Imagine this: contact lenses that can measure a diabetic’s blood sugar level through tears instead of pricking a finger.
Smart devices that pull bed time stories from your kids’ pajamas instead of books.
A toilet that flushes with a wave of your hand.
Good news – you don’t have to imagine any of those things. They’re real.
While attending Robbie Melton’s keynote speech at the NUTN conference in San Antonio, I was floored at the advancements home and health technology have made in the past ten years. And Robbie just kept going – smart plants to tell you when your garden needs watering, smart teeth to tell you which foods you eat aren’t in compliance with weight loss, smart chopsticks that tell you how fresh the food you are about to eat is, smart fingernails, smart eyelashes, 3-D laser printing that can whip up a new body part made of live cells and on and on.
The main point Robbie made was this: technology is incredible. It’s evolving and making mountainous strides in every industry – except higher education.
I know that’s partially true. Since starting my job at HigherEdTD, I’ve covered so many incredible technology projects, from social media learning trends, solar farms, bio mass boilers, ERP systems, software initiatives and more.
However, I think Robbie was most concerned with the lack of mobile technology in college classrooms.
During her speech, Robbie said that some professors are still hesitant when it comes to mobile devices. Some of them think mobile devices will give students an opportunity to sneak onto Facebook and stop paying attention, or work on an assignment for another class.
As a 2012 college graduate, I can attest to this point. In most of my college classes, the professors forbade laptops and mobile devices in the classroom, and probably for the reasons listed above.
At the time, I never questioned what the professors required. Now that I have more experience in higher education technology, I wonder how my college experience would have been different if my professors encourage using mobile devices in class.
I wonder if I would have been a more active digital native, if I would have had a stronger leg-up on navigating apps. I wonder if I would have been able to contribute something greater to the journalism and communications fields if I had more fluency with mobile devices. Who knows.
Instead, I encourage colleges to rethink their “no-mobile devices” policies.
What opportunities would be available to students by utilizing their mobile devices in class? What kinds of collaboration and learning would occur? How would mobile devices benefit your institution?
Bottom line: give mobile devices a chance.
Colleges have a right to be anxious about telling students to pull out their tablets for a lesson. Change is scary, and it’s hard work to boost digital fluency in old school faculty.
However, keep in mind that if technology is absent in the classroom, the institution falls behind. When an institution falls behind and fails to meet students’ technology needs, they will lose those students.
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Video: A reflection on the fear and loathing of mobile devices in college classrooms, and what might happen if colleges keep them banned.
https://youtu.be/_PaaMpjT9hE
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