Emerging Educational Technologies Discussion Samuel Helms Academic Affairs

When to Adopt? Remember these? Benefit-cost analysis, including the cost of buying, supporting, and TRAINING! Technology that is adopted should be part of the mainstream, at least in a small way. This is the lesson of laserdisc. Came out in 1980s but never really adopted in the west (although it was popular in Japan) Adopted by many schools. Wiped out by DVD. We don’t want to make this mistake again. There is nothing wrong with being a little behind cutting edge. Remember these?

Technologies up for discussion Solid object printing Augmented Reality and Holograms eBooks Cloud Computing

Solid Object Printing Demo Solid object printers are just that: they are printers that make solid plastic objects. There are different versions of this technology, but one of the more popular is from Z Corporation. Z Corp’s color 3d printers use a powder and a resin dripped on the powder to create strong, support structure free, plastic models. After a dip in a binding resin, the objects become quite strong and can actually be used to make functioning models. The drawback with these printers is that they are quite slow. Objects the size of a cell phone require three hours to print. The advantage of the Z Corp printers is that the materials are quite cheap. To print a cell phone size object only costs a few dollars in materials. For a demo, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps0WEZbDjHE.

Solid Object Printing (Future) Electron Beam Fabrication Desktop 3d Printing (Designjet 3d) Cost Zcorp 450 = $40,000 HP Designjet 3d = $17,000

Discussion Do you have programs at your school that could benefit from this technology? When would you request to buy one?

Augmented Reality AR: BMW AR Demo Holograms: Tangible holograms

Augmented Reality AR on phones.

Augmented Reality The AR contact lens

Discussion How does this relate to VR? Will AR replace VR? How do you see this being used in the classroom? What about the online classroom? What would need to happen for you to start using this?

eBooks Spring’s Alex Amazon Kindle B&N’s Nook Apple’s iPad

eBooks Quick note about applicability in the classroom: http://www.popsci.com/gear-amp-gadgets/article/2009-09/do-kindles-represent-future-studying-maybe-not 50 students at Princeton in 2009. All got Kindle’s instead of books. Student’s didn’t like it: Can’t take notes No page numbers

eBooks (future) Electronic Paper (eInk): Slow refresh rate can’t support video. Grayscale (for now, color is coming) Uses very little power Some are touch sensitive (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq_2LiTxhls ) iPad doesn’t use eInk (it is LED backlit) Many people are calling the iPad the future of computing (Mahoney, 2010a, 2010b) My prediction is that eBooks will be to paper books what MP3’s are to vinyl. Having a first edition signed cannot be replaced by a digital file. Sure, eBooks will eventually become mainstream (and the iPad may be the thing to do it), but paper books are here to stay. I don’t think this is mainstream yet, but it is getting close. Personally, I plan on buying an iPad and reading books on it.

Discussion Would you recommend adopting this technology (any of them)? If not, when would you consider doing so? How could this benefit education? Could it hurt education?

Cloud Computing Applications are accessed over the internet and provided by a server. The internet has to be fast enough to allow the application to run as if it were on the local hard drive. With fiber optic speeds, access to the internet is faster than a computer’s access to its own hard drive. This way, one application can be installed on the main server in the cloud and used by any number of remote computers (at the same time). This means that users do not have to buy the software or hardware themselves, all they need is a monitor and keyboard (although I think most will still have some smaller processor and hard drive). Then they just rent the software from the server on an as-needed basis and only pay for what they use. The model is much like a public utility. Take electricity, the source of the electricity can come from wind, coal, solar, gas or whatever, but all the end user sees is a single bill from a single source. The electricity comes from one point and the

Cloud Computing: Discussion What are some ways this could help your school? What about in the classroom? 1. You could buy one software package and have everyone share it. Maintenance and cost would be dramatically reduced.

Additional Topics Are there any additional technologies you would like to discuss?