Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Technology Emerges
First, thanks to Emily for posting a couple of things while I was away. Sounds like it was an exciting time to be in Guild.
My colleagues and I are preparing for a meeting tomorrow to present what we think is up and coming in education and technology. Of course, this is something we're thinking about all the time, but it's quite instructive to be forced to pause and collect the information.
Here are some of the things we've come up with, with a few links and thoughts:
For example, this morning, I was talking about the way people were piecing together lightweight web applications--blogs, wikis, image galleries--to create course sites, rather than using course management systems like Blackboard and WebCT. I was suggesting a portal-like app to tie everything together, allowing faculty to check off boxes for the applications they wanted to include. It needs to be simple to use and must be an automated process in terms of generating shells or it should be easy to import students. It should also allow one to make the content public or not. Maybe your syllabus would be visible just like a web site while the rest of the content is password protected.
Blackboard is kind of an all or nothing proposition. It's overkill for what most people want to do and yet constrictive in odd ways. Blackboard has not really been particularly innovative in the last couple of years while the web is marching forward at breakneck speed. Sakai, an open-source course management system, shows promise.
Wherever course management systems go, there will always be people who will venture off on their own in order to have more control over their course environment.
Another thing we were discussing is adding a social element to driving directions. That's especially important in a metropolitan area where you may want to avoid traffic, stoplights, or a bad neighborhood. For example, whenever I go to Mapquest or Google Maps or Rand McNally for directions to spots in the city, I almost always get a route that takes me down Lancaster Avenue. Yes, Lancaster is a direct route, but it's littered with stoplights and takes you through some ugly parts of town. And all of these tools don't allow you to say that you want to take the highway even if it's less direct. What if people could put in their favorite routes or rate others' routes so that when you input your address and destination, you would see similar routes and could choose from those or create your own route.
One of the difficulties of determining what will emerge in terms of technology and education is you never know what technology will be adopted by education. When Palms came out, lots of educational institutions jumped on them, but Palm development has stagnated somewhat. The web used to be a fairly static place, but is increasingly dynamic and it has become easier to create dynamic web sites without training. However, education primarily still thinks in static terms when it comes to the web. That's changing, but slowly.
Where do you see technology and education going? Where would you like for it to go?
educational technology, education
My colleagues and I are preparing for a meeting tomorrow to present what we think is up and coming in education and technology. Of course, this is something we're thinking about all the time, but it's quite instructive to be forced to pause and collect the information.
Here are some of the things we've come up with, with a few links and thoughts:
- Social Software. I think this will continue to grow in new and surprising ways.
- Web 2.0. A catch-phrase really for where the web is going and the way it's become a platform similar to a desktop and may even replace the desktop.
- Multimedia. True multimedia. It's becoming easier and easier to create video, audio, images and text and publish it all to the web. Increasingly, students and faculty will create their own multimedia content.
- Portable computing. Cell phones, pdas, iPods. These are all taking over.
- Gaming. Using games to teach. This is really taking off. There's a whole issue of Innovate dedicated to it.
- GIS/GPS applications. Interactive mapping. Connect map data to historical data, statistical data, video, images.
- Podcasting, screencasting. Related to Multimedia, but more like broadcasting.
- Interactive video classes. I'm sitting in one right now.
For example, this morning, I was talking about the way people were piecing together lightweight web applications--blogs, wikis, image galleries--to create course sites, rather than using course management systems like Blackboard and WebCT. I was suggesting a portal-like app to tie everything together, allowing faculty to check off boxes for the applications they wanted to include. It needs to be simple to use and must be an automated process in terms of generating shells or it should be easy to import students. It should also allow one to make the content public or not. Maybe your syllabus would be visible just like a web site while the rest of the content is password protected.
Blackboard is kind of an all or nothing proposition. It's overkill for what most people want to do and yet constrictive in odd ways. Blackboard has not really been particularly innovative in the last couple of years while the web is marching forward at breakneck speed. Sakai, an open-source course management system, shows promise.
Wherever course management systems go, there will always be people who will venture off on their own in order to have more control over their course environment.
Another thing we were discussing is adding a social element to driving directions. That's especially important in a metropolitan area where you may want to avoid traffic, stoplights, or a bad neighborhood. For example, whenever I go to Mapquest or Google Maps or Rand McNally for directions to spots in the city, I almost always get a route that takes me down Lancaster Avenue. Yes, Lancaster is a direct route, but it's littered with stoplights and takes you through some ugly parts of town. And all of these tools don't allow you to say that you want to take the highway even if it's less direct. What if people could put in their favorite routes or rate others' routes so that when you input your address and destination, you would see similar routes and could choose from those or create your own route.
One of the difficulties of determining what will emerge in terms of technology and education is you never know what technology will be adopted by education. When Palms came out, lots of educational institutions jumped on them, but Palm development has stagnated somewhat. The web used to be a fairly static place, but is increasingly dynamic and it has become easier to create dynamic web sites without training. However, education primarily still thinks in static terms when it comes to the web. That's changing, but slowly.
Where do you see technology and education going? Where would you like for it to go?
educational technology, education
