Tag Archives: wired

Where the iPad Goes, Students Follow

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“Five years from now when young students come into college, the expectation is going to be a lot different than it is now. They’ll be used to using tablets in middle and high school,” Stoltzfus said. “We have to be the ones that are pushing the limits.”

– Wired (Can the iPad Rescue a Struggling American Education System?)

It’s a valid point, this. Anecdotally, when we do Mobile Media Pilot training sessions in the classroom, there are very few hands left down when we ask if students have used an iPad, iPod touch or iPhone before.  Slightly more when asked about producing video or editing on these devices, but the number is dwindling with each passing semester.  From the Media Commons point of view then, it’s really sink or swim: the students have the skills and experience with tablet computing and it’s not long before they see its absence in their classes (as at least an option) as a real limitation.

Cyberpunk Saves the Day

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Just as when we were on the cusp of cyberpunk and didn’t know it, I’m hoping now for another new breed of writers, people who can craft drive-by speculations that leave us gasping with surprise.

My love of all things 80s and 90s artsy/techie of course has bred in me a fascination with the ethos of the cyberpunk.  It doesn’t help that I’m also a Stephenson junkie and a Gibson supporter…  Paolo Bacigalupi’s “How Cyberpunk Saved Sci-Fi” was a delightful find in the latest issue of Wired magazine.  (And it’s available to read for free online now, too.)

Perhaps not too surprising since the staff at Wired’s always been on the cyberpunk bandwagon, though.  Probably actually helping turn its tenets into our reality.

The View from Here

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“Audacity is easily written off as naïveté, as overshooting your resources or talents. And that’s a danger. […] But you can’t make the future without imagining what it might look like.”

And I think all of us in the field of instructional technology at least aim to walk the fine line between dreaming up a future for our faculty, staff and student clients…and overstepping the (sometimes scant) resources we have to help shape it.

Wired has pulled together 7 fantastic steps that they themselves employ for helping to predict what’s coming next. Ranging from “explore the willful inefficiency” to “look for deep design”, the list has lots to learn from – and lots to apply to our day to day. 20 years of experience can’t be too wrong, right?

Getting Gestural with TeleHuman

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“Communication breaks down even with a subtle little thing,” Vertegaal said. “When you think about preserving human communication, it’s more about what you leave out rather than what you add. With this system, we’re trying to leave out as little as possible.”

Roel Vertegaal of the Queen’s University Human Media Lab discusses the benefit of making remote communication more natural with the TeleHuman projection system.  The device allows for a 3D image to be projected at life size into an environment and further allows users to glean subtle information about a presenter that would have been lost by transmission in 2D.  While this device isn’t perfect (yet), the technology already has clear classroom implications.  Imagine sending yourself to any campus in the Commonwealth without going anywhere at all.  Certainly much less jarring for the learner than the alternate, “Big Brother” on TV approach.

Check out the video for a few previews of how the TeleHuman system works:

There’s more about the TeleHuman and its sister, BodiPod at Wired‘s site.

Very Inspiring (and Validating)

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What I love about this image above is what it’s actually depicting:  three game developers working together on a delightful new iOS title, Waking Mars, that their company, Tiger Style Games put out recently.  All without ever actually sharing an office space or any set of company resources.  

The workplace is changing dramatically and the fact that top-notch, critically acclaimed products can be created without ever actually sharing any physical meeting space is proof.  Having worked on several freelance projects with clients in multiple separate states, I know just how well this model works.  And continuing to work remotely with clients at 9 Penn State campuses in all corners of the western half of PA shows me daily just how well it can work.

(Wired)