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.

Facing the future

At the end of each year many of us tend to focus on the future, wondering what it will bring. We wish each other a happy New Year, and hope that life will treat us kindly. We try to shape our own futures by making New Year resolutions, many of which fall by the wayside after a week or two. Much of our future is not ours to shape. But still we persist in trying to predict the future.

Many of our predictions about the future are based on speculation or wishful thinking. Remember the personalised jetpacks we were all going to use, and the Moon colonies many thought would be established in the 1970s? No matter what we think we 'know' about the future, we are unable to predict the future with one hundred percent confidence. Gambling casinos and bookmakers make a fortune out of our desire to guess what will happen next. On 21 December 2012, many people held their collective breaths because of a well studied, but poorly understood 'prophecy' about the ending of an age. Some sold their houses, or gave up their jobs in preparation for the 'end of the world', and were relieved and disappointed in equal measure when nothing happened. The Mayan Apocalypse did not happen. Many of us didn't believe it would. We have seen it all before, several times. Down through the ages self appointed religious cult leaders have predicted the return of Christ, or the start of Armaggedon, or some global catastrophe, largely based on their own personal interpretations of texts or 'signs'. This always spreads fear and uncertainty to many. All the modern day prophets have failed, but have ruined the lives of many gullible and impressionable people in the process.

What about teachers and schools? If we try to predict what will happen to education in the next year, we will probably have reasonable success, especially if we work within the teaching profession. Those of us who are engaged as learning professionals tend to see the trends first, and can better understand the nuances and vagaries of education better than the average 'man in the street'. This is why practising teachers are better placed than politicians to offer ideas for improving education. The caveat is that if we try to predict what will happen in education over a longer time scale, say 3 to 5 years time, we become less accurate, because there are random events, changes in policy, variations in world economy, new technologies, or other unknown variables that can happen to change the terrain.

And yet, you and I have a sneaking suspicion that if we do not try to anticipate the future, and make ready to respond to changes as they occur, we will be caught off guard. And we would be right. Anticipating change is a natural part of our survival strategies, and should be encouraged. So we have a conundrum. Do we try to predict the future and risk being badly wrong, or do we just let the future roll over us and try to adapt to it? If we decide on the latter, then we will be at the mercy of change, and not only will education suffer, more importantly, the children and young people in our care will be affected. If we decide on the former, then at least we have made a choice to try to anticipate the future, and we have an outside chance of being right. The less timescale we try to predict, the more chance we have of being right. The farther we try to gaze down the corridor of the future, the more risk we run of being wrong, because there will be more opportunities for unpredictable things to occur.

Over the next few blog posts I intend to examine some of the predictions that have been made on the future of education, with specific reference to technology and the role it will undoubtedly play.  Some of the predictions will be fairly inevitable, others will be wildly speculative, and many will sit somewhere in between, as possibilities that may or may not become reality. If we are prepared for change, then we will be less likely to be taken by surprise. We can at least prepare for a successful new year of teaching and learning based on what we believe is just around the corner.  But we still need to live and work in the present.

I wish you a happy and successful New Year.

"Learn from the past, prepare for the future, live in the present." - Thomas S. Monson

Other posts in this series
Is technology making us smarter?
The future of intelligence
The future of classrooms
Digital classrooms
AR we there yet?
Global learning collectives
The foresight saga
Touch and go

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

Next generation learning

In my previous blog post, the architecture of learning, I outlined some of the key characteristics of learning in a digital age, and started to identify some of the main differences between Learning 1.0 (before social media) and Learning 2.0. In the summary of the article, I suggested that the distinct differences between the two types of learning are mostly based on how learners are changing the ways they interact, and their increased ability to create, share and organise their own learning. Learning 2.0 is socially much richer and more participatory, and relies more on interaction with other learners than any previous learning approach. This change has been realised through access to inexpensive internet tools that offer easy ways to connect with others of similar interest. There is a growing understanding that it's not so much what you know anymore, but who you know. No longer is the computer your only mind tool and extension of your memory - now you can also call on everyone else in the world. Social media are enabling learners everywhere to connect and work together with each other, forming convenient communities and networks of shared interest. The full power of the Learning 2.0 approach has yet to be realised, but already we are seeing radical shifts in the way learning is conducted. I also argued that if we view sequenced versions of the Web, based on the way learners use it, we will inevitably have to think of Learning 3.0, and beyond. This led me to think about what we might see in the future of learning, based on present trends, and our anticipation of what new technologies and approaches we think are on the horizon. So here we go - Learning 3.0...

Learning 3.0, if we are to believe all the hype, will be located within a semantic based architecture of webs - a 'meta-web'. I see it arising partly from what is happening on the web right now, but also as a result of new intelligent filtering tools. Increasingly, as users contribute to the content, links and pathways of the social web, it will become more 'intelligent', and will recommend to its users the best ways to find what they are looking for. It will also recommend things that users don't know they need yet, predicting their 'needs' based on their previous behaviour and choices. Learning 3.0 will see learners using sophisticated new web tools that are intricately connected to each other, are context aware, and are accessed through intuitive and natural interfaces. Here we begin to think not only of voice activated, gestural controlled interfaces, but we also need to start considering biometric recognition systems such as retinal scanning, facial recognition and even directly implanted devices that allow us to control our devices merely by thinking (see the table below). Where Learning 1.0 was organised around taxonomies and content was largely expert generated, Learning 2.0 has seen as shift toward user generated content, and the emergent property of folksonomies. We have known for some time that people learn better when they are actively engaged in making things, solving problems and engaging with others. Social media have provided the tools to achieve this on a global level.

Learning 3.0 will be user and machine generated, and will in all respects be represented in what I will call  'rhizonomies'. The rhizonomic organisation of content will emerge from chaotic, multi-dimensional and multi-nodal organisation of content, giving rise to an infinite number of possibilities and choices for learners. As learners choose their own self determined routes through the content, so context will change and new nodes and connections will be created in what will become a massive, dynamic, synthetic 'hive mind'. Here I do not refer to any strong artificial intelligence model of computation, but rather a description of the manner in which networked, intelligent systems respond to the needs of individual learners within vast, ever expanding communities of practice. Each learner will become a nexus of knowledge, and a node of content production. Extending the rhizome metaphor further, learners will act as the reproduction mechanisms that sustain the growth of the semantic web, but will also in turn be nurtured by it. Learning 3.0 will be a facet of an ongoing, limitless symbiotic relationship between human and machine.

Whatever Learning 3.0 is or will become, we can be assured it will be completely different to what has preceded it. We will witness new modes of learning, new ways of interacting and new ways of representing knowledge that will be both robust and mutable, personally contextualised, but without boundaries. I believe the future of learning is going to be very exciting indeed.

Postcript: My thinking in this blogpost is embryonic and is as ever, open to challenge. I may be hopelessly off target here, because this is uncharted territory for me. But I am taking the risk to air my views in public about this topic just to see what feedback I will receive from my professional learning network. I therefore value any dialogue (on this blog and elsewhere), corrections, advice and suggestions as I attempt to navigate my way through the thinking process about what kinds of learning we might see in the future.

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

Smart learning

I spend most of my time in the future, but I do go home at weekends. At least, that is my explanation about why I am so fascinated with the future. I always have been, ever since I was a little boy and started reading science fiction novels. From Asimov to Heinlein, and Clark to Wells, I hungrily devoured them all and fed my mind on what was to come.

I'm in a dream job now, talking about technology and learning, and how we can optimise one from the other. Inevitably, people invite me to speak at events and ask me to give my ideas about what is just around the corner.

My recent involvement with the New Media Consortium Horizon Report committee was another outlet for thinking about the future. That came up in today's keynote at the 15th International Conference on Interactive and Collaborative Learning (#ICL2012), here deep in the Austrian Alps, in a little town called Villach. I spoke of Learning 3.0, and speculated on what learning might look like in a few years. I proposed that a great deal of learning will take place in the future through the use of mobile tools, and that tablets, phones and other handheld devices would be just the start of our new technology enhanced learning journey.

Learning 3.0 and the Smart eXtended Web from Steve Wheeler

Augmented reality, intelligent filtering, 3D spatial interaction, enhanced vision and other seemingly exotic or out of reach technologies will one day merge to become our new reality. The technology is already there, but as William Gibson once said 'the future is not widely distributed'. Eventually, all widely adopted technologies tend to fade into the background and become mundane, as learning breaks through to take centre stage. When will this happen? We can't say for sure, because other random factors continually intervene. Pictures and quotes from the past, shown in the slide set above, demonstrate that we are not always very good at predicting accurately what our future will hold, but with current trends, we can see farther than we have ever been able to see before down the corridor of time. And we can see that technology is not slowing down, and neither is our thirst for small gadgets, smart objects and embedded technologies. Learning 3.0 will be the nexus, the meeting point of all these smart tools, where people will connect seamlessly with other people, objects and information and learn when they need to, what they need to, where they need to. We will then be tapping into the combined intelligence of the entire globe, and that will be powerful beyond measure. At least, that is my vision for the future.

I hope you enjoy looking at the slides. I certainly enjoyed presenting them today, and discussing my ideas with delegates at ICL2012 in Villach, Austria.

Photo by Joaquim F. Silva


Smart learning by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

In an Internet minute

The futurologist Ray Kurzweil once said that 'change is not linear, it is exponential.' Sociologist Alvin Toffler described three waves of evolution in our interaction with tools. The first two, the agricultural and industrial revolutions laid the foundations for the larger, Third Wave - the technology revolution. Prior to the technological wave,  life changed relatively slowly, and change was linear, but in the advent of new technologies, we are lurching from change to change without pause. The technological Wave has changed everything in life, including the way we work and trade, learn, provide healthcare, entertain ourselves, conduct our relationships and interact. Arguably, old rubrics which described, but did not govern the pace of technological change (see for example Metcalfe's Law or Moore's Law) may already be outmoded.

The infographic on this page illustrates the sheer volume of  user generated content and user activity that occurs every 60 seconds somewhere on the Internet. In one minute there are over 2 million search queries on Google, 6 million Facebook views, over 200 million e-mails sent and 100,000 tweets. These staggering metrics are only the tip of the iceberg. We can expect to see exponential rises in all of these and the emergence of new and more dynamic social media and communication systems. One of the most marked changes are the upsurge in the use of mobile technology, with 1,300 new mobile users every minute. Mobile phones, tablets and laptops are portable gateways into the Internet, and it is predicted by 2015 that there will be twice as many mobile devices on the planet as there are humans. This means that access to the Web will increase, and there will be a steep rise in Internet activity, probably beyond what we can ever imagine. This assumes that the growth rate will continue at its current pace, which of course it won't. It also assumes that people will (and are) using more than one device to access the Internet. I currently have 3 devices with me, and I'm using two of them to write this blog post.

Whichever way we look at this, we know beyond reasonable doubt that demands on the Internet will continue to rise. Are we prepared for this exponential rise in use? The biggest challenge facing us now is not how to use the Internet, but being able to futureproof it so that we have enough bandwidth, capacity and storage space to hold all of the user generated content that is coming. Another challenge is to ensure that the Internet improves in terms of speed, security and usability.

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In an Internet minute by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Exponential times

We live in exponential times. Change is rapid and events often take us all by surprise. Social, economic, environmental and political challenges roll across our screens every day. Now, more than ever, we need good education to negotiate our way through the turbulence of our times. There is a distinct separation forming between those who are teachers and those who aspire to be educators. Anyone can be a teacher, and indeed, whether they know it or not, just about everyone does do some teaching during an average week, usually on a very informal basis. Although we all teach, not everyone can be an educator. Educators are a breed apart, and although the professional title of 'teacher' is sustained in schools, it is often the educators that make all the difference. Not everyone can see the difference between teachers and educators, and many tend to think they are synonymous as this online discussion forum demonstrates. But there are distinct differences, and it is essentially the attitude of the individual that is at the heart of the question. I read an excellent blog recently which brings the differences into sharp focus:

Ashley Tan's blog Another dot in the Blogosphere? features an excellent exposition of the differences between educators and teachers, and I really believe it needs a wider audience. So here, on this blog, is a summary:

A teacher teaches; an educator reaches.

A teacher typically focuses on curriculum and assessment. An educator focuses on development and evaluation.

In the curricular race, a teacher perspires. In the journey of lifelong learning, an educator inspires. (An educator goes the extra mile.)

A teacher works with content. An educator deals with people.

Teaching is a job. Educating is a calling.

Some teachers do this to earn. Educators do this to learn (about themselves, their learners, better ways to inspire, etc).

A teacher might network locally. An educator is connected globally (and thinks and acts that way too).

The world needs individuals who will go the extra mile. This is what true educators do. They reach out to our young people, and they make a difference. It's not simply a job for them, and no amount of money would recompense them for all their commitment and overtime spent engaging their students, preparing, marking, planning and studying. As a teaching profession, we all need to work more with people than we do with content. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy stated that 'a child miseducated, is a child lost'. During my lifetime I have encountered many individuals who were miseducated, and took the wrong pathway in life. We need to be so careful how we execute our roles as learning professionals, because the future of an entire generation is in our hands. Any poor decisions we make can influence our students badly, but conversely, any good decisions we make can inspire that same generation to succeed, to burn brightly, and be a real force for good in this world. What an opportunity we have, but what a frightening prospect, if we get it wrong.  Yes, we live in exponential times, with change and uncertainty all around, but I have met some incredible educators in the last few years that give me a lot of hope for the future. They are more connected that any previous generation of educators, and they are more passionate. They will be the ones who make a difference to young lives. I believe that one day we'll look back on this period of time and say 'that was an extraordinary generation of educators.'

Photo by Anders Hoff


Exponential times by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Uncertainty principles

It's extremely difficult to predict the future accurately, because as futurologist Ray Kurzweil once said, change isn't linear, it's exponential. I often consult The Horizon Report, which is published every year and attempts to predict what will be the widespread adoptions of technologies in education and training. The annual report is published after extensive consultation with an international panel of technology and pedagogy experts. Yet even this is problematic, because the farther you move away from the present, the more opportunity there will be for unforeseen and unpredictable events to occur. And experts are not infallible. You really have to turn to science fiction and read something like Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy to appreciate some of the complexity associated with this kind of uncertainty. What does the future hold? We can't be certain, because right now it's imaginary. The Horizon Report is usually quite accurate in the 1 year cycle. When we examine the predictions in the 2-3 year cycle, it becomes a little hit and miss, and by the time we attempt to predict what will be widely available on the 5 year horizon, it becomes even more tricky to maintain accuracy. The farther out we move in projected time from the familiarity of 'here and now' the less accurate we are in our predictions.

I was invited to speak at the Learning and Performance Institute's annual conference - Learning Live - at St Paul's in London recently, on the subject of Learning Futures, and afterwards talked to Martin Couzins, who recorded the brief video interview below (yes, I know it says 'learning tends'... but perhaps that's a fortuitous error):



Uncertainty principles by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

On Aer

I spent two great days in Ireland this weekend, and would like to thank my hosts at the Computer Education Society of Ireland for inviting me. It's a beautiful country, the culture is rich and the people are all so friendly. Ahead of my keynote speech at the CESI 2012 conference in Portlaiose, I managed to do an interview for Dublin City FM 103.2. The programme Inside Education, presented by Seán Delaney, is a regular radio and podcast Irish perspective on news and stories from the world of education. We sat outside in the early spring sunshine of Portlaiose and discussed blogging, social media, the state of education, ideal schools of the future, innovation and technology, and a whole host of related topics.

I emphasised the importance of blogging as a means of teacher professional development and best uses of technology in education (social media, interactive whiteboards, VLEs, videoconferencing, iPads), and we discussed choice and adoption of new technologies in education. It was a wide ranging interview in which we also explored the use of Twitter as a rich communication backchannel and social networking media, discussed personal learning networks and communities of practice, and talked at length about the idea of classrooms without walls, BYOD and open educational resources. We also touched on youth culture, txt speak and digital literacies. The most important thing, I emphasised, is for teachers to consider the pedagogy, the potential learning gain and the student experience before they decide on the purchase of any technology.

Seán was a very good interviewer because he listened to what I had to say and then followed up my statements with useful questions that delved deeper into my ideas. The programme was broadcast on Sunday evening, and the podcast featuring the first part of the interview can be found here. The interview lasts approximately 20 minutes - listen carefully and you can actually hear the crows in the background! - do have a listen.

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

Eye on the future

Below is my keynote abstract for the C-SAP Showcase in Birmingham. C-SAP is the Higher Education Academy subject Network for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics, and it's in it's eleventh and final year of existence. The event will take place tomorrow at the Burlington Hotel, and will include numerous papers, workshops and poster sessions from delegates.

The future of learning will be...

How much can we shape our own futures? As an academic community, how much can we invest in our present to secure a better future for ourselves and our students? The answer is clear - the more we invest in the present, the more we will reap in the future. But we cannot control everything. There are randomly variable events. George Orwell once said 'He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past'. This is why the media - television, newspapers, radio, internet, gaming - have so much influence over public perceptions. For slightly different reasons it is also why lecturers can wield such power in the classroom. We know what technologies we can use to create excellent learning opportunities for our students. We also know from research what the pitfalls and caveats are. We know for example, that technology used for technology's sake is usually a mistake. We also know that learners engage better when they have tools to use they feel comfortable with and enjoy using. The balance decision is ours to make. What we don't know much about (but can guess) is what technologies are just around the corner, waiting to be harnessed. In this keynote presentation I will explore our learning technology past, attempt a glimpse into our technological future and trace the trends that will lead us into a future that will be open, personal, social and mobile.

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Eye on the future by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

From atoms to bits

The final keynote speech at ALT-C 2011 was given by Professor John Naughton, who read directly from his notes with his head down, and used no visual media to support his at times somewhat mumbling and occasionally difficult to hear presentation. The message however, was quite compelling. The key theme in his 'the elusive technological future' speech, was that the future has already overtaken the music, advertising and publishing worlds, because they were completely unprepared for what was coming. He summoned up the words of author William Gibson, who famously said 'the future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed' to drive his argument.

In a taciturn style, Naughton cited Napster and other music sharing sites as disruptive innovations that changed our world and the way we do business. He harnessed the 'atoms and bits' argument (first offered by Nic Negroponte in his book Being Digital) as an illustration of the rapid progress of web based delivery of content, direct from the originator to the consumer. He gave evidence that the digital future has supplanted the analogue quickly, remorselessly and unexpectedly. For Naughton, Craigslist had caused a dramatic and irreversible downturn in newspaper advertising revenue, and Wikipedia was hammering the nails into the proverbial coffin of the encyclopedia industry. Whilst this was perhaps a little sweeping and dramatic, Naughton's message still resonated with his audience. The almost unspoken question was whether the digital future would soon overtake the world of education. Are teachers and lecturers prepared for the brave new world of the digital? Are we still wasting time and energy shipping atoms when we should be dealing in bits?


From atoms to bits by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

End of the screen age?

Since the earliest days of television and the subsequent introduction of personal computers, the visual display unit (we now commonly refer to them as 'screens') has been an integral part of the user experience. Families who previously gathered around the hearth to share their day's experiences moved their orientation (and their living room furniture) to face 'the box'. As technology has improved, and high definition television broadcasts and multi-channel satellite and cable TV have become increasingly available, we begin to see many more screens throughout the home, and a subsequent 'social atomization' of family viewing habits (For more on this concept read Future Shock by Alvin Toffler). If we add personal computer and laptop screens into the mix, we observe homes and workplaces that are replete with visual displays that can be shared or used individually for a multitude of different purposes.

As a multi-tasking society says Nick Shackleton-Jones, we spend a lot of our time looking alternately down at our laptop or iPad screens and then up at the television,  Wouldn't it be sensible, he asks, to integrate the two into one? There is some sense in what he says. The next move though, he suggests, will not be to have one single device which you can put down and lose, or damage by dropping and breaking (how many iPhones have been sent to the great beyond in this way?), but a technology that can project the images onto some sort of heads up display. This might be in the form of a visor, or a pair of spectacles which you can still see through into the real world. Some people might recoil at this idea, claiming that it is either hazardous (while watching a Lady Gaga video you could walk into a lampost) or even dehumanising. In his prescient book Natural Born Cyborgs, Andy Clark argued that such increasingly intimate relationships with technology are a natural progression in the evolution of humankind, and that we adapt very quickly to new ways of using technology. This includes intimate contact with devices that are quite invasive, in for example, cochlear implants, plastic prostheses and organs, and cardiac pacemakers. It is already a common sight to see people wearing ear buds or blue-tooth ear pieces. How much of a step would it be to see widespread use of in-view visor displays.

In-view vision, whether in visor, heads-up, or projector form, would have the capability to lock into and exploit the full potential of applications such as augmented and mixed reality, where the onboard processor can generate and superimpose information about objects or people to give the viewer instant information about what or who they are looking at. This would be an important step forward for augmented reality tools, which currently rely largely on mobile phone cameras to function. A look at the TED video of Patti Maes and Pranav Mistry's Sixth Sense wearable technology may give you a sense of how this can be achieved and the positive (and possibly negative) effects that may emerge with this ambient approach to interaction with the environment.

If we went down this road, and began to replace static desk and wall mounted screens with handheld and in-vision systems, what might the impact be on our social lives? Would our perceptions of reality be changed? Would the dynamics of families and small communities alter as a result? If so, would these changes be positive or negative? Would personal in-vision technologies isolate many individuals from their communities? Will we see the end of the screen age in our lifetimes? You are invited to add your comments and views below.

Image by Jonathan O'Donnell


End of the screen age? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The future is not here ... yet

I seem to be spending a lot of time lately travelling around talking about 'the future'. Does this make me a futurologist or some kind of prophet? No - I'm just one more person who wants to know what might influence my professional life and my students' learning over the next year or two. We are all interested in the future, more or less. But trying to predict the future is not something I would recommend, because no-one really knows what tomorrow will bring. If we did, most of us probably wouldn't dare stepping outside our homes. Well, here's me in an interview with a German Human Resources magazine, in the run up to a keynote speech I'm giving in Cologne, Germany in September. I speculate on what I see happening around me now, and how the trends might evolve in the coming months....

You have been working in learning technology for over 35 years. Does the evolution of learning still hold surprises for you?

Oh yes. It never ever ceases to amaze me. Every day I am surprised because new things are coming to me and I discover new technologies or I learn about new software. The important thing for me has always been to find out what is coming next, because I want to be prepared, not just to know about it myself, but also to tell other people what is ‘just around the corner’ and how you can use it.

What has been the biggest surprise in the last years?

The biggest surprise for me so far has been social media: it is the biggest thing in the last ten years to hit the world of learning technology. Everybody can connect with everybody else now anywhere in the world. You can literally tap into any community of practice that you are interested in and find people who are very clever and knowledgeable and get almost instant answers from them.

Do you see this change as some kind of revolution in learning?

I go along with the opinion that it always has been an evolution but not a revolution. We are all building on to the previous work of other people as in the expression “standing on the shoulders of giants”. The first technology for me was always language. And since those days we have learned to turn communication into other forms – first the telegraph, then the telephone, radio and television, mobile phones and then the internet – they are all versions of language and ways of sharing our ideas with each other.

You already mentioned social media as one of the most important technologies that have changed learning. Which other technologies are there, that have had a similar impact?

Probably one of the biggest innovations has been the mobile phone. The ability to talk or send texts to anybody in the world – that was important. But with smart mobile phones there are so many new applications available now. Together with social media those two innovations are transforming the way we work and learn.

You predict in your blog that the future of learning apart from being social and mobile will be open. Can you illustrate this prediction?

Open learning and open scholarship are important to me because to be open is to be honest – and there are still too many people hiding behind walls, saying things that they don’t mean or can’t prove. For me, knowledge is like love: You can give it away as much as you like but you still get to keep it. Why should we charge people for information that they really need to survive? Brian Lamb, who is a Canadian academic and a friend of mine, recently said: “With this economic crisis that we are in now and the global problems that we are experiencing it seems perverse and wrong to hoard the knowledge and only give it to people who can pay for it”. So therefore openness in all its forms has to be the way forward. Open learning is also a second chance for people who have failed in school to get a qualification later in life, which is exactly what I did: I left school with nothing and I went to the UK Open University when I was in my thirties and got my first degree.

There are also other things like open access to knowledge, which more and more journals are providing for free, and there is open scholarship: As open scholars, I and others like me share our knowledge and our concepts for free: all of my blog posts are free and so are my slideshows, photos and videos.

And do you get a response from the people who read your content?

Oh yes. And I can also learn from them. Open scholarship means that as an academic I open myself up to criticism. People can actually point out to me what I may have missed out on or what mistakes I may have made. In effect, open learning in all of its forms becomes a reciprocal arrangement: it’s a mutual giving and receiving – all for free.

Do you think that learners already use those new technologies with all their possibilities?

Yes, it’s becoming a huge movement in the world. You see, social media is a leveler: everybody has an equal voice to say what they believe and to argue and discuss with each other. You send your thoughts around the world and people respond very quickly. I had conversations this morning with people in Australia, in New Zealand, Canada, all over Europe, and Malaysia. This would never have been possible without the internet and social media services like Twitter and Facebook.

Will learners need new skills to use these new technologies?

I think “skills” is probably not the correct word to use, I prefer to call them literacies. Literacies are skills, but they are more than that, because literacy means the ability to engage with your culture more deeply. Students – and teachers as well – will need to learn a lot of new literacies as these technologies become more pervasive in society. They will need for instance what is called “transliteracy”, which is the ability to present yourself and your ideas across multiple platforms and to switch very quickly between them without losing quality of content. The new literacies are also going to involve skills like the ability to be wise to the fact that not all content on the internet is correct, accurate or up to date.

What do these developments mean for trainers and how do they adapt to these changes?

Some trainers find it hard to keep up because they think it is too fast and too complicated for them to understand. But any teacher or trainer can exploit the power and the potential of these technologies. Most of them are free and easy to use and there is a definite pedagogy underpinning the use of these technologies. They just have to be aware that there are privacy and identity issues, issues of safety and content management. I urge every teacher and trainer to try these technologies out in a safe environment to see how they work and what they can do for their learners.

Can we apply this also to corporate learning: Do companies use these technologies and how?

Oh yes. I can give you an example: Just recently I was speaking at a conference in London. 450 people attended from all the major companies, from banks, manufacturing companies, the police, the military and government departments. Many of these 450 people were doing something new with technology and wanted to hear all about the latest digital media and technologies. I think that it is a growing trend that corporate trainers are tapping into the power of these media.

And do companies support the use of these technologies by their employees?

Well, corporate barriers are a problem – for instance when the management says you are not allowed to use Facebook because it’s against the company policy. I say to them, if you ban Facebook, you are losing one of the biggest opportunities to gain social credibility and social traction that you are going to have: the power of social media to connect people professionally as well as personally. The ability to tap into a professional network is one of the most valuable things that any employee can have. So do not turn your backs on social media in the workplace. Rather than block it, facilitate it in a way that it becomes a benefit to both your employees and your company.

You once said that learning transcends the boundaries of the classroom. Do you see problems when professionals, for example specialists in a certain field, connect with others from different companies?

Companies obviously want to protect their secrets, they have to – to a certain extent – because if they don’t, their rivals will come in and steal their ideas and capitalise on them. But there are ways of sharing information, there are also ways of marketing where messages become viral, enabling you to exploit the power and potential of social media, to sell your ideas to people. You see, all of my content is licensed under creative commons, which means that it can be shared and repurposed under the same license with which I have licensed it. Sometimes people translate my blog posts into other languages, and this way I get a huge audience which I would otherwise not have had. This is what companies have to see: They may wish to protect some things, but they may also wish to open up their ideas to sharing, to gain more credibility, more effective marketing and more efficient promotion of their ideas and products.

Do you think that people need rules for the use of social media in the company?

I don’t think that rules work anymore. Governments have tried to impose rules, they have tried to block Wikileaks for instance and failed notoriously, because the internet is far too big for one government or one organization to control. Many companies will have rules, but if they find that these rules are actually causing them damage, they will have to revise them and make them more flexible.

In Germany HR professionals have to face the demographic change. Are the new learning technologies just a new way to learn for digital natives or also for older people?

I don’t believe that younger people are more adept in using technology just because they were born after 1980 and I don’t want to categorize people this way. In my view, it is all about context rather than about age. What matters is what uses you see for the technology and then there is a willingness to learn to use it. These technologies are for everybody to use, demographics such as age don’t really matter that much.

How far are all these changes we talked about international phenomena?

In one sense there are huge differentials between how people use technology to learn to connect with each other, to communicate, to do commerce or business. If you go to Singapore, there is a population of people who are very much immersed in technologies, because it is one of the most wired – or wireless – countries in the world. You can’t compare that to Gambia in Western Africa, a very small nation where they don’t even have electricity for most of their country. But in other ways everybody is in the same boat, because everybody wants to learn, everyone wants to have a good life. The needs, aspirations and hopes are the same, but our opportunities are not the same. The future is unevenly distributed, which means that the future is not here yet.

Interview by Bettina Wallbrecht and Stefanie Hornung


Image source


The future is not here ... yet by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Shaping the future

Welcome to the future? Whenever we consider the future, it is always elusive, and always just around the corner. It is never quite here. We live in the present. All the time. All each of us have is our memories of the past, and a future that is imaginary. Until something happens, we really don't know what the future will bring, and anyone who says they know what the future holds is either a liar or deluded. Forget the soothsayers, the horoscope writers, the clairvoyants and the crystal ball gazers. Their prophecies of the future are nothing more than bland, generalised predictions which can be interpreted in many ways. If they get it wrong, it is difficult for anyone to prove anything. We just don't know what will happen next. That's probably a good thing.

William Gibson once famously remarked: 'The future is here - it's just not very evenly distributed.' This is a well used quote, but what did he mean by this? Some would suspect this is a reference to the digital divide, the haves and have nots in our society. For me it is more profound than that. It is that some see a different future to others, and there are many interpretations of exactly what the future holds. Some view it with trepidations, seeing only problems, while others see the future as a never ending set of opportunities to exploit.

How much can we shape our own futures? As a community, how much can we invest into our present to secure a better future for ourselves and our children? The answer is obvious - the more we invest in the present, the more we will reap in the future. But we cannot control everything. There are randomly variable events. George Orwell once said 'He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past'. This is why the media - television, newspapers, radio, internet, gaming - have so much influence over public perceptions. For slightly different reasons it is also why teachers can wield such power in the classroom. We know what technologies we can use to create excellent learning opportunities for the students in our care. We also know from research what the pitfalls and caveats are. We know for example, that technology used for technology's sake is usually a mistake. We also know that learners engage better when they have tools to use they feel comfortable with and enjoy using. The balance decision is ours to make. What we don't know much about (but we can guess) is what technologies are just around the corner, waiting to invade the classroom. What we certainly don't know is what effects new technology will have on learning, on our professional practice, on our daily lives. We can watch the trends, but who would have thought for example, that mobile phones, a tool developed for business and leisure, could be applied so effectively in teaching and learning? Conversely, who would have predicted the consternation and controversy mobile phones would cause in many, many school contexts? 

The subject of my closing keynote at this weekend's free to attend Reform Symposium online global conference will be 'The Future of Learning'. Here's the link to the Elluminate Room we will be using. I will draw on over 30 years of my own research and experience in the learning technology field to attempt to unravel this conundrum. I will discuss the trends in technology evolution and trace the social movements that have led us to this point in the history of education. I'm going to examine a number of ideas including personal learning environments, social media, open scholarship, resistance to change, content curation, augmented reality and the semantic web. In doing so, I hope to inspire and also challenge teachers to reflect on their practices, uses of technology, and instill hope for the future. The future is ours to own. 


The last word on this subject goes to President Barack Obama who declared: 'We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it'. 


Image source by 'Back of the Napkin'


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

2020 Vision

I read a post by Tina Barseghian on the Mind/Shift Blog entitled '21 things that will be obselete by 2020' today, which prompted me to start a conversation on Twitter to discuss what we think school would look like in another decade or less. Discussions are still ongoing in projects such as Purpos/ed about what education should be for/about, and gazing into the future challenges our ideas similarly. By thinking about what the future may look like for schools, we reflect on what we would like to see. By doing this, we critically evaluate where we are and where we have come from. I took this picture at a hi-tech convention and trade fair in Germany last month. In among all the shiny technology vendor stands sat this anacronism - a replication of the school classroom that I recall from my primary school days. The only thing missing was the inkwells, knibs and paper. The organisers had obviously done this for a purpose. For me, the purpose was to cause people to remember where we have come from in our personal journeys through education. It was also to remind us never to go back to that kind of education, but instead to move forwards. I am left asking my own question - what is my vision for education in the future?

In 2020, will we wander around learning technology exhibitions (or museums) and see simulations of computers with keyboard and mice? Will there actually be any physical exhibitions and museums? Will we gaze upon exhibits of school ICT suites and smile? And will our grandchildren sit on our knees and ask us - did you really have to touch computers to make them work?

What will school look like in the next 10 years? Will be still send children to school? Will there still be classrooms? What will the roles of teachers be in the next 10 years? Will they still be doing the same things? What will assessment of learning look like and what forms will it take? What new forms will technology take to facilitate mobile, anytime, anyplace learning? What will the curriculum look like and what will it contain? Just as importantly, what will be left out? Will teachers still experience the same problems of state interference, time and space pressures and lack of resources? Or will there be other, even more serious problems? Over the next few posts on this blog I'm going to attempt to discuss these questions, and I intend to draw on the comments received from readers and those who have already contributed their ideas on Twitter. The hashtag to use is #learning2020. Let's have a dialogue which may help us to see where we have come from and where we need to go, to secure quality learning for the next 10 years and beyond.

2020 Vision by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.