How Long Before…
How Long Before…

How Long Before…

I am sitting in the garden, relaxing, watching my little boy ‘pottle’ and play (Saturday 24th). I have a Twitter conversation in the background talking and exploring Teach Meet Moodle and I am browsing my RSS feeds. Meantime I have decided to write this post on WordPress for iPhone because otherwise I will forget what I was thinking (as it happens I forget to post it anyway). Watching my son pottling around the garden got me musing. What will education look like when my son goes to school? What will Secondary School look like? How will he learn? Will he go to ‘school?’ What will be the evolution of anytime mobile (anywhere) learning?

Education can rarely afford to be cutting edge, certainly not bleeding edge. We his school life be that different? Education is hardly renowned for expedient change. How long before the highly innovative technologies of NOW, those being explored TODAY (AR, location based information and multi-touch -ipad) appear in a classroom? I have written this post as a ‘time capsule,’ a marker of sort. I am pretty confident on the technology path for the next 10 years.

1-2-1 will be school driven. Netbooks have accelerated this particularly inroad. 1-2-1 projects will be initiating or commonplace in ALL schools 2-3 years.

Handheld learning? Will it ever arrive? Portability say yes. Data input makes the proposal more challenging. Nintendos clam shell DS, (2004) and Apples I Touch (2007) made little impact. Apples Ipad (2010) has plenty of media support and education speculation however Education’s pockets are not Apple deep, and Educations arms are even shorter. So that leaves the door open for the £200 netbooks for the foreseeable future. Until the tabletsphere works it way towards affordability we will have to swoon over the I-Pad and I-PadGenerations 2, 3 and more.

So will ‘mobile handheld multifunction communication devices’ (I gest) hold the answer? Mobile phones with a secondary input device might be an interim solution. This will only arrive when we have SMART priced as well as SMART phones. (sorry ASDA). There are currently more iphones in SLT than in Yr11 at our school! The shortfall will have to be made up by innovative learners and their teachers.

I think that should buy me at least 5-7 education years. During this time VLE will mature and be able to offer more realistic learning. Netbooks and wireless schools will be commonplace. The tablet changeover, running Windows 9 with Office in the cloud, may only then be edu-affordable. Personal own devices will then replace the formerly school run 1-2-1 projects. Well thats my 2 cents.

To conclude, a  minor point really. Can we also now safely agree that the term ’21st Century Learner’ is an outdated term, afterall he/she is now 10 and in September starts Secondary School.

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