Ed Tech Friday is a weekly look at the issues, trends, and conversations that are important in the world of education technology. This week we are doing a broad overview of the field in order to introduce this new series. The advent of digital devices—tablets, laptops, and smartphones—in our K-12 classrooms is being embraced by […]
The Pew Report Recently we did an eight part series on the boundaries between the human and digital world. The first segment was on the new reality of robots. This is a field that keeps moving, however, and recently the debate about whether robots will end up taking our jobs was fueled anew by Pew […]
Ed Tech Friday is a weekly look at the issues, trends, and conversations that are important in the world of education technology. This week we are doing a broad overview of the field in order to introduce this new series. Part 1: Train Wrecks Make Better Stories Most stories about placing digital devices into a […]
Ed Tech Friday is a weekly look at the issues, trends, and conversations that are important in the world of education technology. This week we are doing a broad overview of the field in order to introduce this new series. Wikipedia defines Education Technology this way: “the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and […]
This is the last part in our eight-part series on the boundary between the digital world and our own, human existence. Our goal was to show that this boundary is thin and shifting all the time. The idea that there is a “real life” that exists independently of our online digital existence is at […]
The 2014 World Cup opened with a paraplegic kicking the first ball. The moment was almost, but not quite captured in this video. To make the kick, the man wore a cap full of sensors that read his brainwaves. These signals controlled his exoskeleton, allowing him to kick a ball. The last article in […]
We normally gather information through our senses. We see, we touch, we feel. Though tradition describes us as having five senses, we actually have closer to 20, depending on how you define sense. We are gathering information about the world around us as well as the world inside us on an ongoing basis. Much of […]
If you can’t upload yourself into a computer, how about wrapping yourself up in one? Ever since Dick Tracy put on his two-way radio wristwatch, the public imagination has been waiting for us to wear our electronics. Fictional versions of wearable computing have evolved from the two-way communicator on a wrist to Iron Man’s JARVIS. […]
In 1990 I got a chance to interview the lawyer for Thomas Donaldson, Ph.d, the neuroscientist who at the time was suing for the right to have himself killed and frozen. At the time Donaldson was fairly young, but had been diagnosed with brain cancer. He was a proponent of cryonic suspension, but feared that […]
We expect computers to know the answers to questions. In fact, many of us grow frustrated when a computer doesn’t seem to understand what we’re asking. We Google phrases and we get results that are pretty astounding, really. Those of us who grew up watching Star Trek are familiar with the computer’s supporting role. You […]