Emerging Technologies from a Student Perspective

Last Friday I had the privilege to serve as a judge at the ACSI Annual Multimedia Festival hosted by Azusa Pacific in Orange County.

Students from private Christian Schools all over Orange County brought multimedia projects (websites, podcasts, movies, PowerPoint presentations, publications) to be get real world feedback on their work.

I was impressed by the students motivation to learn. They told me that they liked it when it was hard and I talked with students who even taught themselves html through self-paced tutorials on the Internet.

One school brought projects that were related to an assignment they had been given in which they were to research an emerging technology of their choice and analyze the pros and cons of using this technology. I was completely blown away with their ideas and deep thinking around this topic. A lot of the choices were centered around cell phones. For example Augmented Reality (which I had never heard of before) was one of the choices. There were also some presentations on the evolution of robotics such as in the use of The Crusher an unmanned vehicle being used by the military.

Cell Phones Use in Schools

This month's issue of ISTE's L&L had an interesting article with two different perspectives on cell phone use in schools (p. 9). I tend to think that the main issue is knowing what it is you want to do and then picking a device that can support that.

I tend to agree with Liz Kolb that cell phones "can be audio recorders, digital video camcorders, still cameras, note-taking devices, calculation devices, scheduling and management tools, phone conferencing devices, Internet researching tools, faxing and scanning devices, blog and web page editors, or even audio assessment recorders".

While with any new technologies, learning how to manage it in a school environment is always an initial challenge I am intrigued at how some educators are experimenting with how these tools can be used to promote student learning.

One of the blogs I subscribe to is Dave McDivitt’s http://davidmcdivitt.wordpress.com/ . Some of his recent entries have been talking about how he has been texting reminders to his students. I think this is a great way to utilize cell phones and improve relationships and engagement between students and teachers.

I am also intrigued by Project Connect in which Ninth graders in several public schools in North Carolina will receive smartphones to access supplemental math content to assist them with Algebra. One the advantages of this program is it allows students access to online resources that do not have a computer or internet access at home.