My topic was Wearable Technology- The Story. To be honest, my first reaction when I saw that we were using the Horizon Report for higher ed was Why? Why not the K-12 report? I have felt like many of the challenges were more focused on skills for projects for older students vs. the AWL or K-2 age groups and I thought, "Oh great, something else that won't be applicable to my work." But... I was wrong. I found the whole topic of Wearable Technology fascinating and learned a lot. Will I use this information in my teaching? Probably not, but it was fun to learn something new and I will now keep up with this developing field. It brought up new questions for me, and I would think it will for others as well. A whole lot of time, energy (both mechanical and people power) and money has gone into and will go into wearable tech. When I look at the investments some companies are making just to make silly (to me) dresses that have blinking LED lights, or a dress that shows your facebook or twitter feed in real time... my first thoughts are- What are you thinking? People around the world are starving, running out of potable water, not being educated and you are using precious resources for this piffle? Then I learned about medical wearable tech and found out that a glove designed to teach someone to play a piano by stimulating the fingers- is now being used successfully with quadriplegics and some can now button a button, go to a restroom, etc, independently. There's a really cool glove for blind people that can tell them if there is a person in front of them and how far away the person is; another gadget can scan regular print and turn it to braille. There are new materials with embedded sensors to record bio-metric data. Can you imagine being able to tell that a firefighter in a burning building was getting into trouble, before he/she could realize it...or that same EMS person could have the building blueprints flash up on his personal screen on an eye-shade and help him find a lost child using blueprints and heat sensors. So, my initial reaction that this was cool, but silly and yet more self-indulgent navel-gazing tech by and for the wealthy folk of the world, has changed, somewhat. Forget arguing about privacy, whether google glass will affect the dating scene or even if it can take very cool videos of your adorable children. Take a step back and say, wow, new tech that can help people. Isn't that the point of all this... to find ways to make lives better- not just cool LED dresses, but cool ways to help make everyone's lives better?
Wearable Technology- The Story from Maureen Tumenas on Vimeo.
Now, off my soapbox... what did I learn about using wikis and collaborating on this project? It was hard. Really hard. And it's not done yet. Trying to work with people that you have never met and who are on a different schedule/timetable than you are and have different expectations, etc. is very difficult. I have given wiki assignments to my students in the past. Their main problems were sabotaging each other and having little wiki wars. I knew that I would not do that, nor would any one do that to me. That was true. However, my collaborators and I are on different schedules and one person decided to drop out at the last minute. What I will do next time- meet in a hangout or some other more f2f place before beginning work. Hash out who is doing what, how we are going to communicate, what each person is bringing to the table, what areas of expertise are represented, and a lot of other questions. I like firm deadlines. Without them, I tend to procrastinate. Actually I procrastinate anyway, but deadlines work for me. Others need more flexibility. I need to work on being proactive, advocating for what I need to get my work done successfully, without being pushy.
Lastly, I used a lot of other people's material in my video... purposefully. Fair use is a muscle that needs to be exercised by more educators. My fair use arguments include: transformative use, used a small portion and most definitely did not affect the market value of the original.
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