Seeing Spaces
It is news to no one that over the past ten years the influence of technology on our daily lives has grown exponentially. As processors hav become faster, cheaper, and smaller, computing that was only reserved for the desktop has gone mobile — and a mobile revolution has saturated society with incredibly power personal computers. The adoption of these devices, and exploration of their uses, has been essential to the development of both people’s work and personal lives. This technology allows us to be connected all the time — for better or for worse. For work, mobile computing keeps us on the clock — allowing us to be constantly available for email, phone, or collaborative group projects. For your personal life, the mobile device has secured its place as the all-powerful social machine. Messaging, facebook, snapchat, instagram, etc. has made mobile interaction a primary form of communication, not to mention a keeper and manager of public identity. For these reasons, the smartphone has become part of our daily routine, and part of us.
As much as technology has seen blind adoption in the home and the office, it’s relationship to the classroom has seen more friction and debate. Especially on college campus, the laptop and the phone have entered the classroom, but more as an intruder from our personal lives than an educational object. Students walk into class — no mattter what the scale — sit down, open their laptop, and place their phone next to it. This habit immediately creates a seperation between student and teacher, as well as student and the class as a whole. Using a laptop is an intensely personal experience, and instead of listening to the teacher, they can peruse the internet at their leisure, searching for anything that will interest them more than the teacher. The laptop as object also introduces an unease to teacher, who has no idea what the students he/she is trying to engage are scrolling through. Teachers’ search for student eye contact while mid-lecture is too often met with glazed-over eyes illuminated by a screen they can’t see.
It is this experience, and image, that has fueled the fear of technology in the classroom. Although real, this vision suffers from a shortsightedness of what technology can be, as well as a expectation that it has to remain in its current package. Calibrated by our experience with our smartphones, technology in the classroom brings to mind a a future of students reading, downloading, tapping, and swiping through as much information possible. While this culture of information consumption isn’t much different than what goes on in many classrooms already, repeating formula’s off a bland slide deck, its lack of human interaction adds another layer of discomfort. Technology, and humane technology, has to encourage engagement over entertainment. Much like Joe Edelman’s call to Design for Agency, described in an earlier post.
But what does this alternative vision for a tech infused classroom look like? It begins with the undersatanding that tech in the classroom is not limited to the laptops, ipads and iphones. As Brett Victor, a prominant interface designer and researcher explains, we bring the technological features normally confined to the screen and instead embed them in our space. Much like control room as the NASA control room, displays are strategically incorporated in the space to help engineers interpret complicated data with ease. Essentially, the control room is a “seeing space” that uses technology to aid understanding. Using this as example can help lay forth a framework for a new kind of technology in school, one where “Data is built into the material, displays are built into the room”.
In response to the perceived negative effects of current technology in class, which pulls the student away from the content discussed in class, imagining the class as a “seeing space” can bring students even closer to content. Bringing abstract concepts to life in real time. Powered by recent innovations in data capture, display tech, and the internet of things, we can utilize tech to create an active educational experience — emphasizing recording, tinkering, and true understanding, part a formula.
This vision of a data-driven classroom doesn’t quantify the experience of the student, as would first assume. It instead brings taught concepts to life, making a student a part of their own education instead of observer.
While people leave a trail and impression all over the internet — through social media, through the data collected on them when online shopping or just browsing. But when it comes to education, we let most of our efforts, our projects, or experments go unrecorded. This is clear lost opportunity in strictly a pragmatic sense — data capature in the classroom would be an incredibly to teachers and students alike, even if it was just used to help create study guides and manage student progress. In a broader sense ultilizing data capture through the internet of things, seeing spaces, and classroom computer interaction, can lead to an environment of learning that engages rather than distracts. Embedding tech into the background of our learning spaces will remove the layers of abstraction between teacher, laptop, and student, while affording the opportunity for students to explore concepts normally limited to an equation on a PowerPoint slide.
