10 Ideas about Future Tech that may change our lives

What does the future hold?
As a reader and writer of science fiction, I like to keep an eye on what people are saying about the technological innovations that may fundamentally re-shape our world in the future. 

Science fiction itself has opened windows on many ideas that later became reality--think about Arthur C. Clarke writing about geostationary satellites, for example.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke was one of many sf authors who have correctly predicted future innovations.

Other things apparently were less predicted. Few people really seemed to foresee and understand the potential for massive changes that would ripple out from the advent of personal computers, the Internet, wireless technology, and smart phones, before they our lives forever.

Few of us realized what a revolution these represented, when they first came on the scene.

Nowhere is the wireless revolution and the advent of smart phones having a greater impact than in the developing world. Here's an image from rural Bihar, India.

I've been looking at recent videos on YouTube that attempt to answer this "what future tech is being developed?" question. I shared one in Bionic Sensory Enhancements that I thought looked interesting. 

Here's a video that explores "The Top 10 Future Technology That's Here Right Now." Published in early October by the Top Ten Archive, it predicts a range of innovations from sunscreen pills to personal nanotech factories.


The video's show notes include a full list of the ten technological developments profiled, as well as links that offer more detailed information about each.

IMAGES: Many thanks to the Telegraph Media Group for the image of Sir Arthur (unfortunately on his obituary). The photo of popular smart phone brands is from a TechReviewPro article about the top smart phones of 2015. The photo of mobile phone users in Bihar, India, is from an excellent article on the Design Public Blog. The video is from Top 10 Archives on YouTube.

3-D Printers at School?

Ever since I first learned of them, I've been fascinated with 3-D printers.  Cutting-edge applications for this technology have been proposed or are in development for everything from printing prosthetic ears with living cartilage cells, to printing buildings for a moon base.

But 3-D printers are high-tech and hideously expensive (even $1,200-$1,500 is REALLY steep for your average public school!).  Could they have a use in schools?  The folks at OnlineDegrees.Org think so.  They've prepared a graphic to explain their ideas.  Here's part of it:

Some seem like little more than gimmicks (coughs: Jell-o molds), though I could be all wrong about chef-training for the avant garde world of future gastronomy, which can start in high school.

The truth is, we don't know all the ways that this amazing new technology can or will be used--who predicted the ability to print a plastic gun that fires real bullets?  Yet they are now a reality. 

Because they are clearly an important and rapidly-expanding part of our future, they most definitely belong in schools.  But if we're still "teaching like it's 1980" how can we meet that challenge?  And with lawmakers cutting education budgets right and left, a fancy newfangled gizmo that costs--holy smokes! One to two grand?!?--get real.

Actually, "real" is what we truly must get, as in welcome to the real world--where evolution keeps happening every day, the climate really is changing dramatically, and new technology is not just coming, but already here.

Are we preparing the kids?

School Funding Myth #1: Money doesn't buy a good education

Recently, I wrote about the ways in which basing school funding on property values in the United States makes it near-certain that schools will be funded inequitably. Placing decision-making about school funding in the hands of a patchwork of state and local governments simply increases that certainty.

At this point in the discussion, people often will bring up some predictable objections to any implication that the funding of US schools might be inadequate or ill-advised.

The first one I normally encounter is the one that says, Money doesn’tnecessarily buy a good education.

This is undoubtedly true in some cases—and unfortunately one need look no farther than the Kansas City, MO School District for a glaring, recent example of this precept. In the latter part of the 20^th century, the KCMO district went through aprotracted desegregation lawsuit. At the end of this case, it reaped a windfallsettlement of massive proportions, which it proceeded to waste in spectacular fashion.

Kansas City's East High School had to close early several
times in August, because it has no air conditioning.

With all its newfound wealth, it decided to replace several of its aging, dilapidated schools with new, modern, state-of-the-art buildings. However, very little of this money seemed to go for anything else. Not teacher salaries. Not curricular materials of any substance. And not even all buildings were treated equally. Just last month, two schools in the district had to close early on hot days, because they still aren’t air-conditioned!

No, money and wisdom do not necessarily go hand-in-hand! That said, however, it isextremely difficult to offer a first-class education when you only havesecond-or third-class funding. 

Here are some examples of why this is so:

At some point, even the best teacher
can be overwhelmed by class size.

Class size: There are people who will hotly argue over how much of a difference class size makes, claiming a good teacher is much more important than class size for student outcomes. I certainly will agree that if you have to focus on only one of those, teacher quality is the one to choose. 

But I guarantee you'll get better teaching from any teacher alive, if s/he is not trying to give individualized attention to 40 or 50 students all at once--especially when some of those students don't want to be there or pay attention! 

Technology costs are a burden for nearly any public school.

Technology: Staying current with technology is challenging enough for many businesses, but it is a perennial headache for schools--most especially for schools in poorer districts! I have written elsewhere about the antiquated computers at one of the urban schools where I have taught--but that school was typical. 

A frequent complaint of the business community is that schools are not adequately preparing students with the skills they need to succeed in the business world. Certainly basic math, science, and writing skills are important aspects of that gap--but knowledge of computer skills also is essential. 

The "digital divide" is a direct result of access to resources.

The "digital divide" between richer and poorer schools is often painfully obvious. However, in my experience even some of the more well-to-do public school districts may find keeping up with technology's costs to be a continual challenge when the state funding is cut year after year.

Other Curriculum Materials and Equipment: Technology isn't the only thing that costs money. Traditional, paper-based books keep going up in price--especially textbooks. So are many other types of necessary school equipment. For example, have you ever priced library-quality equipment of any kind? 

One of the traditional complaints of the old, pre-Brown v. Board of Education segregated schools was that the black kids got old, torn-up school books after the white kids were done with them. We like to think we are better off now (though in too many cases we've made way less progress than we want to believe). But then as now, the price tag for high-quality educational materials is more than some schools can afford. 

Field trips can open kids' eyes to the world in unique
and powerful ways--IF their school can afford it.

Field Trips: Transportation and other expenses, such as hiring substitutes for the teachers on the trip (when not all of their students may be able to go) make school field trips an expensive proposition. Some schools simply don't have them anymore. Others have dramatically cut back on them.

Museums, zoos, and similar institutions have had to shoulder an increasing share of the costs involved, but both they and schools have felt the pinch of restricted funding, especially since the beginning of the recession. 

The "informal learning" offered by field trips, even though it is shown by many studies to be powerful and inspiring, is less and less available where funds are restricted.

Two other areas, building maintenance and teacher compensation, also come with hefty price tags. All too often, this means buildings in poorer districts go unrepaired indefinitely, and teachers are not paid adequately. These are topics worthy of much more space than I have left for this post--but I hope I have made my point.

More money may not always "buy" good education, but it certainly increases the odds that it can happen! And there are minimum levels below which we slash educational budgets at our peril.

PHOTO CREDITS: The school funding graphic is from the website Krug for Wisconsin. KMBC-TV provided the image of the overheated East High School in Kansas City, MO. The cartoon on class size is from  Choccy's Blog on Libcom.org. The Cult of Mac blog provided the iPad-with-dollar-signs image. The "digital divide" image is courtesy of the Bridging the Digital Divide with Online Education blog. And the field trip photo is from the City of Gresham, OR website. MANY THANKS to all of them!

Teaching Like It's 1980

Rethinking the way Schools (dis)Respect Digital Natives

Most classrooms still look like this
2010 photo of a 4th-grade room.

Most of today's educators were born too soon. We are not digital natives. Moreover, developments that you might call "market forces" in the last several decades actually have held most teachers back from fully participating in the digital revolution.

As a result, we really don't "get it."

All too many of us are still teaching as if it's 1980 . . . except with a computer cart in the corner, to use sometimes.  Oh, sure, some of us have "smart boards" where our blackboards used to be, and some of us are required to keep in touch with parents via email.

But most educators just fundamentally see digital media (by which they mean "computers") as a sort of add-on.

• We still think of textbooks as physical, printed-and-bound objects.
• We make our students turn off or put away their cell phones when they come to class.
• We restrict access to the Internet, except for narrowly-defined assignment objectives.
• We often absolutely ban Facebook, Twitter, and other social media from our classrooms.
• We demand undivided attention when we are speaking to the class.
• We believe that, to be readily available, facts must be memorized.
• We call it "cheating" when our students look up answers.
• When we make websites, they are almost invariably really lame.

I am pretty sure we have managed to get all of these things (and more) exactly backwards.

That's because it isn't 1980 anymore.  I actually remember teaching in 1980, and a whole lot of my colleagues do, too. For us and for our students, that is unfortunately a problem. Today's students have grown up using technology that never even existed when we were growing up. This has changed the way they see and interact with the world. It also has fundamentally altered the kind of world their future holds. A "1980" education is simply not going to cut it, for these kids, even if we do pull out the computer cart from time to time.

In upcoming posts, I intend to explore each of the points I've listed above, and look at the reasons why we should revise our practices regarding every single one.

IMAGE CREDITS: 

Many thanks to "Gourmet Spud" for the fourth-grade classroom photo from the "Parent-Teacher Night" post on the Food Court Lunch blog. 

Enthusiastic appreciation also is due to the Tulsa Public Schools Department of Instructional Technology for the Pirillo & Fitz cartoon.