Michell Zappa gave a keynote at Northampton University on technology and education. They discussed three main technological drivers that are impacting education: social learning platforms that enable one-to-many and many-to-many learning; personal informatics that allow students to quantify and track their learning; and instant information retrieval through ubiquitous computing and sensors. Literacy and numeracy will need to evolve to skills like programming, privacy, multimedia, and attention as jobs are created that don't exist yet. Students need to be prepared at the edge of existing knowledge.

1. Keynote given at Northampton University on 2011-09-01 by invitation of Adrian Pryce for the school’s
2020 visioning session.
This document has a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA), and can be used freely.

2. TECHNOLOGY
& EDUCATION
Michell Zappa
michellzappa.com
We’re here today to talk about the intersection between technology and education.
And I figured that since you guys are the experts on education, let us start with a quick primer on
technology and how it behaves.

3. Who am I?

4. Last updated: 2011-03-29 (biofeedback) Reversal of
meeting people is easy aging
Optogenetics
Artificial limbs
Swarm Exoskeletons
robotics Programmable matter
UAVs
Utility Regenerative
fog medicine
Domestic Synthetic
robots meat
Nanowires
Stem-cell
treatments
Self-driving
ROBOTICS vehicles
Vertical Carbon
agriculture nanotubes
Personalized
Interplanetary medicine
internet
Molecular
assembler
BIOTECH
Tele- Intelligence
Smart medicine Amplification
cities Smart
toys Bio-
materials
MATERIALS
HAPs Bio-
markers Meta-
materials Machine
translation
Semantic ARTIFICIAL
web Self-healing
materials INTELLIGENCE
Smart Linked
data Appliance
infrastructure robots Memristor
NFC
Cermets
INTERNET Print on
demand Medical Space
(CONNECTIVITY) PGS diagnostics
Social 3D elevator
5G graph printing
Natural language
High-frequency interpretation
Cloud trading
computing Software
2025 + 2015 – 2025 2011 – 2015
Cyber-
now Private
spaceflight
2011 – 2015 agents 2015 – 2025 2025 +
warfare
Sensors
(2011) Space
Ultra- Bio-enhanced tourism
PAN
Tabs & Fuel cells
capacitors fuels SPACE
Pads Multi Multi-segmented
Virtual 4G touch All media smart grids
currencies on demand Smart VASIMR
Virtual meters
property Pervasive Gesture
video recognition Inductive Superconducting
Boards chargers interties
3D
Electronic Gamification
paper AR of media Lunar
outpost
Pico-
projectors
ENERGY
Nanostructure
ACRONYMS battery cathodes
Speech
3D 3D screens and cameras recognition Procedural
storytelling
SPIMES
4G Fourth gen cellular wireless (WiMAX, LTE) MEDIA
UBICOMP
5G Fifth gen cellular wireless (HARDWARE) Haptics Photo- Piezo-
AR Augmented Reality NUI voltaics electricity
(SOFTWARE) Thorium
HAP High Altitude Platform Fabric-
embedded reactors
Holography Location-aware Photvoltaic Biomechanical
NFC Near Field Communication screens
media glass harvesting Traveling
wave reactor
NUI Natural User Interface
Telepresence Nano- Nuclear
PAN Personal Area Networks
generators
Solar
PGS Personal Gene Sequencing thermal
Smart clothing Kinetic
SPIME An object that can be tracked Machine
through space and time vision
UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Artificial
Immersive 3D photosynthesis
VASIMR Variable Specific Impulse projections
Magnetoplasma Rocket
Retinal Solar
screens
Skin-embedded
screens
Learn more: michell zappa.com
I recently published zappa@gmail.com
Contact me: michell a visualization of a few dozen key technologies I think will be important in the
upcoming decade.
Follow me: @mz BY SA

5. assembler
BIOTECH
Tele-
medicine
Smart
toys Bio-
materials
MATERIALS
Bio-
markers Meta-
materials
Semantic ARTIFIC
web Self-healing
materials INTELLIGE
Linked
data Appliance
robots Memristor
NFC
Cermets
INTERNET Print on
demand
(CONNECTIVITY) PGS
Social 3D
graph printing
Natural language
High-frequency interpretation
Cloud trading
computing Software
2011 – 2015
Cyber-
now Private
spaceflight
2011 – 2015 agents
warfare
Sensors
(2011) Sp
Ultra- Bio-enhanced tou
PAN capacitors fuels
Tabs & Fuel cells
Pads Multi Multi-segmented
Virtual 4G touch All media smart grids
currencies on demand Smart
Virtual meters
property Pervasive Gesture
video recognition Inductive Superconducting
Boards chargers interties
3D
Electronic Gamification
paper AR of media
Pico-
projectors
ENERGY
Nanostruc
Speech battery cath
recognition Procedural
storytelling
SPIMES
UBICOMP MEDIA
(HARDWARE) Haptics Photo- Piezo-
NUI voltaics electricity
(SOFTWARE)
Fabric-
embedded Holography
screens Location-aware Photvoltaic Biomechanical
media glass harvesting
It can be downloaded freely on my website.
Telepresence
ge
Solar
thermal
lothing
Machine
vision
Artificial
Immersive 3D photosynthesis
projections

6. What is
technology?
What do you associate with technology?
Cars? Airplanes? Mobile phones? The internet?

7. We usually think about technology in terms of its artifacts: robots, cars, phones, etc.

8. Technology, in fact, is everything that surrounds us.
The wheel, agriculture, fire, the book and money are examples of technologies we do not usually
isolate as such.

9. “Anything useful that
we make is technology.”
— Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly knows what he’s talking about.
Source:
http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_kelly_tells_technology_s_epic_story.html

10. The other characteristic about technology is how it’s always progressing. A century ago, humanity had
never even taken flight. Now, we take it for granted.

11. Same with medical imaging.

12. And also things we consider “technologies”, like video games.

13. 2011
2006
CPU FSB RAM HDD Mpbs
But technology has this other interesting aspect. It grows relentlessly.
You can ignore the numbers -- just look at the constant growth over time.

14. SPEED &
STORAGE
These tend toward ∞ through exponential growth

15. COST &
SIZE
And these tend tend asymptotically toward zero.

16. What allows YouTube to exist? The combination of:
Ubiquitous cameras, cheap storage, fast processing, internet users everywhere, fast internet access.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dtimcarr/308240826/

17. 48 hours of content
uploaded every minute.
(As of May/2001)
“nearly 8 years of content uploaded every day”
Sources:
http://www.mecmanchester.co.uk/blog/youtube-birthday.html
http://www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics

18. While we avoid talking about specific gadgets, there is one elephant in the room...

19. The iPad is, however, an important exception to the rule of “not looking at gadgets”.
It will inevitable make its mark on education, but in my opinion, it will mostly have a great impact on
textbooks in the foreseeable future.

20. “A rocket will never be able to
leave the Earth’s atmosphere.”
— New York Times, 1936
Tech predictions are fundamentally flawed and risky.
Source:
http://listverse.com/history/top-30-failed-technology-predictions/

21. THREE
TECHNOLOGICAL
DRIVERS

22. Social
Learning
Platforms
1

23. One to one One to many
The face of education after the industrial revolution.

24. The one-to-many approach changed a bit with the web. But mostly by amplifying the “many”.
Open Courseware (and its kin) is still fundamentally broadcasting knowledge.

25. Everyone is in on the game.

26. One to one One to many Many to many
I think the equation is changing with the advent of “many-to-many”. Where every student is a teacher.

27. Million students per month
Pause, repeat, review
Own pace, skip ahead
Teacher overview panel
Generate as many questions as the student needs. Until they get ten in a row.

28. 2.200+ lessons
100.000+ views per day

29. Tons of examples of peer to peer learning. OpenStudy is all about receiving help from other students.

30. As is Udemy.

31. Livemocha is changing the face of language education. Learn from those already speak a different
language -- and teach them a language you speak in return.

32. And if you question the validity of Open Courseware approaches, just look at Stanford’s recent AI
course.

33. “Flip” the classroom.
Flip the classroom:
lectures are the new homework -- and classes are used for answering questions and doing work
Transforming a system that has become industrial by necessity into a craft once again.

34. Personal
Informatics
2

35. This is how we quantify ourselves today. Ranking, measuring, achievements.

36. Nike+
Nike+ has over 2.5m users, and can be credited to kicking off the personal informatics trend.

37. Philips DirectLife
Philips is in the game, with a device measuring all your exercise.
http://www.directlife.philips.com/

38. Withings
Or how about measuring your weight and having the results uploaded to your phone in real time?
It becomes a way of tightening the feedback loop between cause and effect. Between eating that extra
bagel, and knowing you gained a few more pounds.
http://www.withings.com/en/index/?taranim=1

39. Or track the quality of your sleep.
http://www.myzeo.com/

40. The same thing is happening to education, of course. Grockit facilitates learning and test-prep by
breaking down the problems into quantifiable chunks. Track how well you are performing at every
*aspect* of math. Not simply through a grade at the end of the term/test.

41. Algorithmic
homework assignment
What happens when you leverage the trend in order to algorithmically assign more adequate
homework assignments to the students?

42. Tighter
feedback loops
“This is not the way to develop a complicated skill. It would be like trying to master the violin, say, by
going blind to a recital, having an expert tell you all the ways you’ve failed, and letting that gestate for
a few weeks before your next recital”.
Equity in the feedback loop. It’s a way to raise the bar for everyone.

43. “Gamified” learning
Or when you start “gamifying” the learning? Better rankings, better class overview, more incentives for
the students to try harder.

44. Instant
Information
Retrieval
3

45. “
Knowledge is
of two kinds.
We know a subject
ourselves, or
we know where
we can find
information on it.

46. The number of Google searches per day keeps going up. We are more than accustomed to having
access to information at our fingertips. But comes “after” typing in queries into a computer?

47. Personal computing Ubiquitous computing
We’re surrounding ourselves with ever more gadgets. All interconnected and covered in smart sensors.

48. Google Goggles
So why have to look up the name of that bridge? Or who created that painting?
Point your smartphone camera and have Google tell you. It’s called reverse image search, and it’s
frankly uncanny.

49. Google Voice Search
Speak your queries. Or have the phone listen in and proactively answer your questions (at some point
in the future).

50. Word Lens
Realtime translations in your phone. You never have to get lost in a foreign culture again.
Five dollars in the App Store.

51. Vicon Revue
Next step? Cameras everywhere. Wear one around your neck.
http://www.viconrevue.com/index.html

52. Looxcie
Or one on your ear. (Already for sale).

54. Heads-up-displays are still a few years away -- but they’ll come.

55. Wisdom
Knowledge
Information
Data
Who teaches our kids to sift through the information flood?
How do we learn to judge the value and validity of this torrent of data?
That’s probably the role of the educators today.

56. Social
Learning
Platforms
Instant Personal
Information Informatics
Retrieval
To recap...

57. FUTURE
LITERACY &
NUMERACY
What is the future of literacy?

58. 65% of today's grade school
kids will end up at a job that hasn't
been invented yet.
Source: United States Department of Labor: Futurework - Trends and Challenges for Work in the 21st
Century
We are currently preparing for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented,
In order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.

59. PROGRAMMING
INTERFACE
PRIVACY
MULTIMEDIA
ATTENTION
MULTITASKING
CONCENTRATION
We need to rethink the very basic skills that are being taught in school. Even more emphasis on
future-proof skills such as Interface, Concentration and Attention. Those issues aren’t going anywhere.
Today, programmers are just like scribes in the middle ages or ancient Egypt. In the future, everyone
will be a programmer. Everyone will have to interact with all media. It’s no longer a “IT” problem.

60. Students should be taken to the
edge of the precipice beyond which
knowledge does not exist.
Harold Innis
I love this phrase (because we have no other option than to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to this
precipice).

61. Thank you.
@mz
mz@michellzappa.com
michellzappa.com