This will be the first in a series of articles I’m planning to post over the next few weeks on the topic of the future of learning technologies.
In this series I’m going to look at some trends and developments in a range of technologies and try to see how they relate to each other and how they might impact on education over the the next few years.
One of the first things I would like to focus on is the digital divide and what I believe is the ‘myth’ that technology is expensive.
Firstly, I would like to state that the digital divide hasn’t been created by technology, but by economics. It’s a financial divide that has been around for thousands of years and one that thousands of years of paper education hasn’t been able to bridge.
Here is some thing that I feel puts this in perspective though.
PastI first bought a computer in 1997. It cost almost £2,500. It was one of the first computers with an MMX chip which meant that, as well as connecting to the Internet (by unplugging my phone and connecting the cable to my computer) at a staggering 32k, if I waited long enough I could actually download and play extremely tiny and blurry video clips. When I paid extra (quite a lot extra) for some software I was able to create text and spread sheets and if I bought some more software I could edit images and make some pictures. This computer had the same storage capacity on the hard drive as that of all the computers in the UK in 1975 put together.
PresentTen years later in 2007 I bought an iPod Touch. It had ten times the capacity of the computer I had paid £2,500 for so that’s ten times the capacity of all the computers in the UK in 1975 combined. It fits in my pocket, connects to the Internet through wireless broadband, I can stream and watch high quality video, audio, read and create text, download literally thousands of small applications to modify the tasks it can do for me from using it as a recording studio to drum machine to games console and it cost me well below 10% of what I paid for the computer ten years earlier.
FutureIf this rate of development remains consistent that means that by 2017 for around £20 I will be able to by some form of portable device that will have 100 times the capacity of all the computers in the UK in 1975 put together, carry it in my pocket, if I need to carry it at all, be able to access the biggest library of books, audio and video ever assembled in the history of humankind and create who knows what on it.
The educational potential of such a device at that price is truly astounding, especially when you put that in perspective against the price of books. That’s approximately the same price as just one students’ text book at today’s prices.
Often when I do talks or training on technology I get at least one teacher saying something about the digital divide, as if that were a good reason for not using technology in education (We’ll be making the digital divide bigger if we do!).
This has the same logic as refusing to give your students food because some people in the world are starving! Surely what we really want is to feed everyone and to educate everyone and perhaps for the first time technology is taking us to a place where that might just be possible. Personally, I’m looking forward to 2017.
In the next post in this series I'll be looking at the humble web cam and its possible role in the future of technology.
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Nik Peachey
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The latest one is Tips for Producing and Managing Flash-based e-Learning Content. In all there are eight ebooks there dating back to 2005 and they are all free to download.
Most virtual reality applications at the moment are being delivered through mobile phones with cameras on, so when you hold up your mobile phone and point the camera in any direction you can see information about the things around you on your phone screen and click on the screen to get more information.
Image from PetaPixel article on AR apps for History
Think about how this simple piece of paper if applied to the pages of a book, could transform the experience of reading and the relationship of text to images.
Here is some thing that I feel puts this in perspective though.
Present
You can listen to an audio recording of the chat here. Many thanks to Carol Rainbow for supplying the recording for the session again.
In this show I'll be interviewing Leon Cych (aka: Eyebeams Electricteeth) Leon Cych is a web designer, coder, teacher, poet, artist, broadcaster, journalist, independent consultant, advisor, teacher in ICT in education in the UK.
This is a nice variation on the standard dictation activity , because it demands that students not only recognise the words, but can make sense of the text.
Audio Puzzler is part of a research project at the Georgia Institute of Technology and they are keen to receive feedback from anyone who tries the puzzles.
