New Technology Paper: Technology in Education

Education is Getting Disrupted

At the end of March, I received about 36 research papers in my New Technology course at Reykjavík University. Given that the average paper is about 6.000 words, I read over 200.000 words in the early April. The topics range is wide, some examples are piracy and the death of physical medium, e-sports, smart technology, e-voting, bionics, EVs, NFC, and UAV, Pro-ams and many more.

In a paper titled Technology Education, Hanna María Hermannsdóttir looks at how technology is changing eduction. We have seen how many new technologies are impacting learning, including tablets like the iPad and use of videos and Youtube’s role. The use of new technology in education has sparked new thinking, in particular the idea of a “flipped classroom” where students become responsible for watching video lectures and attend the classroom for hands-on experience and mentoring.

In the introduction of the paper, Hanna María writes: “Education is heading towards digital learning and that development is inevitable, the only question is how fast the development will be. Ten years ago no one could imagine hardbound textbooks going the same way as the slide rules but today that image don’t seem that far away. In the last few years we have seen devices enter the market that could eliminate textbooks as we know them today. The entire way of students learning is being altered. Classrooms are being “flipped”, teachers are being given more time to mentor and guide instead of lecturing all the time and before we know it every student will have a computer device, even elementary students.”

Paper: Technology in Education by Hanna María Hermannsdóttir.

Picture above by mitikusa on Flickr.

New Technology Lecture L05 Disruptive Technology

History has many examples of great innovators who had difficult time convincing their contemporaries of new technology. Even incumbent and powerful companies regarded new technologies as inferior and dismissed it as “toys”. Alexander Graham Bell did not get a good reception at Western Union when he offer the telephone for sale. Then when disruptive technologies take off they often are overhyped and can cause bubbles like the Internet bubble of the late 1990s.

In this lecture we look at some examples of disruptive technologies and the impact they had. We look at the The Disruptive Innovation Theory by Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen.

 

New Technology 2012 Lecture 04 – Evolution of Technology

Technology is one of the major factors of change. This can be an opportunity or a threat. For many businesses and industries it is important to recognize the threat. New technology is an opportunity for new companies to enter the market.

In this lecture we look at how technology evolves. We look at some of the theories of how technologies evolves including Moore´s Law and the S-curve.

The story told in the lecture is taken from this Wikipedia entry:

Legend of the Ambalappuzha Paal Payasam

Slides can be found here:

L04 Evolution of Technology

Videos used in this lecture are these:

Ray Kurzweil: How technology’s accelerating power will transform us from TED.com

Dick Tracy: The Purple Boy

Ces 2009 – LG Watch Phone from CNet TV

And the game mentioned before the break and played after the break is Timeline.