Reading With the Machine

It is an interesting debate.  Especially when it is with a librarian who is passionate about books, the conventional paper-based type.  I’ve listened to (and read about, on a machine) the arguments for paper-based books, the cognitive advantages, the feel, the humanity of it.  I think this is a case of hanging onto a long tradition and it repeats itself over and over through history.  Even when the Gutenberg press was invented, the religious leaders of the day tried to paint it as a tool of the devil.  I suspect that was to protect the vocation of the tireless monks copying texts and to protect the political leaders power and control over the spread of knowledge.  Or, how about when the oral tradition was shifting to a written one, albeit using stone tablets.  There were fears that peoples ability to remember would be lost.  With any change in tools, there is a sense of loss and a sense of wonder and gain.  Reading is one of those practices that is under siege from the perspective of the old ways are being significantly challenged.  I wrote a few years back about the Future of Books.

I was in an elementary school last week and the vice principal, who teaches 0.7 of which a good chunk is library, took me into the library for the ‘reading block’.  All students in all classes were involved in some form of reading activity at the same time and it occurs every day.  In the library she had kids (grade 2’s in this case) grab laptops (works on Windows, Mac, iPad, iPod, etc.) from a cart, sit around round tables, put on head phones and use a reading program called Raz-Kids. They logged in using the class ID, found their profile (a folder) to get to their selection of books and progress information.  They have access to hundreds of books that are age / grade relevant.  Each student chooses which book they wish to read or picks up where they left off.  They also use this tool from home. 

With Raz-Kids, the learning work flow is something like this:

• choose book
• listen to an engaging human voice read it while it high lights the words, presents photos, drawings, and background sounds and music to support the storyline
• once they are confident they can read it, they will read aloud to the machine, there is a record button to record them
• once they are confident in their understanding of the content, they take an online comprehension quiz – the machine will redirect them back to parts of the book for sections they do not pass the threshold on
• once the machine ‘feels’ (the teacher is involved too) the student is ready to level up, it presents more advanced books to choose from

The teacher has access to all the students reading information such as which books they have completed, how they scored on comprehension, and to their recorded self-reading.  Think about the efficiency alone in this approach.  The teacher would never have enough time to observe, listen, assess in the way the machine does.  The machine is making possible the impossible in supporting and evaluating these kids.

Importantly, the kids’ parents can access the same information.  Parents are encouraged to read along with their kids, to listen to their kids read with the program, etc.  Now, the extra amazing part of this is the school and community population is 75% ELL (English Language Learners)!  What a fantastic way for the kids AND their parents/grandparents (many multigenerational families living together) to learn English together. 

So what might the future of reading with machines look like.  What if the machine analyzed facial expression, eye movement, pace, etc. and connected that to the point in the book the reader was at.  It could correlate content type, word complexity, background sounds and music, machine reader voice tone, gender, etc. to how the human reader reacts.  When the human reads out loud, it could correlate their pronunciation, pace, flow, etc. to the content.  The machine could pop up meanings of words, offer to explain context, etc. when it ‘notices’ the reader struggling.  Perhaps the machine could offer a rich 3D immersive experience of the content to the reader.  The reader would put on some 3D immersive equipment and ‘enter in’ to the book to experience it with all their senses.  The machine would learn their readers preferences, nuances, ‘intelligence’, etc. and tailor assistive materials and experiences to the reader to maximize enjoyment AND comprehension. 

You might be thinking, ‘you are crazy Brian’.  If you are, you are falling into the trap on using the past and the present to predict the future.  Let your imagination run out on an exponential change scale and what I am describing is most certainly possible, probably within 10 years.  Through the massively parallel connections between human brains through the Internet and the mass collaboration on ideas, research, and inventions, new technologies are arising faster and faster every year – exponentially faster that is.  So, I get that we like our own traditions and experiences, i.e., ‘the book’, but we will need to get over it and take advantage of the new possibilities.  We are holding back the potential of people when we limit their access to new technologies.  I’m not naïve in thinking all technological progress is good and healthy, but I do believe we should leverage the good aspects where possible.

Technorati Tags: books,k12,education,future,immersive,personalized learning,student,Raz-Kids,reading

The Rise of the Digital Silhouette

How much do you think about the traces of you, that you leave behind as you engage more and more with technology?  There has been a not so subtle intrusion into what used to be our private lives where a lot of what we do and say is now recorded.  Notice how apps on our smartphones want access to our photos, contacts, and location.  Sure you can deny such access but then the value of the apps diminishes significantly, often to zero.  Do you remember which apps you have given the go ahead to track your movements, your buying habits, your interactions with others, etc.?  We use our digital tools in very trusting ways not really thinking about what the companies behind them might do with all that data about us.  Google makes something like 97% ($32M) of their revenue from advertising – actually from us.  Our use of their tools generates tremendously valuable data about human behavior including purchasing habits.  They really should be paying us for our use of their tools!  Google probably knows more about people, in recent years individuals like you and I, than any other company.  Perhaps more than the government.  Now with their push into wearable technology like Google Glasses and then other companies like FitBit, people are beginning to give over an enormous amount of data about themselves including every interaction with every person, all their location information, video recordings, phone calls, text messages, photos, heart rate, sleep patterns, and who knows what else.  Where does this lead us to?

Switching gears for a moment…  there are some significant benefits to education systems in the ‘Internet of things’ movement.  Imagine that students, wearing various data logging technologies, including Google Glasses, interacting with each other, with ‘text books’, human teachers, each other, and other learning resources, along with a host of educational apps, are continuously digitally documented.  Imagine that there are ‘intelligent’ algorithms (think IBM’s Watson but even more advanced) that look for patterns, provide real-time recommendations and coaching that adjust the student’s personalized learning plan, directly interacting with and advising the students like a personal learning coach.  Imagine that when a report card is due, the student’s ‘digital learning guide’ automatically produces a summative report card complete with a ‘live’ info graphic on the student’s learning and generates it directly in the student’s online learning portfolio and sends an alert to the parents.  The parents can interact with the report card in many dimensions with their smartphone or on a traditional web browser.  They can see point data including pictures, video clips, audio reflections by the student, opinions from their digital guide, and commentary and feedback from their human ‘teachers’ (learning facilitators).  Actually, this access to learning activity and progress would be available in real-time as well – the summative report would simply be a culminating event or check-point along the way.  Such is the potential future of life logging and ‘big data’ analytics when fully integrated and immersed into the learning and teaching process.  You may think ‘this is crazy and impossible’. I say, think again.  I believe that this type of future is not far off.  Machine learning is growing in sophistication and usefulness, exponentially.  Researchers are learning that us humans are far more predictable and pattern driven than previously thought.  Machines are very good at pattern recognition and are rapidly getting better at decision making.  Our machines will one day ‘know us’, perhaps better than we do…

So, whether we like it or not, we are being cloaked in digital information.  Rather, for those of us that regularly use mobile and other technology, our lives are beginning to generate digital information in droves.  I don’t think this is all bad – there are some very good outcomes possible.  Some of the health applications are encouraging.  A significant problem in getting an accurate and timely diagnoses from our doctors is a lack of useful information.  With real-time massive volumes of physical and psychological data and health intelligent machine algorithms, knowledge of our health will be orders of magnitude better.  With real-time data on individual student learners and machine algorithms, the dream of truly personalized learning and teaching may actually be possible.  In this future, human teachers will not be concerned with collecting assessment data and making judgments on individual learners.  Rather they would help kids connect with their passions, provide human wisdom to their learning, facilitate human interactions in classrooms (I believe in continued use of classrooms with face to face learning interactions regardless of the technology that is developed), and teachers could be that empathic listener and advisor that kids need as they deal with emotions, wonders, problems, worries, and dreams.

Like anything, history teaches us that most technologies have a dark and bright side to them.  If we attempt to resist the technological data capture and analytical tools, others may use them for darker purposes.  As we engage with these tools, understand them, shape them, and voice our opinions on their uses, we can do our part to ensure positive helpful humanized digital silhouettes are the result.  Be aware about what the tools you use, do.  What traces of a digital self are you creating by using them?  How are the companies behind the tools likely to use your digital data for their gain?  Get ready for a very interesting ride into the future…

Technorati Tags: K12,algorithm,automation,digital,education,future,learning,speculation,IBM,Watson,Big Data

Transformative Change

Many of us resist change.  We like our comfort zone.  However we are changing constantly as that is just part of living.  One of my co-speakers at the symposium Moving Educational Technology from Enhancement to Transformation held yesterday said that as soon as we speak, we change.  How true.  Change is inevitable so why do so many of us try to resist it?At the symposium I spoke about Transformative Change.  We crowd sourced ideas from the participants on what they can stop, continue, and start doing to increase success in shifting to majority adoption of innovations in their classroom, school, or district.  You can view the audience contribution here along with my co-speakers audience feedback on What Transformation and Ecologies of Learning.

Organizations and individuals have a choice to embrace change, grow, and become more than they are today.  Alternatively, they can fear and resist change and ultimately become less useful and potentially irrelevant.  Embracing change can be invigorating.  I get that it can also overwhelm us.  Part of the problem is we often think we are changing something but rather we add on something new to what we are already doing.  We need to decide what to stop doing when we embrace something new or we may just overwhelm and frustrate ourselves and others.

Some significant requirements for successful change are preparedness, capacity, and competence.  If those who we expect to change are not given time and resources to become competent and confident with the new, they will be more inclined to fear the change and resist.  However I believe individuals need to ‘own’ responsibility for their own development and adoption of change.  As well, if change is pronounced from on high and done ‘to’ people, resistance is more likely.  We change agents need to involve people in the changes we want to foster in our organizations.  I believe in leveraging a broad range of ideas and input – we change agents don’t have all the answers and ideas but with others we can assemble the best of the best that are available.  We are in fact all in this together!

Another thing I have learned in leading change initiatives is that you have to pressure for and support the change long enough to break free of the elasticity of change.  If not, people tend to revert back to their comfort zone, to the familiar, rather than persist through the difficulty of change.  Be careful though, change can exhaust people.  Be sure not to aim to change too much or too fast.  People can only handle so much.  Build people’s confidence, help them feel ‘big’ relative to the change.

Generally, any population of people will distribute relative to their ‘innovativeness’ as indicated in the diagram above.  Everett Rogers has written five editions of The Diffusion of Innovation which started with farmers and has now been applied to information and communications technology.  From his work we learn that we need to foster change initiatives differently with different types of people.  Ultimately, it’s the connections and trust relationships that exist or can be formed within the population (a school, district, etc.) that will help a change diffuse through the rest of the population. 

For change to begin and take hold, you need someone to start acting differently, using the new technology, etc.  These people, the Early Adopters, are the missionaries, the opinion leaders, and they are very important to getting other segments of the population to adopt the change.  They begin the momentum of change and help it diffuse through.

A key element of any successful innovation or change is a compelling vision.  I like Simon Sinek’s model where he says you have to Start with Why.  The more you can inspire people to want the change you are advocating for, the easier it is to get them on board and supporting it.  Simon uses the example of Apple marketing.  Apple has convinced people to join a cause, one where they are changing the status quo.  They don’t just sell products, they sell a whole new experience, often one no one even thought of before.  People buy why they do things, not what they do.  The same goes for your change effort.

Change is hard for most of us but not impossible.  Reach the hearts AND minds of people, build trust relationships, help people become ‘big’ relative to a change, and articulate and clarify the steps to adopt a change and you are more likely to successfully diffuse it through the population.

Technorati Tags: advice,change,education,framework,innovation,leadership,presentation,Simon Sinek,Switch,Diffusion of Innovation,Start with Why

Excited but Worried

This morning after breakfast, my wife and I were sitting chatting in our family room enjoying a French dark roast cup of amazing coffee when my iPhone, sitting on the coffee table, lights up.  It signaled that a new email had arrived.  This reminded me of how amazing our technology has become and how we essentially take it for granted.  How did the email get to my iPhone?  Really.  Can you explain it in full detail?  We can talk about how it came from the ‘cloud’ or a server at my work.  But how did it find my iPhone?  It had to find my my city, street, and house.  We use Shaw for wireless and Internet, so somehow (I know, IP routing, electrical signals, etc., but) it got from my worksite to Shaw then through kilometers of cables, dozens of complex machines, and eventually to our house.  It then ‘jumped’ into the air and enveloped the room.  Somehow the iPhone ‘sucked’ the email bits from the radio waves (how did it know to do this?) out of the air and converted it into an English readable message of text, pictures, and other materials.  But, even here if we dive deep into the iPhone guts, it’s a complete mystery to most humans.  Seriously, isn’t this stuff mind boggling amazing?  And this, just for a ‘simple’ email.

After reading the latest edition of THE FUTURIST, I became quite worried about where technological developments are taking us.  I’ve written and speculated a lot here about the future, some optimistically and other times not so much.  When I read about the trajectory of biometric research (p. 45 THE FUTURIST Jan-Feb 2014):

• body-odor research (US Homeland Security) to track odor changes to support lie detection
• 3D imaging (Japan) to capture gait, walking style, and barefoot print analysis – to recognize a person (90-99% accurate)
• Palm vein patter recognition (already used in some US schools) scanned wirelessly
• Human posterior pattern recognition developed for antitheft systems in the seats of cars (Japan) – 98% accurate

Add to this the explosion of unmanned and increasingly autonomous / intelligent drone mini-aircraft, millions of surveillance cameras, and we see how technology increasing supports a “Big Brother” surveillance society.  This should worry us.

Some people might refer to technology as good or bad when in fact it is a tool that can be used for good or bad.  It’s human behavior we need to worry about.  It’s similar to discussions in schools and Districts about Internet use or Digital Citizenship – it’s not about a good or bad tool, it’s about educating people about using good behavior with the tools.

I do tend to lean toward the excited side when considering uses for and the future of technology – I see potential.  However, I do read a lot more now about how in our lifetime increasing numbers of scientists and futurists are predicting questionable advancements in technology.  People write about the advancement of human-machine interfaces to replace missing body parts or nano-scale machines (nano-bots) that will replace antibiotics and other drugs – machines that will swim within our bloodstream seeking out bad cells and repairing them onsite.  This sounds great but where does it stop.  Perhaps nano-bots or body part replacements will be used to enhance human capabilities.  The Internet has become a global memory extension for all who connect…  Maybe as some predict, we will choose to download our brains into machines that live forever (I don’t buy this future).  This could make steroid use in sports look like child’s play.  Due to the cost, one could imagine an elite society of wealthy individuals having exclusive access to these ‘miracle’ devices to enhance themselves.  Or think about autonomous drone use and the war machine.  We already have quite the capacity to kill one another, do we really need to be moving towards a ‘Terminator’ dystopia where robots are self organizing entities?

I think in schools and District we need to be teaching, learning, and talking a whole lot more about what is happening with technology, way beyond the basic use of iPads, laptops, and SMART Boards.  There needs to be more ethical conversations about technological advancement.  We still debate the value and purpose of technology in schools when it is rapidly enveloping our lives.  Shouldn’t conversations about potential futures and how we want to relate to our technology, start young, in our families, churches, and in our schools?  Or do we trust these conversations and the resulting trajectory to the computer scientists, engineers, war machine generals, and government officials to figure out on our behalf.  I’m not so sure the latter are always acting in the interest of the people they are supposed to serve.

Back to being excited about technology and the future.  I actually do think we have a lot to be excited about in how technology is advancing – it truly is miraculous.  But we need to balance this with thoughtfulness about consequences to environment, people, peace, fairness, freedom, equity, and power balances.

Technorati Tags: 21stcentury,automation,disruption,future,machines,drones,iPhone,amazing,"Big Brother",surveillance,Terminator

Focus

A recent post, The Secret to Focusing on What Matters by Dan Rockwell talks about choosing One Word to focus your attention.  His statement that “[i]nsignificant leaders focus on trivialities” struck home with me.  I find myself so scattered most of the time trying to take on too much too fast for too many people, often things that really aren’t that important in the big picture.  I know that I need to pick a few priorities and do them well.  In practice that seems to be more ideal than real.  In my work, and I see it for so many of my colleagues and staff, there are simply too many seemingly important things to do.  It is a real challenge to step back and decide what not to do.  So often we, myself included, just work harder and forget to work smarter.  Back to Dan Rockwell’s post… If I were to choose ‘one word’, I think it would be ‘focus’.  I’m not saying I’m willing to commit to this yet (procrastinating), but I’m thinking about it.

I need to ask myself, if ‘focus’ is to be my ‘one word’, how might my priorities line up to be in the coming years?  I will need to use focus as a lens to judge my use of time.  I don’t know about you but it is often very difficult to not follow and read the articles behind great links shared by colleagues and others on Twitter.  I do budget some time early in the morning to read and reflect on ‘what’s new’.  I expect myself to be well informed on a broad array of topics so this is important.  But sometimes 90 minutes can slip by and I’ve consumed interesting information but not contributed to my real work.  I need to become relentless about focusing my energy on what’s important and not just interesting.

I am trying to focus my purpose and priorities as outlined in this image…

But, the world does not stand still, especially with respect to technology.  So much about the world of technology is going through accelerating change, the ‘what’ items here will need constant refinement and some will go while new ones will come even before some get started.  It’s a crazy world!

But, there are other significant priorities I am focused on that are not directly stated here.  I value relationships with my ‘clients’ and thus invest a significant portion of my time visiting with, listening to, and sharing with school and district staffs.  Equally or perhaps more importantly, I invest significant time listening to my staff, considering how and where to develop my staff, to prepare them for an unpredictable future fraught with changes to their work, and to better align them to the shifting needs of our business.  This strategic workforce design and planning effort is definitely in my top priorities for 2014.  I also value the ‘partners’ from industry we rely on for hardware, software, and services and thus invest time with them accordingly.  These client, staff, and partner investments are essential to moving us forward together in the most effective manner.  This is hard and time consuming work.  As Dan Rockwell says “[t]he things you focus on express the importance of your leadership”.  I may be a ‘technology leader’ in title, but to be successful and relevant, I’m a people and relationship leader in practice.

My overarching goal, my focus, my “why”, is to ‘transform learning and work through technology’.  Some have asked ‘to what end?’ and that’s a great question.  Embedded in the statement is the assumption that technology will transform learning and work for the better.  I and those I work with will need to work hard to resist the allure of technology for technology’s sake.  I want to leave the places I work at, significantly better off, than when I arrived.

Focus…  I don’t know yet how well I will do to reduce the numerous distractions in my work life and focus on what really matters, but this is what I aim to do in 2014 and beyond. 

Technorati Tags: Leadership Freak,Dan Rockwell,leadership,learning,management,planning,professional,staffdevelopment,value,focus,goals

A Transformation Agenda

The more I read about history, the more in awe I become of the numbers and types of transformational changes that have occurred.  I read (audio book) Niall Ferguson’s Civilization: The West and the Rest this past year.  Empires as we know, rise and fall but their stories are impressive.  A rise and a fall are both transformational events.  We humans experience transformational events personally and on larger scales, all the time.  Being born is a pretty transformational event don’t you think.  Something seems to happen to many of us along the way through life to reduce our tolerance of transformation,

“a change or alteration, especially a radical one” (free dictionary, Dec. 14, 2014).

We become comfortable with the status quo and resistant to change.  Ruben Puentedura’s in his discussion of the SAMR model describes stages of change as Enhancement: Substitution to Augmentation and Transformation: Modification to Redefinition.  His context is change driven by technology, the realm I spend most of my time in.  However, I think the model can apply to and guide thinking about change in general.  Jordan Tinney, soon to be Superintendent for Surrey Schools writes about this here in a recent post.

I recently read (audio book) Onward by Howard Schultz CEO for Starbucks Coffee Company (good book review here).  Those that know me personally will not be surprised I read this given my affinity to Starbuck coffee…  But seriously, what a great story of survival and change for an amazing and very large company.  You should read the book.  Howard had to fairly quickly ‘right the ship’ call Starbucks as it was veering of course by the year 2006 and then the global financial meltdown hit.  He developed a very focused approach to reinventing Starbucks, he called the ‘plan’ his Transformational Agenda (I hope he doesn’t mind me titling my blog the same).  He shares a story of a global leadership conference held in New Orleans and the 1000s of Starbucks partners investing collectively many 1000s of hours in cleaning up, painting, planting trees, etc. all paid for by Starbucks and partner volunteer hours.  He talks about personal visits to Kenya to meet with small farm coffee growers to learn about their needs and to help them be the best they can be at producing quality coffee.  He and other partners began supplying some cows to families in response to their needs.  The cows are now reproducing and expanding their reach to meet the needs of other village families.  Remarkably, Starbucks is the only company (to my knowledge) that provides dental and medical benefits to all their employees (including part timers).

A key piece to the Starbucks story is how important it is to invest in your people (he calls them ‘partners’), to be relentlessly focused on your customers wants and needs, and to strive for specific experiences and quality.  I think we can learn a lot from Howard as we lead and implement change in our own roles and organizations.  A key part of my role as CIO is to choose and advocate for the ‘right’ technologies to ‘transform our learning and work’.  This is no easy feat.  I recall a meeting early in my current role with a key stakeholder where they suggested that a way to do this is to ‘win the hearts and minds of teachers’.  I agree and this will be key to our ‘transformational agenda’.  It is important to be clear about why your organization exists, how you will support transformation, and what you will do to accomplish this.  I’ve previously written some brief thoughts on this here.

Those of you serving as leaders of IT organizations must read The Quantum Age of IT.  This is what Toronto School Board CTO Peter Singh said to me last month – I read the book.  Our IT organizations will either be transformed by us or for us.  IT as we’ve grown to know and love, is changing rapidly.  The author starts out early by saying “IT as we know it is dead” (Kindle Location 221).  “This is not your normal, run-of-the-mill change. This is big. This is game-changing. This is not a flavor of the month.” (Locations 250-251)

Essentially, our business is being disrupted, as we know it, into oblivion faster than most of us would like to admit.  My first post to this blog (4 years ago), Disruption is Coming and a month later, the Future of IT Services – Part 1 and Part 2 talk about this coming disruption.  Full disclosure, although I’m an avid reader and writer about the future and technology, this topic, the radical transformation and disruption of my work is disconcerting.  On the other hand, this is a good thing.  As a change and transformation leader where I’m asking others to get ready for their work, as they know it, to be completely changed, I can honestly say I’m speaking to myself too.  These changes are unavoidable, inevitable, and coming fast.  Many of us in IT, teachers, business leaders, other professions are not paying close enough attention to how the world around us is changing.  We think ‘it won’t happen to us’ or ‘we are safe’.  These are dangerous thoughts.  I think we all need our own personal ‘Transformation Agendas’ and those of us in leadership roles, aught to have clear Transformation Agendas for our organizations as well.  We are negligent if we don’t prepare ourselves, our people, and our organizations.

My Transformation Agenda is to (why) ‘transform learning and work through technology’ by (how) providing a robust sustainable infrastructure, enabling equitable access for all stakeholders, creating and assembling powerful (digital) learning and work spaces, and advocating for and supporting ongoing professional learning.  Within these four ‘strategic pillars’ are various specific initiatives, the what’s that put the agenda into action.

We live in unsettling but exciting times. Often I wonder if I can ‘hang in there’ and be the leader I need to be as the changes in our world speed up.  But, I quickly get over those thoughts and press ahead into the uncertain future.  It is what I do!

Technorati Tags: IT,advice,change,disruption,education,future,leadership,technology,transformation,Starbucks,"Howard Schultz","Quantum Age of IT",Civilization,history

Telepresence will change learning, work, and life

The first time I experienced any form of telepresence was probably 10 years ago at a Cisco Systems office.  They produced a hi-tech corporate teleconferencing room that was and is fairly expensive but unique in how it makes the room participants feel connected to one another.  It worked by connecting like rooms together.  For example I was in a teleroom in Vancouver connected to identically equipped and designed rooms in various US cities and we were able to see each other and our voices were heard in relation to where we sat.  The cameras would auto focus on the speaker.  Participants could present from any of the rooms to all participants.  That was than but the world has changed, dramatically.

Do you remember when Sheldon on the TV show Big Bang Theory confined himself to his room and would only ‘come out’ as a telepresence robot?  Well, I was at a conference this past week in Montreal, an historic city in Quebec eastern Canada and at one of the evening networking events, a colleague from a local Vancouver software company was telling me about a telepresence robot they bought for a couple of thousand dollars.  I didn’t  believe him at first but then he said “let’s install the app (Double) on your phone and I’ll show you”.  So, we downloaded the app, he logged into it, and we were connected from Montreal to the robot in his office in Vancouver.  The robot from Double Robotics is a Segway with a ‘neck’ that can go up or down, and an iPad for a ‘head’. 

Double by Double Robotics - Pre-order Now from Double Robotics on Vimeo.

Telepresence Robot

He ‘walked’ it around the office introducing me to a couple of his staff who were working late.  The robot’s head showed what’s on my iPhone’s front facing camera, ie my face.  I could see what the robot ‘sees’, displayed on my iPhone’s screen.  We pushed a button to ‘see’ the ‘feet’ of the robot – the iPad ‘head’ uses the rear facing camera off a mirror to ‘see’ down at the foot of the robot.  This way you can remotely see what obstacles there might be in the way.  They use this telepresence robot to support their employees that work from home a few days a week.  They have an understanding that whoever uses the robot last has to put it back where it belongs, near the wall charger.  Kind-of like kids having to put their toys away.

I wonder how a tool like this might support learning.  Perhaps schools will one day have a few of these telepresence robots available for kids to use when they are at home sick, in the hospital, or traveling with their families.  They could be assigned a robot and use it to attend classes, learn with fellow students, participate on the debate club, attend an assembly, and hang-out with their friends.  The remote students could present via their robot’s ‘faces’, sharing what they’ve learned.  They could even present a learning app on their ‘face’ for other students to interact with and contribute to.  Perhaps there will be classroom spaces in schools dedicated to distance learners, each one who is associated to a telepresence robot.  Imagine this classroom for a moment with 25 robots interacting, all controlled by students from a distance.  It’s an interesting possibility.  Perhaps this approach mixed with digital immersive learning environments will begin to support very flexible versions of ‘school’.

Coincidentally in my inbox this morning I found a TED Talk video where a gentleman presented via his surrogate telepresence robot.  This man is confined to a bed as a mute paraplegic due to a stroke-like illness that struck him when he was 40.  You have to watch this to truly understand the game-changing possibilities of this technology in supporting disabled persons.  He also learned to control quad-copters and flies them around his house and yard looking at the garden, checking the roof solar panels, etc.  He even controls coptors in a lab 3000 miles away from his home, where he works with researchers to further this important work.  The world is ‘small’ via the Internet.  Check out the video below.

I’ve written often about the exponential disruptive changes that technology is driving in our world.  The Internet has done more than any other technology to speed up change by connecting human beings to all other human beings where their ideas mix, mate, and mutate.  We were asked by a keynote speaker this week what we felt would enable students to learn at the pace of change.  I was surprised by the lack of comments by those attending, about technology’s role in this.  I tweeted about the importance of global connections.  I later referenced Steven Johnson’s book ‘Where Good Ideas Come From’ ow.ly/27OBDP.  He delves into great detail about how connections, whether intentional or serendipitous, generate the most and therefore the best ideas.  Ideas drive change.  If ideas and their humans never meet and mix, they will not generate the important changes they relate to.  I believe that students must learn to connect digitally and globally to learn at the pace of change.  I believe that we do a disservice to their learning and potential when we downplay, diminish, and underfund their digital connection to others around the world as part of their learning.

Technorati Tags: 21stcentury,augmented reality,disruption,future,immersive,machines,technology,virtual reality,Steven Johnson,ideas,robots,telepresence