A list of trending tools from our friends at EdTech, including some oldies but goodies and some newbies, at least to me. I’d not heard of Breakout.edu, described as an immersive games platform where “players work collaboratively to solve a series of critical thinking puzzles in order to open a locked box.” I wonder about applications for healthcare and criminal justice, in particular. Anybody using Breakout.edu? 
Southwest Virginia Community College is using Microsoft’s Hololens virtual reality headset, along with the experimental gaming platform “Fragments” that was developed for the headset in crime scene investigation training. The video demo for Fragments is pretty cool!
One of the limitations of Virtual Reality headsets thus far has been accounting for movement in the virtual space. You could “look around” a virtual construction, but trying to move through it was kind of like walking through a Hollywood set — objects were “flat” and had no backside to them. A new VR headset from Occipital has debuted with 3D scanner capability (and, reportedly, other manufacturers are in hot pursuit). Presently only really of use to developers, this article from Fast Co. describes some pretty compelling potential, however.
I was thinking about the terms “native” and “immigrant” that were coined by Marc Prensky back around 2001, and I stumbled upon this further thinking by Prensky on the terminology. His focus now is on “Digital wisdom.” He says: “Problems too often stem from people making judgments that reflect their own formative cultures, and thinking of those judgments as culture-independent or absolute. Immigrants have to watch out for thinking the way they learned to do things is still the best way. Natives need to realize that they still have to learn many things about technology — and life. That is why it is important that we all learn to work together, with mutual respect, to find Digital Wisdom.” It all comes down to adapting, embracing and changing.
This fascinating EdSurge article includes this statement: “An unanticipated benefit Billings also noticed is an increase in technology competence. “Students who are exposed to tech in a developmental English course are now reporting higher confidence with technology as they move through higher-level courses,” she says.”
We tend to think of our post-secondary students as “digital natives.” Perhaps we should be considering their level of technology acumen as they enter, ensuring that everybody has at least a minimal level of competence with computers and the internet… what do you think?
You must be logged in to post a comment.