in a world where the use of social media is so sustained, embedded and familiar, forget that many schools still ban the use of Web 2.0 type tools in their classrooms. Tom has some advice for schools who are in this category, and I quote:

"Perhaps one of the biggest barriers to engaging with the social web in schools is the perceived issue of safety: many teachers say they are left feeling helpless when pupils' work is available on the World Wide Web. I have been blogging with classes for eight years and these common-sense guidelines always work:

1) Be open to parents and allow them to share any concerns.
2) Moderate all comments before they are posted online.
3) Have a clear and robust e-safety policy.
4) Work within the school policy on images of children on blogs.
5) Publish a set of blogging guidelines on your site and share them with parents.
6) Make sure the whole school community is aware of your work."

Common sense indeed, but I would also add that schools should encourage and permit children to help teachers co-create the e-safety and school policies on social media use. They use these tools outside of the school on a daily basis and often have a sophisticated grasp on how social media work. Who better to inform schools than the users themselves?

I once spoke at an event where a school leader remarked that his school had banned access to blogging, YouTube and all other social media because 'they are dangerous'. I countered by asking him whether we should also stop teaching children how to cross the road, because traffic is dangerous too? I think he got the message. Where better to teach children about the dangers and risks of using the Internet, than in school? I think a rethink is very much overdue.

Whether this blog post, or Tom's article, or any number of other good pieces of advice will have an impact on the impasse many schools find themselves in with relation to social media use in schools, remains to be seen. But just a few moments thinking about the risks (and balancing those up against the clear benefits social media have in schools who do allow them) should convince most school leaders that adopting social media in the classroom really is the best way forward.

Image source


We need a rethink by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Pelecon flies higher

Those of you who have ever attended a Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference, or even followed from afar via the social media channels will know that Pelecon is an extraordinary event. Since attaining international conference status and extending its programme to 3 days, Pelecon has become one of the must-attend European learning technology conferences on the calendar. The event attracts learning technologists, lecturers, researchers, teachers, learning professionals, health and medical staff, private trainers, and just about anyone who is interested in the very latest in digital pedagogies, literacies and technologies. In previous years delegates have enjoyed listening to high profile and diverse keynote speakers such as Stephen Heppell, Keri Facer, Gilly Salmon, Graham Attwell, Sherry Terrell, Jane Hart, Josie Fraser and Alec Couros.

This year the conference takes place between 10-12 April. For 2013, we have lined up a veritable feast of leading speakers, all of whom are featured on the Pelecon conference website, and this year promises to push the boundaries even further than before.

#pelc13 is set in the delightful South West coastal English city of Plymouth. The surrounding Devon countryside is stunning as it unfolds in springtime, the towns and villages are steeped in history (the Mayflower Steps and Plymouth Hoe are a must for all tourists to visit) and the culture is rich. The Conference social events including a Wednesday evening Teachmeet, are guaranteed to be fun, entertaining and engaging.

This year the Pelecon Conference dinner will return once again to the visually stunning surroundings of the National Marine Aquarium. Located in Sutton Harbour in the historic Plymouth Barbican area, the Aquarium is the largest in the UK, and is one of the premier tourist attractions in the South West of England. Delegates who enjoyed the conference dinner at previous Plymouth eLearning Conference events in 2009 and 2010 were unanimous in expressing their praise for the evening.
The Dinner starts on Thursday evening, April 11th, at 7.30 pm with welcome drinks and an exclusive tour of the entire aquarium by official guides. Delegates can watch as the sun sets over Plymouth while fishing boats and other marine vessels arrive and depart from nearby Sutton Harbour. The three course dinner will be served in the Atlantic Reef area of the Aquarium, where diners can watch the sharks and other large fish swimming in one of the largest glass tanks in Europe, whilst they enjoy their meals. The company will be great, the food will be excellent, and the live music will be splendid. The price for the evening isn't bad either - at only £40.00 per head. The bar will be open until 11 pm, and then afterwards, the nearby Barbican and Coxside watering holes will be sure to offer a warm welcome to any delegates who wish to linger to explore Plymouth's nightlife a little more. The Conference Dinner has only one drawback - there will only be about 110 dining places available at the Aquarium, so please book your place for this exclusive event soon to avoid disappointment!

The Pelecon Conference organising committee look forward to joining with delegates at the Conference Dinner at the National Marine Aquarium. We hope you can attend the conference.

Photo by Jose Luis Garcia

Pelecon flies higher by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Touch and go

This is part 9 in the series on the future of learning and technology. Everything it seems, is being disrupted. By this I mean that new technology is arriving all the time, and much of it is changing forever the way we do things, the way we think about things, and the way we use things. The reason technology has the capacity to be so disruptive, is that it moves more quickly than industry, business, education, health, entertainment, in fact just about every part of the society we live in is constantly struggling to keep pace with it. As Larry Downes wrote recently: 'Social, political and economic systems change incrementally, but technology changes exponentially.'

In these exponential times, we can expect new technologies to emerge with increased regularity, and we can expect more and more to find ourselves scratching our heads, figuring out how we are going to harness their strange power and potential within familiar situations. Disruption occurs when we introduce new technology that impacts so dramatically upon previously familiar practices, that it changes them irrevocably. Stephen Heppell remarked that technology radically changes everything it touches. We will never return to the days of linear tape machines. Audio and video tape were replaced by digital media. The physical presence of music media is being rapidly eroded by digital media. The vinyl discs I used to buy as a teenager are already curios, and CDs will also become collector's items as they slowly begin to disappear from our high street shops. High street shopping itself is in very real danger of disappearing too, as online stores strengthen their grip an on entire generation of consumers. Photography, telephony and telecommunications, travel, leisure, commerce, news gathering, marketing, movie making, the list goes on of hundreds of industries that have been forever disrupted by technology. Digital skills are at a premium. If you don't possess the skills to use a computer or other digital device, you automatically exclude yourself from the majority of jobs currently available.

In a recent blog post, I wrote about the Internet of Things - a world where every object is connected to the Web. I wrote that 'Once upon a time, objects were simply objects. They only came alive in Disney cartoons'. Now, the announcement of a new technology called Touché has the potential to change forever they way we interact with everyday objects. And ironically, it has emerged from research by Disney Corporation. Touché uses a Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing technique to make just about any every day objects 'aware' that users are touching them. From door handles to sofas, once connected, objects will be context aware, and respond to our natural gestures. The manufacturers claim that using the technology may ultimately render keyboards and other peripherals completely redundant. Touché can detect whether humans are present or absent, and a variety of multi-touch gestures can be programmed to be recognised. Watch the video below to see for yourself the full potential and fascinating implications of this technology. Ask yourself how it could be applied in your own area of work. And then prepare yourself for disruption ...




Touch and go by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The foresight saga

Vuzix M100 Smart Glasses

This is part 8 in the series on the future of learning and technology. At the start of each year everyone it seems, goes into the prediction business. The first week of 2013 saw many articles appearing on what we can expect to see this year. A large number of the articles were about new technology trends, and there was much speculation about how certain technologies might transform our mundane little lives. With the massive Consumer Electronics Show CES 2013 opening its doors last week in Las Vegas, technology news was making prime time TV all across the globe too. The stars of CES 2013 were the Vuzix M100 Augmented Reality Smart Glasses (pictured), Samsung's new ultra thin bendy phone screen and the 4K ultra high Resolution television screen. These are not future technologies. They are technologies for today, 2013. 4K resolution is not enough it seems. Already there are articles predicting beyond 4K into the exotic TV world of the future where transparent televisions (what the...?), and even 'choose your own size' projected wall TVs will roam majestically across the prairies. Entertainment will literally go to the wall.

But what of the future? What are the tech-gurus saying we should look out for this year? The BBC's New Year's eve article 'Who will call it right in 2013?' seemed to hold a competition amongst the illuminated ones, the technology soothsayers of our age. Peering into their digital chicken guts, each gave it their best shot (without sticking their necks out too far, thus avoiding any potential damage to their stellar reputations) predicting what we can all expect to bump into as we turn that chronological corner. The article should perhaps be re-titled 'who will call it at all in 2013?' because many of the so called 'predictions' were banal to say the least.

Robert Scoble (the celebrated blogger) stayed safe and on piste, predicting that 2013 would be contextual. He talked of heads up displays (Google Glasses and the Vuzix M100 are already gearing up for mainstream release) that we could use when we all go skiing (yes, we can all afford alpine holidays in today's burgeoning economy. I'm just nipping off to Gstaad), to brag to your friends through the gift of video evidence just how high you climbed before you fell drunk from the ski-lift, and how long was your 'hang' time on your latest jump. That's if you have any friends left. How's that for context?

Dave Coplin, chief envisioning office at Microsoft (every company should have one) was even safer in his predictions, suggesting that 2013 will be about mobiles, data and trust. More and more, he suggests, data are (he says is) going to be the lifeblood of all our activities. And mobile devices will offer personalisation and  will become the first point of contact for everything we do. Well, who knew?

Mark Cook, chief executive of Getronics UK and Ireland (yep, a household name) takes the prophet's mantle for the safest prediction for the year. He reckons that many companies will move away from BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) to CYOD (Choose Your ... etc). Interesting, as many companies don't even have a BYOD as a policy yet. Cook thinks that CYOD will place the initiative back in the hands of the organisation,  offering employees a device of its own choosing. That's novel. Now why didn't I think of that? I guess you will be able to choose any colour you like, as long as it's black.

So the future is much the same as the present then. I think I'll stick to CES in the future.

Image source


The foresight saga by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Global learning collectives

This is part 7 in a series of posts on the future of learning and technology. I spent the last two years of my school life at AFCENT* International School, in Brunssum, Holland. There was one word to describe AFCENT School - diversity. I remember how culturally rich the experience was, because children from all of the NATO** countries attended, and I often sat alongside American, German, Canadian, French, Norwegian and Swedish classmates.

I discovered that this school's education was far more than just the three 'R's. We learnt phrases from each other's languages (slang and swear words were particularly good fun to practice), heard about unfamiliar customs and practices, and sampled strange and wonderful food and drink from other countries. I should point out that in the 1970s Britain was far less multi-cultural than it is today. This was the age of the cold-war and our parents were serving in the military. We took part in multi-national games that went on all day, where we played the roles of politicians and generals, as we tried to avert a nuclear war. We produced and performed in musicals such as Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar and Fiddler on the Roof in the school assembly hall. We learnt to play the games of other countries. It turned out that Baseball and American Football were less of a mystery for us Brits than Cricket was for our American counterparts. Who knew?

We learnt traditional songs and stories we would never otherwise have encountered, because each child could not avoid bringing their own personal stories, history and culture into the classroom. German Christmas, Canadian Bring 'n' Buy sales, and American cheerleaders were not something I had encountered in any English school. Believe me, if we'd had American cheer leaders at school in England, I would never have missed a lesson. At AFCENT School we literally had the best of both worlds by attending an international school. Not many school students are as privileged.

Some years ago, I saw several schools try to replicate this cultural richness through the use of video links to connect two (or more) classrooms together across distance. It was a great step beyond the pen pal letters we used to write when I was in secondary school in the 1960s. Then we had to wait for days or weeks for a reply. Now whole groups can meet and converse with each other in real time without travel. Language learning, cultural exchanges, personal stories, preparation for overseas school exchange visits and a whole host of other benefits can be realised when children collaborate and share their learning across language and cultural divides. The excitement of connecting with children in schools in other countries was tangible. Some schools who connected using videoconferencing manage to project the live video images onto big screens so that large groups could participate, and the kids loved it.

Video conferencing was just the start. We now have several alternative technologies that will allow schools to connect cheaply and easily with school children in other countries. One of the futures of education will be greater connectivity between schools around the world. Through the use of social media meeting tools such as Google Hangouts, video sharing tools such as Skype, and even massive online open games, students around the world already enjoy better chances to learn from each other and with each other, regardless of their geographical location. How will this develop? I foresee the emergence of global learning collectives where children will learn together across schools and time zones, collaborating on projects and other joint activities, and where technology will help us to once and for all bridge the great divides of geography, culture, creed and ethnicity.

*AFCENT = Allied Forces Central Europe. NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

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Global learning collectives by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Where AR we now?

This is part 6 in a series of posts on the future of learning and technology. Technology is great for many things, but perhaps its most useful application is enabling us to do things better, faster, smarter. Augmented Reality (AR) is one such tool that has a lot of potential to enhance our senses, but to date has had poor uptake and real life application in the world of learning.  AR typically provides the user with additional information than can be obtained naturally. It takes live views of the real world around you and augments them with computer generated sensory information such as graphics, data, video or sound.

Examples in include smart phone applications such as Layar, which use the GPS and video camera tools to position the user in an information sphere, and feed them contextual information related to that specific geographical location. This can include information about local environment, navigation of complex transport systems (see the embedded video below featuring Acrossair's New York subway app), weather, news and  amenities, as well as cultural or historical information, and even social information. You might for example, wish to discover who else in your location is using Twitter or another social media tool. The opportunities to use such applications in education are fairly obvious, but not everyone has access to the technology, and it can be quite difficult to use effectively if you are able to gain access.  Part of the problem is the inconvenience of having to hold your phone up if you wish to interrogate your environment. A better, more intuitive application of AR is the use of large screens (see the image above, taken in a Westfield shopping centre, London). Better vision, and a more natural means of interrogation of one's surroundings can be achieved using this technology, and objects can be rendered in 3D using simple marker technologies (see BBC this video for a vivid demonstration of some upcoming AR features and uses).



Perhaps the most promising and intuitively easy to use AR version is the wearable (or eye wear) application seen most recently in Google Glasses. A simple heads up display (HUD) is located in the upper right quadrant of one lens of a reasonably normal looking pair of spectacles, and users can control what they see with their mobile phone. Eventually, natural gesture control (such as a head tilt, wink of an eye) or voice control will be developed to enable even more natural and unobtrusive AR use. It has had its problems and suffered a few teething difficulties, but I believe that AR is on its way to a learning environment near you and it will catch on quicker than we expect. Our desire to learn more, and to learn while on the move at any time and in any context, will ensure that the wearable AR device will be available for an affordable price very soon. What educators do with them next, is really down to each individual's creativity and imagination.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


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Digital classrooms

This is Part 5 in my series of posts on the future of learning and technology. A few years ago Peter John and I wrote a book entitled 'The Digital Classroom'. It was published by Routledge in 2008 and is now also available as a Kindle reader version. It wasn't the first published under that title, and it probably won't be the last. The idea of a 'classroom' (regardless of how anachronistic that may sound) is appealing when it is 'digitised'. It's the old, comfortably familiar territory embellished with the new. Everyone in the world of education it seems, has an interest in how technology is going to influence what we do in the classroom. The book was received well, and we received some positive comments and feedback. Although the book is probably a little dated now, with technology advancing at rapid pace, it still set a benchmark for some of the things we could expect to see in the coming years. We talked for instance about how technology would streamline assessment, and how the curriculum might be impacted by new technologies. There were sections on digital literacies and mobile learning, both of which we considered to be important for the success of education and learning in the future. Blogs and wikis and other social media made an appearance, even though at the time they were still fairly nascent in compulsory education. We even mentioned the Semantic Web (or Web 3.0) as a potential horizon technology for learning. We spent a lot of time talking about digital cameras and interactive whiteboards, both of which have had dubious success in the school classroom.

Ultimately though, we could not have predicted the new tools and technologies that will become very much a part of normal school life in the recent and coming years. We did not foresee the touch tablets and their rapid success in schools, nor did we predict the rapid rise of smart phones and apps, or the potential of augmented reality. The non-touch motion sensing gestural interfaces now emerging (for example the Xbox 360 Kinect) and the voice activation applications were still just a gleam in the eye for many of us. Perhaps we should not have titled the book The Digital Classroom, but simply Digital Classrooms, because now we know that there are many possibilities, and that classrooms that have digital capabilities are many and varied. If I was to take a risk and suggest possibilities for the next 5 years of development, I might be right on some of my predictions, and hopelessly wrong on others, but here we go...

The signs are there that in the coming years, more gestural interface technology will be available for learners, and that advances in manufacture and design will enable the installation of screens on walls, desktop, in fact on any flat surface. The screens will be resilient and high resolution, but as thin as a sheet of card. The mouse, and keyboards such as the one in the image above, may disappear completely in favour of voice and gesture activated tools. For students with mobility issues in particular, this may turn out to be an important leveler. Smart touch devices will continue to develop too, so that every student will have the means to access all their learning resources right there in their hand, wherever they are, and whenever they need them.

Much more learning will be done outside of the classroom. Digital classrooms will become the place where learning is performed, celebrated and assessed - on large wall screens for all to enjoy. For many teachers, learner analytics will become an indispensable tool for tracking student progress and intervening when necessary. Many governments will probably insist on it and legislate accordingly when they realise just how much data can be mined from personal activities across the web. Eye tracking and attention tracking will also emerge as useful behaviour management tools for teachers in the next few years. Gamification and games based learning will establish a stronger foothold in classrooms as teachers realise just how powerful self-paced, self-assessed task oriented and problem based learning can be.

Probably the most important development I foresee though, is the emergence of student developed applications. As technology increasingly takes its hold on the school classroom, so students will become increasingly adept at coding. There is more scope than ever for children to experiment with computers. The Raspberry Pi is just the first of many tools to support this. The result will be the creation of a vast array of student games, mobile apps and eventually new forms of hardware (See this TED talk by 12-year old app developer Thomas Suarez). Many of the new apps and games will be made commercially available. Schools working in partnership with commercial companies will ensure it happens. We may even see some children achieve millionaire status before they leave school, and it will become commonplace for young people to be entrepreneurs before they reach higher education age. Now there's incentive.

A lot of learning comes from doing, making and problem solving. One of the most important contributions technology has made to education over the last decade can be found in its provisionality - that with digital, nothing is necessarily graven in stone, anything can be changed, upgraded, edited, revised, deleted. Learning in digital classrooms will be much more exciting, because learning through failure and experimentation will engage learners thoroughly in the right conditions.

Finally, a word of warning. We don't know how long these developments will take, nor do we know for sure  if they will materialise, because it is very hard to predict the future accurately, and schools are conservative places where change can be very difficult to achieve. What we do know is that the future will be very different from anything we can imagine right now. As ever, your comments and views on this article are very welcome.

Image source


Digital classrooms by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The future of classrooms

This is Part 4 in my series on the future of learning and technology. What will be the future of school classrooms? It is unlikely that we will see the demise of the classroom in the next decade. Those who study the future of education often suggest that the demise of traditional classrooms is not only inevitable, but imminent. This is due to the rapid proliferation of mobile technology, the disintermediation of traditional teacher and student roles, new trends such as MOOCs and the upsurge of user generated content on social media sites -  all of which take learning away from previously familiar territory. The argument that these tools and trends are removing the need for classrooms and 'schools' in specific geographical locations is a strong one, but also has some flaws.

In a recent article, Larry Cuban attempts to gaze 10 years into the future, and makes the case that classrooms will stay very much the same during this period. Firstly, he argues, teachers tend to use new technology in much the same way they used old technology, and that as a result very little has changed in terms of pedagogy. Secondly, he suggests that technology is overhyped and is not future-proofed, especially against 'major unplanned events', although what these might be, he fails to elaborate. Anyone who is familiar with Cuban's work will think 'well he would say that, wouldn't he?', but is he right?

One of the future developments he is optimistic about, however, is the lightening of students' backpacks. Cuban believes that the digitisation of texts (books, encyclopedias and other paper based knowledge) will take hold and become an important trend. He predicts the obsolescence of the hard bound book, at least in the hands of school children. Automated assessment of learning through computer adaptive testing is another trend he predicts, where students are given grades based on their performance on multiple choice questions. Implicit within this scenario is learner analytics, where the data mining of all student scores, attendance levels, social media postings and discussion group contributions can be analysed to provide teachers with an overview of where the student is, and whether any intervention is required. Also implicit within this prediction is the need for teachers to adopt new roles, change their professional practice, and move from instructors to facilitators and moderators.  It also means that teachers would need to revisit their concepts of knowledge and learning, and begin to accept that often learning occurs without their direct input, both inside and outside the classroom. Many teachers would welcome such a shift in practice, whilst many others might feel very threatened by such a seismic shift in the profession.

Cuban is very sceptical of online courses, and presumably his sceptiscism also embraces MOOCs. He believes that online learning has repeatedly failed to deliver its promise. His argument here stems from the human need to socialise, to gather together face to face, and learn firsthand the cultural, moral and civic values we hold so important in today's society. Online course, he argues, fall very short of delivering this richness.

Cuban sees a place for technology in schools, but does not see it radically changing the face of the 'place for education', and says:

'...by 2023, uses of technologies will change some aspects of teaching and learning but schools and classrooms will be clearly recognizable to students’ parents and grandparents.'

Is he right? Will we see no radical change in schools in the next 10 years? Will it take longer for us to witness transformational changes in our education institutions, or are the changes above sufficient to revolutionise pedagogy? Are schools too conservative and resistant to change to be impacted by new technology? Is technology the only catalyst for change, or should we look elsewhere? As ever, your comments on this blog are welcome.

Photo by Paul Shreeve


The future of classrooms by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The future of intelligence

This is Part 3 in a series of blog posts on the future of learning and technology. In my previous blog post I examined the debate about whether we are becoming more intelligent or less intelligent as a result of our prolonged and habituated uses of technology. I believe that if we are to fully apprehend the many issues and nuances of our relationship with future technologies, we first need to begin to appreciate the complexity of human intelligence(s) and the problems associated with trying to model these digitally.

Many commentators express concern about the negative impact technology may have on our ability to think critically, construct knowledge and read/research more deeply. The argument is that we are becoming increasingly dependent on search engines and other tools, that trivialise knowledge and simplify what we learn. A secondary argument is that there is a large amount of content on the web that is spurious, deceiving or inaccurate, and that user generated sites such as Wikipedia and blogs undermine the authority of professionals and academics.

Futurologist Ray Kurzweil's argument looks beyond these issues, holding that the tools we have available to us as a result of networked social media and personal devices, actually enable us to increase our cognitive abilities. He argues that we are becoming more creative and have the potential for endless cognitive gain as a result of increased access to these technologies. His position is reminiscent of the work of American cognitive psychologist David Jonassen (1999) and his colleagues, who proposed that computers were mind tools, and that our cognitive abilities could be extended if we invested our memories into them. Others, such as George Siemens and Karen Stephenson hold that we store our knowledge with our friends, and that connected peer networks are where learning occurs in the digital age. British computer scientist and philosopher Andy Clark, is of the opinion that we are all naturally aligned to using technology. In his seminal work, Natural Born Cyborgs (2003), Clark sees a future that combines the best features of human and machine, where we literally wear or physically internalise our technologies.

There are examples of how such cyborg existence might come about. Recently, demonstrations of Google Glass, eyewear that connects you via augmented reality software and gestural control to information beyond your normal visual experience, and Muse, a brain-wave sensing headband, have veered us in the direction of cyborg experience. I predict that other devices, wearable, natural gesture based, and sensor rich, will appear in the next few years, and these will be affordable to many. And yet, as science fiction writer William Gibson intoned, the future may be here already, but it's just not evenly distributed. He is right. A persistent digital divide exists between the industrialised world and emerging countries. Mobile phones may be proliferating rapidly, but Divides are also evident within western digital society where some invest in new technology, and a whole spectrum of other responses, from mildly enthusiastic to outright rejection are present in the population. There are even divides between those who can use the technologies and those who can't. Technology remains unevenly distributed, and will be for some time to come. But the digital divide will not stop the march of technology. What might wearables and non-touch interfaces achieve for us?

It is debatable whether wearable and invasive technologies will increase our intelligence. What such tools might be able to do though, is free us up physically, enhancing our visual capabilities, and enabling us to control devices hands free. They will also enable us to free up cognitive resources, by distributing our thinking and memory, enabling us to focus on important things such as creativity, intuitive thinking, critical reflection and conducting personal relationships, while the wearable computer navigates, searches, discovers, stores, retrieves, organises and connects for us. It will not make us smarter, but technology will enable us to behave smarter, work smarter and learn smarter. That's if we accept that ultimately, the success or failure of such tools is really down to us and us alone.

References
Clark, A. J. (2003) Natural Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies and the Future of Human Intelligence. New York: Oxford University Press.
Jonassen, D. H., Peck, K. and Wilson, B. (1999) Learning with Technology: A Constructivist Perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Photo by Jussi Mononen


The future of intelligence by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Is technology making us smarter?

This is part 2 of the series on the future of learning and technology. When discussing the future, especially the future of technology, there are some writers who almost always seem to be quoted. Near the top of the list is the futurologist Ray Kurzweil, who has much to say about our technological future, and also about the growth in human intelligence. His views are quite optimistic, especially around computers and the nature of knowledge. Kurzweil popularised the concept of 'the Singularity', but it was science fiction writer Vernor Vinge who originally coined it. In a nutshell, the Singularity describes a tipping point in technological development when computers exceed the power of total human capability. This will occur, Kurzweil argues, due to a rapid advance of technology and proliferation of human and machine intelligence. Whether we shall see the Singularity is one question. Whether it will have such as profound effect on our society and our humanity as Kurzweil and other predict, is an even bigger question. We simply don't know if computers can or will surpass human thought, or what the implications might be if they eventually do. Such questions have for years been a focus of the Strong vs Weak AI (Artificial Intelligence) debate.

In Kurzweil's view, technology and the human mind are symbiotic, reliant upon each other for their mutual development.  His vision of the future requires humanity to become increasingly intelligent, made smarter because of increased opportunities to connect, create and find knowledge across the network. James Flynn, (2012) of the University of Otogo in New Zealand reveals that over the last century, IQ scores have been steadily rising from generation to generation. Whether this occurs as a direct result of access to technology and greater opportunities for networking, is yet to be established. But, intuitively this seems to be a reasonable proposition.

There are those who argue the exact opposite, that humans are becoming less intelligent and more dependent upon technology. This perspective is championed by Nicholas Carr (2011), who provocatively argues that habituated use of search tools such as Google is 'making us stupid'. Carr's essential thesis is that we are bombarded with content on the Internet, and cope with this by reducing our depth of study whilst increasing our breadth of study. In other words, he argues, we tend to skim read and miss out on the richness of meaning we would have absorbed pre-internet. In his original publication, Andrew Keen (2007), was adamant that the Internet is undermining the authority of academics and is a threat to our culture and society. In his most recent edition, Keen turns his ire specifically onto user generated media such as blogs and YouTube (Keen, 2010). Tara Brabazon (2008) appears equally cynical about the impact the Web is having on this generation of learners, but provides a more measured response. She suggests that it is an error for universities to invest more in technology than in teacher development, and in so doing, opens a debate on the future of education in the digital age.

So the future of technology supported learning is uncertain and contested. Are we being made more intelligent by our habituated uses of technology, or are we becoming smarter because we have more opportunities to create our own content, and think more deeply about it? Does our collective increase in intelligence owe itself to better connections with experts and peers, or should we simply put the growth of knowledge down to a natural, progressive evolution of the human mind? Is technology actually a threat to good learning, creating a generation of superficial learners, or do interactive tools such as social media and search engines provide us with unprecedented access to knowledge?

Such questions are exactly what the study of the future is all about.  

References
Brabazon, T. (2007) The University of Google: Education in the post-information age. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Carr, N. (2011) The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains. London: W. W. Norton and Company.
Flynn, J. R. (2012) Are we getting smarter? Rising IQ in the 21st Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Keen, A. (2007) The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy. London: Nicholas Brealey.
Keen, A. (2010) The Cult of the Amateur: How blogs, Myspace, YouTube and the rest of today's user generated media are killing our culture and economy. London: Nicholas Brealey.

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Is technology making us smarter? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.