In this talk I quickly review the sort of emerging technologies currently being used in university classrooms, imagine with other pundits what the future of instructional technology will look like, and then reflect on recent books published on these subjects.
Instructors are adding Audio, Video and Animation to their PowerPoint Presentations.
Adding Video Clips to PowerPoint Presentations -- from ZDNet IndiaInstructors are adding Audio, Video, Animation, and Interactivity to their web sites.
Audio
See "Neural Audio Imaging" -- multiple options
Hear Hildegard Westerkamp discuss the use of "environmental sound" in the art of composition (1800K QuickTime) at the web site of the World Forum of Acoustic Ecology.Video
QuickTime video clip of a Combustion Reaction in an Enclosed Place
Newsletter on Web-Based Audio and Video by Scott Bradley
Animation
Watch the Battle of Hastings as it progresses hour by hour (includes panoramic photographs of what the battle site looks like today)
Ask the Museum of Modern Art this question: What is a Print?
Tour other examples of Arts and Humanities Teaching Sites (Found at Penn State's Suggestions to Integrate Technology)
Instructors are Creating Customized CDs and DVDs with Audio, Video, and Animation to show in the classroom
Anything that can appear in a PowerPoint Presentation or on the web can also be burned to a CD or DVD. Increasingly publishers are providing multimedia CDs with their textbooks that can be used as teaching aids. Programs like iMovie on the Macintosh platform make it easy to create instructional videos, edit videotaped lectures, etc.Digital Video and Internet2: Growing Up Together -- USC Center for Scholarly Technology
Guidelines for Putting a Course Online -- Ernest Knowles
Instructors are Using Online Resources Provided by Textbook Publishers
I gave a talk on this topic for SITT a couple years ago. (See a list of all my CAI talks, and information I compiled on sites by academic publishers.) Since then, publishers have created even more interactive exercises for students to complete independently (part of the trend towards distributed learning).
Instructors are Teaching Hybrid Courses
Elizabeth Gibson of Mediaworks recently gave a talk explaining hybrid courses and the sort of such courses taught at UC Davis.
Syllabus article "Hybrid Courses are Best" by David G. Brown
See other hybrid courses at the University of Wisconsin, The University of Colorado at Boulder, and CSU Long Beach.
Instructors are using web-based applications for the display and computation of complex formulae.See UC Davis Professor Brian Higgins' site called WebMathematica in Chemical Engineering at UC Davis.
Other CAI topics and activities being explored at US universities includeWireless networksOnline Assessment Tools
According to a presentation made earlier this year by Diana Oblinger, the future of instructional technology will look like this:
Internet2 will have substantially replaced the current Internet
High-speed, all-optical networking will be commonplace (at least the backbone)Use of wireless will be commonplace (See earlier CAI talk on mobile and wireless technology at UCD)Use of personal video communications will be commonDigital TV will have replaced analog broadcastingThe use of e-books will be common (highly portable, high-resolution display for printed material) (See Palm on E-Books)
Ubiquitous Computing
Richard Hunter's new book, World Without Secrets: Business, Crime and Privacy in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing, discusses the drawbacks to living in an information economy where all our personal data is stored, mined, and potentially bought and sold. Today's citizen sacrifices privacy for convenience.
We might consider these concerns when we imagine the classroom of five or ten years from now, when every student and faculty member will have a portable computing device of some sort. Will faculty members depend too much on automatic instruction-providing applications that recycle and upload content to networked students? Will students be distracted by instant and ubiquitous access to e-mail, the web, audio and video? Or, will such applications and devices attend to repeated tasks and thus free time for higher-order thinking and encourage independent learning?
In the final chapter of James Gleick's just-published book, What Just Happened, the author provides a rosier look at ubiquitous computing, reminding us of Moore's Law and that computers will become smaller and more wearable, that today's Palm Pilots will one day seem like the first iteration of wristwatches or hearing aids. Soon we may have computers implanted in our jewelry or even in our bodies.Social Computing
John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid's famous 2000 book, The Social Life of Information, reminded us that technology works best when it promotes the creation and maintenance of communities, organizations and societies. As I reread The Social Life of Information, I wonder to what extent we can use the classroom of the future to train "information architects," as the authors put it, for
"Increasingly, as the abundance of information overwhelms us all, we need not simply more information, but people to assimilate, understand, and make sense of it" (121).
Other Instructional Technology and Computer-Aided Instruction Books, According to Amazon.Com.
Other CAI and IET bibliographies.