Shift to the Future

I was out shopping with my wife Shelley on Monday.  It was our 25th anniversary – wow, time flies.  Anyway, while she disappeared into the Coquitlam Centre mall, I decided to check out 3D TV ’s in Future Shop .  I am totally impressed with the 1st generation products, especially the amazingly thin LED versions.  Apparently you can hang them on the wall like a picture frame! So, I was wondering…  how might this technology evolve?  Where might it show up next?  And how can teachers and students use it for the enhancement, or transformation, of learning?  I wrote a post a few weeks back Welcome to your life in 2020 where I speculated about a learning holodeck / virtual reality experience and another Technology, People, and Learning where I wondered about applying Disney Imagineer’s magic to learning design.  Perhaps both posts are a little “out there” but I suggest that 3D TV technology will become mainstream within laptops, netbooks, tab...

My son Jesse, who’s 21, got us to re-watch a video today that Shelley (my wife) and I made way back in 1991 of a trip we made with some friends to Disneyland.  We used an 8mm mini-cam to record the Disney experience and edited using a VHS player that had a shuttle wheel.  Shelley wrote out the credits and introduction which we taped from a tri-pod facing the camera down to the paper “feed” while she slowly pulled it past the camera’s view.  We dubbed cassette tape music into the VHS player at key points to lay down some music tracks.  A two hour family movie was born.  It was a painful process with the technology available in 1991… While re-watching the video I was impressed once again with the technical wizardry Disney used even 20 years ago.  The way they synchronized the characters in the Pirates of th e Caribbean or the Bear Jamboree and made them come to life was quite remarkable. Video editing today is so much simpler than in 1991.  Even with...