Learning in the palm of your hand

Last year I wrote extensively about learning using Web 3.0 and Web x.0, which after much discussion across the network, was renamed the eXtended Web. Later I suggested in a presentation in London that we should call it the Smart eXtended Web, due to the high profile smart mobiles will undoubtedly play in the future of learning. For me, learning will need to fit into the palm of the hand if we are to grab the attention of younger students. Ever since I wrote about it, I have been thinking about what such a Smart eXtended Web might look like. Tomorrow I get the chance to speak a little more about the Smart eXtended Web when I address the ICS Skill's National IT Training Conference here at the Northwall Quay in Dublin. I took a photo of the Convention Centre today, which you can see is quite futuristic, so it's a great venue to be talking about things to come. Here's a reminder of what I wrote in a blog post last year:

"...it's not only Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 we need to consider, but extensions beyond these into a truly integrated, fully responsive and entirely personalised learning environment that fits into the palm of your hand. This is my vision for the future, but as I continually warn - predicting the future can be hazardous. I wrote about this problem in a recent post entitled 'Seeing the future'. The U.S. Mayor who in 1880 announced that one day every town in America would have a telephone was right, but also so far wide of the mark, it's almost laughable. So when people ask me when we will see all of these tools being used for learning, I simply smile and say - "we'll see". We know the tools exist (see: The Future is the Web) we just don't know when they will become economically viable enough for institutions to begin investing in them wholesale. Perhaps they never will. Perhaps it will be down to individual learners to purchase their own devices and applications. Perhaps this will be another aspect of the 'do it yourself' personal learning environment ethos we are all talking about."

Talking about the future has been one of my recurring activities recently, with several blog posts published right here in a series entitled 'Learning 2020'. Since I posted these, there has been much debate on this site, and the high view rates on all of the posts suggests that many people are interested in what the future holds and want to engage in discussion about it. But we are not just discussing it. I firmly believe that we can also help to shape the future, and tomorrow I'm going to speak about what we might expect to see in (and outside of) schools and universities over the next few years. You can follow the conversation on Twitter via the hashtag #ittc11

Learning in the palm of your hand by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

eXtending the Web

eXtending the Web - New and Emerging Learning Technologies

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I was up at stupid o'clock yesterday to present a webinar for the ASCILITE organisation - the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education. The time zone differences meant that my audience, distributed across Australasia, was listening to me in the evening, while I was sat in my office in jeans and a T-shirt at 7 in the morning, armed with copious quantities of caffeine and a box of matchsticks. While I talked, as if by magic, the sun removed itself from Australia and New Zealand and reappeared outside my window. I was actually up an hour earlier at 6 am finalising and uploading my slides onto ASCILITE's Wimba platform, and then making sure the technical details were all in order. But I enjoyed it. The audience were very knowledgeable, and asked some pertinent questions.

My subject was "The eXtended Web - New and Emerging Learning Technologies" - it was essentially a gaze into the future of e-learning where smart mobile technologies create a ubiquitous learning context, and where semantic software predicts your needs even before you ask the computer. It's not too hard to envisage this, including 3D manipulation of virtual objects and natural gesture driven learning, and of course the use of augmented reality for learning and context awareness while on the move. The technology is already here, in both handheld and wearable versions - as I try to depict in my slides above - but it may take some time before everyone who wants access to them can have it. We shall see - it's hazardous predicting the future, especially where technology is concerned, but we can watch the trends and see where the road is leading. We live in exciting and challenging times, and we can expect to see a lot of changes taking place in the next few years in the world of education.


eXtending the Web by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.