Today is our last computing lecture hosted by Darren Savage who works for Publics London with the aim to help huge developing companies such as Sony to adapt to the new technological era. To read more click here.
The purpose of today’s lecture was to draw our attention to ever changing world around us and how the problem with understanding the future of technology is that it is a very complex system and things can go wrong. The start of this presentation showed the different perceptions that people can have and how these can easily be changed. As you can see from the examples below no one knows how to predict the future and it clear to see how wrong people can be, but that’s okay. Reflecting on this from an educational stance the importance of knowing how the future will look shapes the nature of the educational system and the emphasis we place on certain subjects. Computing plays a key role in the development of our societal state and the inclusion of manual labour in most jobs is beginning to wear thin. Therefore the importance of computing and where the future lies is important but cannot be relied on as no one knows what will shape the future.
Darren’s lecture focused on the interactivity of the world wide web, where it stated and where he thinks it might be going, what I found interesting was the importance of modern technology and how it influences us today in a range of different ways below I have listed some of the examples that Daren kindly provided in this lecture.
Estimotes are low powered computers that can be attached to any wall or surface to deliver pre-programmed actions that develop contextualised experiences. While this sounds complicated it simply provides information relevant to the user when it detects human presence. Most likely to be used in contexts such as museums or stadiums the educational purpose of these is clearly present. Information that is stored in this could can be collected by users on their iPhone and shows a new interactive form of learning that has yet to be explored before. I personally feel that the implementing of such learning can provide new meaningful and interactive learning experiences that pupils will not forget making education fun and unforgettable isn’t that what education is all about I definitely think so.
The amazon echo is a voice communicated software that allows you to access the internet from the comfort of your home without having to type anything in.
I have one of these at home and have proved a video on how it works:
The amazon echo could change the learning environment in an astounding way. If pupils had any burning questions, could not access a computer and you did not have the answer they have someone else in the classroom that they could ask. Not only this amazon echo which is still in development phases and will be enhanced further in its abilities could eventually listen and adapt to the surrounding of the classroom to make it a safer and more enabling place for the pupils to learn. This is a really interesting concept that has not been explored before. Teachers and parent may be sceptical about the use of some form of technology that is not filtered being used in a classroom but being clued up on how to do this safely there are no barriers to pupils learning.
Overall reflecting on modern technology it is astounding how far we have come from when we started with the web and it is hard to construct what we think the future of technology might look like or think how we could possibly improve from where we are. However if you have the ability to use technology to the full there are no limits on what you can achieve.
You seem to like the Amazon Echo, but we must be conscious of what information is programmed for us to receive. However, I think It would be a good idea, would you pay for one yourself as I don’t think schools would fund such a device. How could we justify it to the head or ICT co-coordinator?