Wearable Technology developments will have a significant impact on Education. Technology will become increasingly mobile and invisible, offering us new ways to interact with the world through Virtual and Augmented Reality and provide us with continuous streams of information. This opens up innovative opportunities in pedagogy that will redefine what we mean by terms such as “experience” and “learning”; how will texts change when 3D virtual objects emerge from the page or screen? How will learning change when we can experience an historical era through an Augmented Reality App? Wearable Tech will impact our current instructional technology in Education, creating new opportunities for collaboration and documenting learning while make obsolete current solutions for lecture capture and video conferencing. Wearables will fuel the already massive increase in visual resources in contemporary society and pose new challenges for educational institutions on data use and questions of personal privacy. If the futurist Ray Kurzweil said that the Smartphone is a “gateway to Knowledge” then what will Wearable Tech be for learning? This presentation was given at the Campus Technology conference, Boston, 2014

1. Wearable Tech is Coming
to your Campus!
Emory Craig
Director of eLearning
The College of New Rochelle
Campus Technology
July 2014

2. Today . . .
 Our first “Summer of Wearables”
 Google Glass, Vuzix, Meta 3D Glasses,
Oculus Rift, Narrative Clip Lifelogging
Camera
 Challenges – What’s holding us back?
 Impact on our Learning Environments
 Some insights (the foggy Crystal Ball)

3. What’s the Attraction?
 Ubiquitous – yes, everywhere
 Always on – Goodbye “off” switch
 Connectivity – without picking up our
Smartphones (an average of 150 times a day)
 Useful – Location aware, intention aware
 Transformative – New data (body trackers) and
new experiences (AR and VR)
 Hands-free – Please disappear (completely)!

4. History of Wearables – (Yes, a
Long Road Here)

5. Now the Tech Focus is Ending –
Wearables are Marketable

6. Five Wearable
Devices

7. Devices on the Market (or Close)

8. Google Dives in: Isabelle Olsson
with Early Glass Prototype

9. Google Glass
• High resolution display,
equivalent of 25” HD
screen 8’ away
• Camera: 5 MP
• Video – 720p
• But Google (or we?)
tripped over the social
acceptance issue

10. Vuzix M100 Smart Glasses
• Display equivalent to a
smartphone screen at
typical 14” distance
• 5MP Camera and 1080P
video
• Runs local but designed
to pair with an Android
device (we’ll get to
battery life in a minute)

11. Meta 3D Glasses – Now It Gets
Interesting
• True augmented, holographic reality glasses
• Available late 2014 for $3,000
• Wired to a small
pocket computer
to do the serious
work

12. And Oculus Rift Goes All In (and
so does Facebook)
• Virtual Reality head-
mounted display
• Expected 1920x1080
resolution
• Designed as an in-
expensive gaming
device

13. Smaller Devices - Huge Impact?
Narrative Clip
• Life logging Camera
• Size: 1.42“ X 1.42“ X 0.35"
• Time-stamped, geotagged photo
every 30 sec
• No on/off switch
• 2 day Battery life
• Wear it and forget it

14. Continuous Snapshots of Your Life
• Photos stored in
the cloud
• Organizes images
by “Moments”
• In one day you’ll
take 1,700 photos
or 12,000 a week
(not a typo)

15. Challenges

16. Glass is Surprisingly Simple

17. But They All Encounter Tech and
Design Challenges
 Battery life – the Achilles Heel of Wearables
 Attractiveness - Can they truly become
fashion accessories – seductive, worn “for
their own sake”?
 Purpose Driven: Can they become “essential
wear” like a coat in winter?

18. Battery Life is a Problem of
Weight
 Battery life obstacle –
Samsung’s 210mAh
battery
 Compare Smartphones:
1500mAh – 2500mAh
• Look at Fast / Slow iPhone progress:
• Processor is 40 times faster in 7 years
• Battery life only 12% increase in 6 years

19. Patchwork Solutions Until
Problem is Solved
 PWRGlass: an add-on developed for Google
Glass that increases battery life 3X (actually
quite creative)

20. Lenovo Toying With Wrapping a
Battery Around your Neck

21. Pivothead SMART Glasses: Modular
Power and Connectivity

22. Fashion: The Activity Tracker as
an Object of Beauty
Misfit Shine

23. Purpose Driven: Don’t Leave Home
Without Them
Lechal Shoes – that direct you to your destination
(using GPS on your phone)

24. Impact on Learning

25. The Glaringly Obvious: Wearables
and Learning
 Easy first person video
 Hands-free documentation
 Full Social Media integration
 Easy Collaboration (which was once so hard)
 Virtual field trips – from a first-person
perspective
 Hello outside experts!

26. Glassware – If the Ecosystem
System is Weak . . .

27. Virtual Field Trips - Andrew
Vanden Heuvel
Doing a virtual field trip for students into the Large Hadron Collider

28. Can we Reinvent “Experiential
Learning"?
 Not just life experience – but actually
experience, or “see” history
 HistoryPin Project – collaborative effort to
visualize the past
 Smartphone App - overlay historical scenes on
the contemporary landscape
 Now combine this with Wearables

29. StreetMuseum – Stroll Through
19th Century London
Amazing even now as an iPhone App - think about the
possibilities with Wearables

30. Augmented Reality: Vuforia App –
Texts come alive with 3D Objects

31. The Future

32. Lecture Capture and Video
Conferencing – Headed to the Landfill?

33. Do classrooms Become Public Spaces?

34. Will all Interactions with Students
be Documented?

35. Does Social Media Become the
Baseline for Communication?

36. What will we do with Mountains
of Data on Learning?

37. Wearables? As Henry Ford Might Say:
The Future is not a Faster Horse!

38. Wearables will Bring a Tidal Wave
of Data and Images
Estimated that humans have taken 3.8 trillion
photographs since the invention of the camera –
10% of those were taken in the past year – 3.8 Billion

39. Do the Math: 1800 Images a Day,
12,000 a Week - One Narrative Clip

40. What Fence? Boundary Between Public and Private
Space – Fascinating and Contentious Issue

41. A Final Thought:
“Mobile phones are misnamed.
They should be called gateways
to human knowledge.”
—Ray
Kurzweil

42. Rephrased . . .
Wearables are misnamed.
They should be called gateways
to innovative learning