What will they think of next?
As technologies continue to improve and prices continue to come down, computers are becoming integrated more and more into our daily lives as well as being embedded into our physical environment. Engineers are building bridges that are equipped with sensors that report regularly about their structural integrity. Web enabled light bulbs allow us to change brightness and colour in a room by simply speaking into our smartphone. Touch, gesture and voice will all play a big part in how we interact with these computer systems. Products like the Ubi are already available to allow you to automate much of your entire home through voice commands (Tea! Earl Gey! Hot!)
Touch displays are being incorporated into a variety of surfaces, such as the mirror and window in these videos below.
This interactive mirror was developed by Keytec and provides a good example of how technology is increasingly becoming integrated into some unexpected areas of our lives.
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Samsung's new, transparent Smart Window replaces an existing window in your home, adding a touchscreen interface, essentially turning your window into a big iPad.
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Innovations
There is no shortage of speculation from pundits and academics as to where these technologies are headed. This article from TechCrunch explores 5 unique perspectives on the future of the human-computer interface. Below are a few more examples of innovative technologies that are already on our doorstep.
Productivity
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Entertainment
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It is likely that we will see more products that allow for multiple individuals to participate and interact in a single activity, whether collaborating on a project or playing a game. The two videos above give us a look at PixelSense (formerly called 'Surface') by Microsoft, running on a Samsung designed table. This table is not just a big, horizontal touchscreen. It includes a variety of cameras, sensors and scanners to allow it to sense and communicate with things that are placed on top. If you put a business card on top, it will scan it instantly. If you put a phone on top, you can drag the now scanned card near the phone and it will be instantly copied to the phone's memory. The video to the right shows two people playing air hockey together on one of these tables. This product can be found in hotel lobbies and bars and coffee shops. it is likely that one day, when the prices have come down a bit, we will find them in our homes.
The new SONY Tap 20 that just arrived along with Windows 8 looks like a start. (about 20 seconds into the video, you'll see it... and probably want it.)
Communication
The video above shows a recently announced breakthrough by Microsoft in voice recognition technology. He speaks to the computer in English and it repeats back to him in Mandarin Chinese. The most amazing thing is, it repeats back to him in his own voice.
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Accessibility
While voice, touch and gesture controls may be all the rage now, would you believe that it is already possible to control machines with your mind? This man recently climbed 103-story skyscraper in Chicago on his mind-controlled bionic leg. The future is already here!
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Convergence
The modern smartphone certainly represents a convergence of many technologies and has been at the core of much innovation in terms of how we will be able to communicate with and control the vast array of computer systems around us. But this is not the only vision. Below is a video that introduces Google's Project Glass--a wearable computer that goes a step further to blur the lines between man and machine.
Google's Project Glass is a wearable computer--a pair of augmented reality glasses that allows the user to interact using a variety of voice and gesture controls. The video above was the original ad for this product. For an even more amazing glimpse, check out the presentation that they gave at Google I/O 2012 which showed Sergey Brin onstage communicating live with some skydivers all wearing these special glasses.
What does all this mean for education?
There is no shortage of pundits and educational bloggers out there reporting on what the next big thing will be in education. Articles that speculate about how new technologies may help improve learning or make it more meaningful or fun are always a popular read. Here are a couple of examples that popped up recently.
Giving everyone a chance
Voice, gesture and touch-based interfaces allow for a wider variety of users to have access to new technologies than ever before. Educators are finding new ways to incorporate these technologies into the classroom. The KAP project will help autistic students to recognize the meanings associated with movements and gestures. It will allow students with profound and multiple learning difficulties to create music through movement while encouraging exercise.
Virtual surgery
VCath is one of a new generation of applications that leverage touch-based interfaces to try to create more realistic simulations. VCath comes out of Bangor University and is designed to train future neurosurgeons. It is a free download from the Apple app store.
What our group found to be of particular interest however is the way that new technologies are empowering students to engage in the creative design process--to stop thinking of themselves as content consumers but instead as content creators. The sorts of technologies that we have been looking at through our research into touch, gesture and voice appear to be far beyond our grasp. It is easy to assume that they are being developed in exclusive research facilities at top universities and the R&D departments of multimillion dollar companies. Well, as it turns out, these same technologies are also available to the inquiring high school student and the tinkerer in the garage. Have a look below and see what some of your colleagues are doing and what you could too!
D-I-Y
With the proliferation of the Maker movement in recent years, there are more opportunities than ever for people to participate in these technologies not only as consumers but as creators. There has been a deluge of open-source projects to encourage tinkerers to try their hand at programming computers and working with electronics. Projects such as Scratch and Greenfoot that teach programming to beginners through a simplified graphic interface, have already gained a foothold in the classroom. Hardware projects such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi and MaKey MaKey are beginning to make inroads as well. The diversity of users taking advantage of these technologies to develop their own projects has pushed us to reconsider some of our understandings of education in general. These technologies encourage users to learn by doing. They often do so far from a classroom, they learn independently or in small, informal groups. They seek out their own resources online, choosing materials that suit them best. These technologies allow novice users to create their own software interfaces with limited programming knowledge, even incorporating Touch, Gesture and Voice.
With MaKey MaKey, you can make just about anything into an input, or key, for a computer. The way that it works is simple. It is a small, microcontroller board that uses high-resistance switching to detect if a connection has been made, so that you can turn materials that aren't very conductive (but a little) into switches. The MaKey MaKey tricks your computer into thinking it is another keyboard and these objects are the keys. So you can communicate with your computer by tapping on bananas or leaves or pie plates. In this picture above, you can see how this user took advantage of the conductive properties of graphite, drawing controls for a Pac-Man game with a pencil. Players can tap the pencil-drawn controls with their fingers like they would buttons on an arcade machine. Try to imagine how you could incorporate this idea into your classroom. The possibilities are almost endless!
These two guys (above) wrote a program with the Scratch visual programming language that responds when their two swords touch. The swords are connected to a PicoBoard, a small microcontroller board with a variety of sensors that can be incorporated into Scratch programs. In this case, they used a sensor that is able to read changes in electrical resistance. Many teachers (myself included) use Picoboards in the classroom as a way of introducing students to physical computing.
With Microsoft's release of the Kinect SDK (Software Development Kit) many companies have been able to incorporate it as an input device for their own software. Projects like Kinect2Scratch allow even elementary school students to leverage the power of the Kinect into their Scratch programs and allow for gestural input.
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Greenfoot, another visual programming language that targets slightly older students than Scratch (it is primarily used with high school and university students) also includes drivers and blocks for users to take advantage of gestural input using the Kinect.
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The open nature of the Android operating system has allowed for developers and students to take advantage of the wide variety of sensors that today's smartphones have onboard. This user has has created an interesting piece of generative art using a programming language called Processing. He has incorporated an Android phone to allow for touch input.
This person used an Android phone together with an Arduino microcontroller to make a gesture-controlled robot. Wit it's relatively simple programming language and inexpensive hardware (an Arduino board costs about $20) the Arduino has become very popular with hobbyists and is beginning to make its way into schools as well. I have 20 Arduino kits in my class that I use with a grade 10 Design class.
This person is working on a voice-controlled robot using an Arduino.
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The Raspberry Pi is an inexpensive mini computer board ($35) also designed for education and hobbyists. This man is also using his Raspberry Pi to make a voice-controlled robot.
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Activity
While there has been a concerted effort within the education community in recent years to provide more opportunities for the integration of technology into other subject areas, the focus has largely been on communication tools. Social media and other Web 2.0 tools often make their way into classrooms now to facilitate sharing between school and home, the community and even across the globe. This however may be quite different from the integration imagined by such educational technologists as Seymour Papert, Sherry Turkle and Alan Kay where students are seen as makers and the emphasis is projects, as Papert famously put it in his essay, Situating Constructionism, "[learning] happens especially felicitously in a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity."
Try to imagine a cross-curricular classroom project that could incorporate one of the above (or a similar) technologies. Give a brief outline of the project in the comments section below. Be sure to consider how the technology provides some added value to the other subject areas. The idea is to come up with a contextualized learning task that truly incorporates concepts, skills and knowledge from a variety of subject areas. We might consider how MaKey MaKey was used in the video above to turn everyday objects into digital musical instruments. How does this promote understanding in music? Art?
Try to imagine a cross-curricular classroom project that could incorporate one of the above (or a similar) technologies. Give a brief outline of the project in the comments section below. Be sure to consider how the technology provides some added value to the other subject areas. The idea is to come up with a contextualized learning task that truly incorporates concepts, skills and knowledge from a variety of subject areas. We might consider how MaKey MaKey was used in the video above to turn everyday objects into digital musical instruments. How does this promote understanding in music? Art?