The weather’s turned cold, and I’m still grading as I write this. In between reading yet another set of term papers, I’ve perused a few current articles in education publications wherein higher-ed pundits pontificate on trends to watch in 2011. I find these articles highly amusing. What comes to my imagination is a panel of graybeards in tweed jackets (with regulation elbow patches, of course), opining on how “wireless networking will continue to proliferate,” etc. I’d like to award each of these pundits a tee shirt emblazoned with a large letter “O”, the official logo of Captain Obvious.

SMARTPHONE, BAD IDEA
You see, this past semester I have spent significant class time working to be more engaging than a laptop or cell phone. I’ve had more than one student answer one of my rhetorical questions by reading verbatim a page from Wikipedia as shown on his smartphone. I’ve learned how to “win” those battles, but it’s still a challenge, one which does not involve banning the wretched devices.

NOW TO THE PUNDITRY
The least I can do is put on my tweed jacket and personal Captain Obvious shirt and make my own predictions for trends in 2011. Consider this a list of the least obvious tech ideas that might catch on in the next twelve months. Or not.

1 Because we will run out of 16-bit IVP4 addresses sometime this coming summer, we will be forced to begin the long and arduous changeover to 128-bit IVp6 addresses. The wiz kid who can figure out how to make a cheap box that does that translation in real time will become very rich someday.

2 The use of smartphones in class will continue but will stabilize as more of the devices become a target of hackers and are seen as insecure. (Actually they are only somewhat secure even today, because the the encryption used for HDMA service was created back in the mid-1990’s—no chance that has been cracked, right?) There is no question but that cell phone technologies represent a target-rich environment for hacking, particularly with more people doing their banking via smartphone (an incredibly bad idea).

3 Digital signage players could replace projectors and screens in small- to mid-sized classrooms. Projectors are great for presenting in large spaces, but they can be expensive with their consumable lamps and user-serviceable filters. On the other hand. large flat-panel displays, be they plasma, LED, or even LCD, are relatively cheap and getting still cheaper, although they seemed to hit a price plateau last summer. They have the advantages of portability and of visibility under a wide variety of lighting circumstances. In addition, they can be either ganged to make a larger display, or placed at strategic locations within a classroom. Snuffing out the room lights could be forever unnecessary.

Digital signage players are inexpensive, small, and most are capable of pulling content for playback over Ethernet. Given that some young software wizard is able to figure out a simple way to generate .svg (Scalable Vector Graphics) files from a standard Powerpoint or Keynote presentation, and can make the results of that conversion interactive like Powerpoint, then that person will have a highly saleable product.

4 Among educators, the holdouts will finally learn how to use their content management systems for more than a place to post grades. In my shop the percentage of professors who can’t or won’t use our current CMS is stunning given that 2010 is in the rearview mirror. Last summer the provost decreed that our CMS has become an integral part of our disaster preparedness strategy, and therefore everything will be available online. Meanwhile, those of us who have used the CMS to its so-called potential and have done so for awhile, are so appalled at the state of the latest version that they are willing to do without. I’m still hating on our CMS system and I’ve been complaining about it to whomever I could get to listen over the past year. So far it appears to have fallen on deaf ears, despite the fact the the Engineering School developed their own which looks like it works just fine.

Meanwhile, I still hope that Santa brings me an iPad, just because they’re cool…for educational research purposes, of course.

Steve Cunnigham is an assistant professor of practice at USC’s Thorton School of Music.

Posted by Ryan Abeling at 01/04/2011 06:53:48 PM | 

Source:http://www.avtechnologyonline.com/blog/52606.aspx