1.2: Defining Today’s Emerging Technologies

For some instructors, integrating technology into their teaching can be an overwhelming task. Adding the word “emerging” can make these technologies seem impractical, unnatural, or counter-intuitive, as well as implying hat the technology is transient. Although technology is constantly changing, using it for instructional goals can make a difference in a successful adoption and implementation.

As the authors of this chapter, we firmly believe in the use of technology for teaching and learning purposes. In this section, we will describe several currently emerging technologies. Johnson (2006) provides a list of emerging technology links on his website. Using his list as a base, we provide definitions, as well as examples of how these technologies can be used in teaching and learning. The list below is not in any particular order.

Digital storytelling

Storytelling is one of the oldest teaching methods. By using digital video cameras and software such as iMovie, almost anyone can extend a story’s reach to a much wider audience. In education, instructors can ask students to create digital stories to demonstrate knowledge of a topic. Websites such as the Center for Digital Storytelling emphasize that the technology is “always secondary to the storytelling” (Banaszewski, 2002, para. 18). See Chapter 25, Tools for Online Engagement and Communication, for more information on digital storytelling.

Online meetings

Synchronous meetings of online classes can be facilitated by the use of web conferencing/virtual classroom tools such as WebEx, Wimba, Elluminate, Skype, Microsoft Live Meeting, Adobe Breeze, Centra, and Interwise. These technologies add presentation and group interaction tools. Most of them provide both voice and text chat functionality. Their synchronous nature appeals to many people and complements other asynchronous activities. Huge savings in travel costs can be realized by conducting meetings over the Internet. For a geographically widespread class or working group, occasional online meetings can help to keep people on track and provide a valuable opportunity for synchronous discussions.

Communities of practice

Much of social computing revolves around the formation of communities of practice, which are groups with a common interest. With technologies that ease the sharing of experiences, information, and resources, whether across the hall or around the world, many communities of practice are developing spontaneously, or are intentionally created by an individual or organization to meet a specific purpose. Communities of practice use social computing tools and often form as a result of the availability of the tool. They can contribute greatly to the dissemination of knowledge and skills within an organization, as when, for example, the group serves as mentor to a new member.

Communities of practice are not a technology, but rather a learning theory that can make use of many of the emerging technologies available today. For more information on communities of practice, see Chapter 30, Supporting Learning Through Communities of Practice.

Personal broadcasting

Personal broadcasting tools include: blogs (web logs), moblogs (mobile blogs), vlogs (video blogs), podcasts, vodcasts (video podcasts), and RSS feeds with uploaded images from cell phones. Instructors can use these technologies to bring diverse elements into a course to assist in meeting a variety of learning styles. These technologies can also be used for updating students on current activities and projects.

Podcasting and videoblogs can assist learners whose learning style is primarily auditory. Some uses include recording lectures for students to review, providing more clarity for difficult concepts, and supplementing lecture information such as, for example, guest lectures and interviews.

RSS feeds allow students to selectively download updates from targeted sources, personalizing the information and news they want to receive. Tools such as Suprglu allow multiple RSS feeds on one Web page. Stead, Sharpe, Anderson, Cych & Philpott (2006) suggest the following learning ideas for Suprglu:

• Aggregate all of a student’s production in one page.
• Bring a range of different search feeds together for easy viewing.
• Create a class site that aggregates whatever content feeds you are providing for students.
• Create a collaborative project site.
• Bring teacher lesson plans or ideas together on one page (p. 37).

Personal broadcasting technologies give students an opportunity to participate in the creative construction of knowledge and project-related work. People can share their broadcasts on their own websites or through sites that specialize in specific types of broadcasting, such as wordpress.com for blogs or youtube.com for vlogs. YouTube’s tagline captures the essence of personal broadcasting: “Broadcast Yourself.”

Wikis

Wikis are a type of website that allows visitors to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit the content. This ease of interaction makes wikis an effective tool for collaborative authoring. In a short time Wikipedia (Wikipedia, 2006d) has become a primary reference tool for many students, though by the readily editable nature of its information, it cannot be considered authoritative. Wikis can be useful as a tool for students to build their own knowledge base on specific topics and for sharing, comparing, and consolidating that knowledge.

Educational gaming

Despite the vast interest in video and computer games, the educational game market still has a long way to go. Many people have heard of Warcraft, a strategy game, and Halo, a battlefield simulation game, but how many people have heard of Millie’s Math House, a learning game? However, as Web 2.0 puts more power in the hands of mere mortals, teachers will start making better learning games than the commercial game producers. These games will also take advantage of new technologies. For example, low-cost virtual reality gloves give middle school students the ability to play “Virtual Operation.” John Shaffer (2002) describes a variety of educational learning experiences that virtual reality could present to middle school, high school and even college students.

Several renowned organizations have turned to educational games to attract young people to their disciplines or movements. The Nobel Foundation uses educational games on its website to teach different prize-winning concepts in the areas of chemistry, physics, medicine, literature, economics, and world peace. The Federation of American Scientists has created engaging games that ask players to discover Babylon as archaeologists and to fight off attacks as part of the human immune system. Instructors do not have to be game designers to incorporate existing educational games into their curriculum. They may want to play the games first, both to make sure they address course concepts and to have fun!

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs)

Interacting online within the same game environment, hundreds, if not thousands of people gather together to play in MMOGs. In Worlds of Warcraft, one popular game, players can choose roles as a human, elf, orc, or other creature that works with others to accomplish goals. In the future, students will choose whether they will play as red blood cells, white blood cells, viruses, or anti-viral drugs to learn how viruses affect the body, and how to stop them. Currently, gamers seek treasures to score points and gain levels in an MMOG called Everquest. In the future, students will use MMOGs in an online environment depicting the historical period to seek answers to instructors’ questions about World War II such as, “How did women influence the end of World War II?”

Extended learning

Also known as hybrid or blended learning, extended learning mixes instructional modalities to provide an ideal learning solution, using e-learning and classroom training where each is most appropriate. It may also be a mix of synchronous and asynchronous technologies. Using both online and in-person methodologies allows instruction to be designed to address diverse learning styles, as well as meet the course’s learning objectives. For example, learners might use e-learning for the basic content, but meet face-to-face in a laboratory, or in a classroom.

Intelligent searching

Google and other search engines are already the most used learning tools around. Many people use them daily to do research and to find all kinds of information. Some librarians have noticed that students are not learning how to use journal databases and other sources of materials because of their over-reliance on Google. Search engines will evolve to provide more concept- and context-sensitive searching. Currently these have emerged in specific content areas such as Google Maps, Google Scholar, a self-adapting community system using Gnooks, video and audio using Blinx and StumbleUpon, which uses ratings to form collaborative opinions on website quality.

Intelligent searching will use such tools as vision technology (for images), natural language processing, and personalization by users to make them more usable and useful. Ask.com uses what it calls ExpertRank (Ask.com, 2006). This technology ranks pages based on the number of links that point to it rather than by how popular it is. Known as subject-specific popularity, this technology identifies topics as well as experts on those topics. Search engines will also become learning and content management systems that will help us organize, catalogue, and retrieve our own important information more easily.

Webcams and video from cell phones

Digital cameras, video cameras, webcams, and video from cell phones have become almost ubiquitous as ways to capture personal history. But they have gone far beyond that and have become a means of communication. People have captured events like weather, subway bombings, and funny incidents that have become part of television entertainment and news. Thanks to sites like Flickr and YouTube, online videos have become a pervasive online feature.

Examples of educational uses include: a source of data for student projects, a way to practise skills, document events, record interviews, and add video to videoblogs (vlogs). Instructors might use them to emphasize or explain important or difficult-to-understand concepts. The use of video provides learners with an alternative medium for grasping concepts when text or images alone don’t convey the necessary information.

Mashups

(Lightweight, tactical integration of multi-sourced applications.) “A mashup is a website or web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience” (Wikipedia, 2006a, para. 1). Mashups take advantage of public interfaces or application programming interfaces (APIs) to gather content together in one place.

Tracking the Avian Flu, which tracks global outbreaks, is an example of how content is integrated with Google Maps. Top City Books is another example; this site shows the top 10 books in a city for eight subjects.

SecretPrices.com is a comparison-shopping site with customer reviews, information on deals, and more. It uses APIs from Amazon.com, Shopping.com, and A9 and gathers information from Amazon.com and Epinions.com.

Cookin’ with Google aggregates several databases. Type in a few ingredients you have on hand and Google searches databases with recipes containing those ingredients and presents a list of recipes you can consider cooking for dinner tonight.

Social computing

Social computing is the essence of Web 2.0. It is the use of technologies such as wikis, blogs, and podcasting by individuals and groups to create content, instead of simply being content recipients. Web 1.0 was about downloading; Web 2.0 is about uploading.

Forrester Research describes social computing as “[e]asy connections brought about by cheap devices, modular content, and shared computing resources [that] are having a profound impact on our global economy and social structure. Individuals increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources like corporations, media outlets, religions, and political bodies. To thrive in an era of social computing, companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists” (Charron, Favier & Li, 2006, para. 1).

In an e-learning context, social computing is about students becoming the creators as well as the consumers of content. In a formal setting, students can be encouraged to use social computing technologies to share their experiences and collaborate on assignments and projects. In informal situations, people will be able to find great treasuries of information on almost any imaginable topic and contribute their own knowledge to it.

A new category of software has emerged called social networking software. This web-based software assists people to connect with one another. Examples of social networking software include Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Plaxo, and LinkedIn.

Peer-to-peer file sharing

In a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, files are shared directly between computers without going through a server. P2P applications are usually web-based and use peer-to-peer file sharing. Some examples include online meeting (web conferencing), instant messaging, Skype, Groove, Festoon, and BitTorrent. “P2P merges learning and work, shedding light on team processes that used to disappear when a project’s participants dispersed. For example, P2P applications can create an audit trail” (Cross, 2001, para. 13).

Despite the copyright controversy around music file sharing on Napster, Kazaa, and others, P2P is a useful technology that offers opportunities for e-learning. P2P file sharing can support students working together on collaborative projects. Having one central location for group members to access and edit a master copy of a shared document can help with version control. Another benefit in collaborative work is the ability to view and mark up a master copy instead of sending documents as attachments through email. This can help avoid confusion over who has the master copy and the problem of edits accidentally missed or overwritten. P2P technologies also enable chatrooms and online groups, where students can talk synchronously about their project. Using a P2P application such as Groove, students can create a shared virtual office space for group projects (Hoffman, 2002). P2P technologies can possibility encourage project-based learning.

Another technology related to both P2P and podcasting is swarmcasting. Because files are transported across the network in smaller packets, swarmcasting is a more efficient way to send large files such as video files. Swarmcasting provides the possibility of Internet broadcasting much like a television station does (tvover.net, 2005).

Mobile learning

Also called m-learning, this represents an evolution of e-learning to the almost ubiquitous mobile environment for laptop computers, cell phones, PDAs, iPods, and RFID (radio frequency identification) tags. Technologies like GPS and Bluetooth will also enable the adoption of m-learning.

Learning will be in smaller chunks and designed as just-in-time (performance support) to accommodate wireless form factors, the flood of available information, and multi-tasking users. It is an opportunity for people to learn anytime, anywhere. An executive heading to a meeting can brush up on his or her facts, and students can study for an upcoming test or access information needed for a research project.

Using mobile devices for learning is the logical next step for e-learning. It will require some new strategies— smaller chunks of information, shorter modules, efficient searching for learning objects, and an orientation to performance support rather than information dumps (Wagner, 2006).

Examples of m-learning include:

• SMS (text messaging) as a skills check or for collecting feedback
• audio-based learning (iPods, MP3 players, podcasting)
• Java quizzes to download to colour-screen phones
• specific learning modules on PDAs
• media collection using camera-phones
• online publishing or blogging using SMS, MMS (picture and audio messages), cameras, email, and the Web
• field trips using GPS and positional tools (Stead et al., 2006, p. 12)

Mobile learning is already making an impact. In a recent survey conducted by the eLearning Guild, Pulichino (2006) reported that 16 percent of the responding organizations are currently using mobile learning and 26 percent expect to do so over the next 12 months. He also observed that colleges and universities are ahead of corporations in its adoption.

Context-aware environments and devices

Environments and devices that are tuned into the needs of those using them and automatically adjust to the situation are considered to be context-aware. Everyday devices such as phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and multimedia units equipped with built-in software and interfaces can be made context-aware. The strength of this technology is its ability for learners to extend their interaction with an environment. One example is the integration of student services with a PDA device. A student points a PDA to a computing device, and the PDA captures the information about the service which is beamed into the PDA. For more information on context-aware environments and devices, use a search engine with the parameters “Cooltown + HP.”

Augmented reality and enhanced visualization

Augmented reality (AR) is an evolution of the concept of virtual reality. It is a hybrid environment, which is a combination of a physical environment with virtual elements added by computer input. This computer input augments the scene with additional information. While virtual reality strives for a totally immersive environment, an augmented reality system maintains a sense of presence in the physical world. Augmented reality’s goal is to blur both worlds so the end user doesn’t detect the differences between the two.

Augmented reality may use some of the following technologies:

Display technologies:

• high-definition, wall-sized display screens
• three-dimensional displays
• handheld mini-projectors
• glasses-mounted, near-to-eye displays
• flexible, paper-like displays
• full-face virtual-reality (3D) helmets

Multi-sensory inputs and outputs (see Stead, Sharpe, Anderson, Cych & Philpott, 2006):

• speech
• smell
• movements, gestures, and emotional states
• tangible user interfaces using the direct manipulation of physical objects
• handheld PCs for user input and data
• GPS (global positioning system) units
• wearable sensors

Examples of augmented reality applications include:

• image-guided surgery in medicine
• movie and television special effects
• airplane cockpit training
• computer-generated images for engineering design
• simulation of major manufacturing environments

Augmented reality is most often used to generate complex, immersive simulations. Simulations are powerful learning tools that provide a safe environment for learners to practise skills and conduct experiments.

Integrating the physical world and computer input is obviously an expensive technical challenge, and it is mainly a research field at this time. Up to now, the potential training applications are limited to medical, military, and flight training; but as costs come down, the possibilities for simulations in all fields are limited only by the imagination.

Many research projects are being carried out in this area. For more information on augmented reality, see Sony’s Computer Science Laboratory (www.csl.sony.co.jp/project/ar/ref.html) and the thesis abstract at http://www.se.rit.edu/~jrv/research/...roduction.html.

Smart mobs

Rheingold, the author of Smart Mobs, considers smart mobs to be “the next social revolution” (Rheingold, 2006, para. 1) combining “mobile communication, pervasive computing, wireless networks, [and] collective action” (para. 1)

Two well-known examples of smart mobs involved events in the US as well as in the Philippines: “Street demonstrators in the 1999 anti-WTO protests used dynamically updated websites, cell phones, and ‘swarming’ tactics in the ‘battle of Seattle.’ A million Filipinos toppled President Estrada through public demonstrations organized through salvos of text messages” (Rheingold, 2006, para. 2).

In education, instead of smart mobs protesting a political decision, smart study groups will form to prepare for quizzes or to provide feedback about written assignments before submitting them for a grade.