OPLS blog

Towards the end of last month, I accompanied representatives from the Aga Khan Academies group on a visit to Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Seattle. Our purpose - to explore possibilities for collaboration and knowledge exchange on the development of an e-learning strategy for the academies’ network.

We had a very productive day, and it was rounded off by a tour of Microsoft’s Home of the Future - a prototype of what our living spaces might look like 10 years from now. Housed in their executive briefing centre, it was conceived using the notions of discoverability, place and participation. From their website:

Place. A series of demonstrations showcase how software, services and devices can combine to deliver timely, relevant information to people based on their location, whether inside the home or nearby. One example is display technology shown in the neighborhood bus stop that provides continuous updates of route and arrival information, and is used to demonstrate how location services can automatically notify people about services near them or even when someone they know arrives at the bus stop.

Participation. Reflecting consumers’ widespread desire to more directly shape their sources of information and entertainment — through blogs, social networking Web sites, wikis and the like — the Microsoft Home features several emerging technologies designed to extend people’s self-expression. For instance, a teenager’s bedroom in the facility portrays what it would be like to have addressable wallpaper that employs organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology to display a variety of content such as artwork, video clips and Web pages.

Discovery. Technology systems throughout the Microsoft Home demonstrate innovative ways of prioritizing the huge volumes of information, media and content choices to which consumers will have access in the future. These systems can filter through myriad content sources — from thousands of TV channels, news reports, e-mail messages and electronic documents to music files, on-demand videos and blog entries — to intelligently bring people the content they care about most and at the time when they’re in the mood to enjoy it.

I enjoyed the tour, but what struck me most was the ubiquitous nature of the technology and how possibly intrusive it might become. Voice recognition was used throughout (the main computer was called Grace) and it reminded me very much of Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 - A Space Odyssey.

I was intrigued, though, by the notion of watching web content virtually with a friend and having conversations in real-time via VOIP - the move towards shared reality continues unabated.

I was not allowed to take any photos or video footage, so the next best thing? I had a quick look on YouTube, once I got home, and found this:

It doesn’t cover everything, but gives you an idea of what it was like.

At a recent dinner with a number of workshop leaders for IB psychology, we discussed the issue of mobile technologies in the classroom and the decision being taken by many schools and districts around the world to ban them. It was quite a vigorous debate (as you can imagine in such company), but a real eye-opener for me was the genuine concern around the table for things like mobile phones, iPods, PDAs etc, being used covertly and overtly in the classroom.

I’ve been reflecting since on what might be driving that concern and suggest the following:

• There is a concern that, if the student is listening to his iPod then he’s not necessarily listening to the teacher or his classmates
• There is a real or perceived threat to academic honesty
• The teacher is apprehensive at best, frightened at worst, by the fact that his students know more about mobile technologies than he does.

Josh Allen, writing in ISTE’s most recent Learning and Leading with Technology, even goes so far as to say, “Nothing that you can do on a cell phone will inspire students as they make their way in the world.” He suggests that investment in laptops would be a far better use of our very limited resources, arguing that, “any monies a school spent on phones and [their accompanying] plans would be much better served with any number of other technologies.”

I do not agree. Although there is a very real concern among teachers that they are being overtaken, perhaps overwhelmed, by these emerging technologies, I do not believe the right course of action is to ban them from the classroom. Equally, I do not agree with the sentiment that phone technologies have no educational use or application. You only need to look on Flickr - of students taking photos with their phones during a field trip, sending them to a class Flickr account and then creating and editing a digital slideshow later - for a myriad of examples.

Liz Kolb, writing in the same Learning and Leading with Technology article, states that “a basic cell phone has the ability to be the students’ Swiss Army knife of technology.” And I think she’s right. They can record audio and video, be digital cameras (with increasingly very high levels of resolution), act as video conferencing devices and blog editing tools, used as assistive technologies in special needs education, and can even been employed for formal assessment purposes (see the Ultralab example summarised by Stephen Heppell).

So, is it not a question of temperance and balance, rather than banning? And furthermore, are we not, as educators, compelled to embrace these technologies rather than ignore them and hope they’ll go away? Because, as we embark upon another year, I wonder if the real issue, and therefore concern for educators, is the fact that these technologies are changing the very nature of teaching and learning, and that we’re just not ready.