Research Question Three

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PROCESS: Please enter your responses to the research question in the space below.

You may list as many items as you wish (and we hope you will!), but please list each item separately -- that is, if you say wish to list widget1, process2, and idea3 as important, please list each item as a separate bullet point (asterisk), as we will be rank ordering these later. Do not list them as a single paragraph, as that will hamper the process.

Please also add your name or initials after each item so that we can follow up with you if we need additional information or leads to examples, as I have done here [Larry]

If an item on your list is already listed here, just add your comment to the end of it, with your initials.


[edit] Research Question Three

What are the key emerging technologies you see developing to the point that learning-focused institutions should begin to take notice during the next 3 to 5 years? What organizations or companies are the leaders in these technologies?

NOTE: Items in this category should also be easily supportable with examples, although some of them may still be only found in research contexts. Nonetheless, some work should be happening that we can point to for those who wish to learn more. Three to five years is not a long time for education to turn its attention to something, thus we should see evidence of pioneer efforts that can be documented. Listing the actual companies or organizations working on the items listed here is very very important, as we often will follow up with them to learn more as we turn to the actual writing.

  • Thin Screens Flexible, plastic screens and OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology (Sony, Phillips, Samsung) [RSS] See this announcement [LJ] http://www.audioholics.com/education/display-formats-technology/organic-led-displays-oleds-the-next-trend [JKL] [SM] There are many different technologies to make "electronic paper". The one that impresses me the most is the flexible display produced by E-ink where small spheres upper half black and lower half white, 1 micron in diameter, are suspended between between two plastic sheets where electronically created charges attract or repel white. The result is amazing; see for example, pictures of the electronic newspaper made by IBM over 5 years ago, http://www.tug.org/tug2001/authors/jett/jettslides.pdf Better than real newspapers. Only drawback = cannot wrap fish as done in many open air markets in the developing world. (JPJ) A ditto to thin screens .. already in TV ads in Hong Kong for the last year, as a sort of coming soon taster.[NN] ubiquitous full wall displays taller than 14' (however they are achieved) [CPL]
  • Brain Activated Controllers - Brain activated devices are emerging in both the gaming and medical communities. The technology to activate prosthetics or game devices would allow learners to control avatars in virtual environments or to manipulate information in visualizations. Some of these devices are already on the market. Emotiv Systems is one company exploring this technology with their Emotiv EPOC product. [EFL] NeuroSky has an interface for mobile applications (http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080911/157833/). [DD]
  • Social Operating Systems Tools that facilitate true social networking (not Facebook friends, but real connections, derived from your "tracks" as you use the network. See Xobni Also see this Wharton article on the current state of this technology.
  • Personalized Browsers through plugins and scripts, browsers can now augment the users experience of ANY web page to bring in content and links from other sources appropriate to them. cf. http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2007/09/27/oer-client-tools/ [SWL] or even beyond browsers to web appliances- is Google Chrome a browser or an application framework? [AL]
  • Ebooks With the popularity of the Kindle, as well as the increasing outcry over the cost of textbooks, ebook readers--or some sort of cheap hybrid device that supports ebook reading--seem to be emerging as important to the education market. [LMS]
  • Sphere shaped screens - like Global Imagination's Magic Planet - http://www.globalimagination.com/ Perhaps there's a larger category this type of display technology resides and perhaps fits in Q1 as the technology becomes more affordable to be available across K-16, libraries, museums. [JKL] Would this more be multishaped screens ... not sure if spherical will be the only one.[NN]
  • Speech/Voice Recognition though not particularly new as a concept, offers a multitude of opportunities for all learners, particularly in supporting those with disabilities. The process is becoming more accurate and efficient, with increased educational opportunity. All users can search for content they need by keywords in the transcript and users with visual impairments can have transcripts read to them from a much larger selection of resources. Deaf and hard of hearing individuals will benefit from a much larger selection of captioned videos within education. Adobe has recently announced inclusion of automatic speech-to-text recognition tools within Premier and Flash apps. This will allow for much greater video indexing, adding a rich layer of metadata that will have great use potential. Google Audio Indexing (GAudi) uses speech technology to find spoken words within videos, allowing to jump to the portion of the video where these words are spoken.” Goog411 is capturing a massive amount of voice data. Though rumored to be geared toward voice-activated searching, there is much promise that a resulting algorithm will bring unprecedented power toward speech-to-text as well. http://www.reelseo.com/adobe-transcript-video-indexing/ http://labs.google.com/gaudi http://www.google.com/goog411/[BC]
  • Flexible learning spaces in which students drive learning through access to dissemination technologies. [SM]
  • Wireless AC and long lasting batteries We are only effective if we have that power source! [SM] Tied in with this are new forms of chips (e.g. chemical/biological) that require far less power. Developments in both areas could see this take off ... but what about the network infrastructure end of this equation?[NN]
  • RIFD (Radio Frequency Identification) Coming of Age - reliable, fast, cheap technology. Widespread adoption primarily for GPS and inventory control in industry. Seeing significant adoption in School and Academic Libraries for: wireless location, studying uses of tagged materials, and retrieval of lost/missing materials. Hot Button .. Privacy and security questions are significant. Issues are being identified, studied and patially resolved (i.e. "blocker tags"). On the Horizon .. integration with Virtual environment applications, Mobile Technology, Student access to locations and technology. [MAS]
  • The Semantic Web Semantic Language Systems continue to work through issues of accuracy in an elusive quest to automate the expression of meaning. However, semantic language systems are maturing. WC3 is working on it, Metadata standards are evolving, and Microformat Apps and standards look promising ("Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards." See http://microformats.org/about/). We are also seeing a wave of evolving Web Apps (see: "10 Semantic Apps to Watch" at http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_semantic_apps_to_watch.php and Mozilla's new product "Ubiquity" http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/ [MAS] One application: smart markup for preexisting content, like archives, repositories, and courseware. See ClearForest Gnosis, bought by Reuters. [BNA] Some of the first of these applications are in BETA and on the verge of release (http://www.twine.com/). Semantic Web applications should greatly enhance our ability to use the information and content available online. [DD] See Visual Thesaurus http://www.visualthesaurus.com/ [MAS]
  • Mobile Learning Technologies - Learning applications adapted for mobile devices (videos, documents, social environments, simulations, etc.) [EDL] While not fully integrated, the mobile projector from Toshiba (http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080922/158324/) is a move towards the convergence of projector capabilities into smart phones. It is not beyond the realm of possibilities that within the new 5 years, we will see projectors built into these devices that will permit presentations, video, images, etc. to be downloaded to the device and projected when desired at any location. [DD]
  • Standard interoperable technologies - Technologies using standards will allow for greater interoperability between devices, systems, platforms, as well as for most effective automatic transformations of content (i.e. using XML we can transform wiki's to audio, to pdf, etc.) [EDL]
  • Post-Wikipedia information aggregators - Projects taking advantage of Web connectivity, but trying to provide an alternative to, or transcend, what worries people about Wikipedia. Think of Google's Knol, or Sir Tim Berners-lee's new Web science trusted site initiative. [BNA]
  • Courseware interoperability - we might see this emerge. First, CMSes are experimenting with exposing content to the open Web (Blackboard's Scholar.com, Web publishing in Moodle). Second, NISO is exploring courseware standards. Third, if federated login and identity projects continue to win adherents, there will be much incentive to move among silos (OpenID, Shibboleth). [BNA]
  • Intelligent Parsing of unstructured data Tools like dabbleDB, Google calendar and others can start to recognize and parse data that is not explicitly marked up or formatted. This could be a good way to get data out of our Courseware silos [CPL]
  • 3D Printing - a new generation of 3D printer is emerging with much lower capital and operating costs - some examples: Desktop Factory http://desktopfactory.com; Mcor Matrix http://www.mcortechnologies.com/ - not too cheap to buy but very low operating cost; 3D Systems VFlash http://www.modelin3d.com/ - cheaper too buy but probably more expensive for materials. This is an area now being discussed within the assistive technology community, as it has particular advantages for blind students. [AMB] [BC]
  • Context Aware Technologies - Two technologies should continue to bring context area content and applications into the spotlight. Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT) (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1130826,00.asp) has the potential to bring always on connectivity to a variety of items that could easily make the leap to being classified as lifestyle technology. These range from connected clothing and accessories, to utilities. When coupled with RFIDs (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1130883,00.asp), which continue to drop in production cost, the application goes from personal to institutional application as well, where tracking, monitoring, and tagging are more critical. [DD][AW]
  • Wifi Analytics - Cisco software allows tracking of IP addresses with a resolution of 2m in a campus WiFi environment. Using this data to assess usage patterns for learning spaces including peak times, configurations of workgroups, favourite spots, etc holds great potential (and also a potential privacy risk) [CPL]
  • Outdoor Learning - WiFi enabled augmented reality platforms, citizen scientist data collection of botanical gardens & urban farms, 'choke points' that trigger actions when an IP address (i.e. an iPhone) enters a certain location [CPL]
  • Shared / Collaborative Timeline tools - I thought I saw shared timeline tools but couldn't find it. Shared timeline tools could be a way to co-construct events happening in the past and then reflect on them. This could simply be overlaying world events onto your own life (and life decisions) or it could allow a recreation of historical events. This might be a specialized visualisation tool or could even be a collective ePortfolio type tool. [CPL]
  • Semantic web Making sense of all the unstructured data...searching for data across clouds, etc. [IBM]
  • Edit this page to add a response [Larry]


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