Lately, I have been researching the changing face of the classroom. My job sort of forces me to go out and feel for new technology, technology that allows something new, something old in a new way, or something unique. What is the difference between new and unique? Well, unique isn't always new. The first foray I had into the realm I am currently interested in began with SmartBoard. This board can do a lot of things. It has a Power Point aspect, a conferencing aspect, and it triples as a white board. It is a unique tool, not only a new way to do old things, but it presents a unique way with which to interact. However, this way of interacting is one-sided. I can see what you're doing, I can talk to you, chat with you, but I can't really do anything else.
It has been a great time, learning this stuff. My job gets me a surprising amount of play time. It's fun. In any case, the idea of conferencing becomes a strange thing. At first, we had this ability to conference via telephone. We had to be in our houses or our offices but we could conference with people from just about anywhere. As time has gone on, we've seen that ability go to conferencing from anywhere. With my cell phone I could call from a hot tub, the beach, a bar, or my car. I could conference with anyone, just about anywhere for a moderate price.
Then, VOIP came along and we gained a new way to talk to each other. Arguably, it is a new way to do something we always have done, but it offers access to several great conferencing tools. Microsoft Office offers an interesting collaborating system. It's been around for a while but has been rather like a complicated email. As time has gone on, Google, always the innovator, combines the ability to chat, manipulate a written work, spread sheet, or even a presentation in real time. I can watch you type things, watch you move things around, I can ask you about it, and, further, I can talk to you. It is the closest you can get to being around a table together without leaving your house.
However, the latest round of products from Adobe, and other companies that do similar things, take this one step further. There has been a system of electronic collaboration in place for classrooms for quite some time. I can watch pre-recorded video and take tests in real time. My teacher doesn't have to be there, and I can go at my own pace. However, this doesn't really give us a classroom experience. I can remember taking a math course online when i re-began my school career and feeling mortified as I realized that I had a question but I had no way of being able to ask someone right then and there. I remember this feeling of dread as I went in to take a test from a person I couldn't judge as a person. As a student, I believe we judge our tests by the feeling our teachers give us. We're usually not far off once we are near graduation.
So, I have been feeling around for a way to close this gap, it interests me both professionally and personally. And, the adobe product Adobe Connect offers just that. You can raise your hand, meet in small groups, listen to a lecture in real time, watch the video of a professor in real time, and, further, the client side is free. It is an interesting attempt to close the gap of education, location, and socioeconomic factors. I could attend a college course, online, at a library, friend's house, or even from the beach and watch the body language of the professor, look at the students at the brick and mortar classroom, and even ask questions during class. And really, you don't lose a lot of the things that the internet often does.
I'm looking forward, working in the education realm as a technology expert, to figuring it out and helping to implement it. To think that a class could be attended in person as well as electronically is a fascinating idea. Attendence, missing because of an appointment elsewhere that cuts too soon to class, or even having to work (though, you still have to get online at the time of the class), could be avoided.
All in all, it is interesting to watch all of this collaboration happen. As the ubiquity of computing spreads to the lower parts of the socioeconomic ladder, I can only hope that the ubiquity of schooling past 12 grows with it.
There are fears associated with that. The loss of prestige, the possibility of cheating, the abuse of the loss of prestige as an idication of the lack of intelligence of the lower classes. There are so many other things, i'm sure, that haven't even been thought of. But, the interesting thing is that, while crime and that is destructive in some ways, we need that ingenuity to drive ourselves to better ways of educating both in person, and not.
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