Educause 2017, Day 2

The conference was off to an interesting start with keynote speaker Michio Kaku, who is one of the thinkers behind String Theory and is focused on making Physics interesting and appealing to a broad audience.

Michio Kaku

His focus was on what life in general and education in particular could look like in 20 years. The key idea is that computers as we know them (as boxes under or on our tables) will no longer exist but that the processors will be built into our clothes, into our watches, maybe glasses, but most likely into our contact lenses, so that with the blink of an eye we would have any and all information not at our finger tips but on our retinas.
This kind of instant access to information would mean less need to memorize anything - and it would mean that assessing people on memorized information becomes completely meaningless. He also reminded us that memorization crushes curiosity and the desire to become a scientist.
Because of these changes, people will need to improve their intellectual properties as jobs that are bound in repetition or just simply a middle position will all be moved towards robotics and other kind of automation. The skills needed will be analysis, creativity, experience, innovation, leadership, talent, imagination.  Faculty will need to mentor their students to improve and practice these kinds of skills rather than focusing entirely on content.

My next session was the Learning Spaces Constituent Group where I learned about Happy Light, a light designed to help with seasonal affliction. Adding these light sources to classrooms without windows may be a relatively easy way to improve the student energy in the room.  Georgia State just opened a new MakerSpace that looks quite interesting. I am not sure if they did this, but I think if we were to build a MakerSpace, I want to try to build it to follow Design Thinking so that each area of the room provides resources for one particular stage - eg, loungy chairs for discussions in the empathy space; erasable wall space for the definition and ideation space, lots of tools for the Protoype space, and open space for the testing. One point raised was that students need explicit permission to use certain spaces, write in certain places -- for example on designated walls and windows -- one trick there is to use the same color of paint for all those spaces you can write on, to set it apart from regular walls.

The session on Making Virtual Reality a Reality focused on work Arcadia University is doing -- as in giving students a space to explore and design virtual and augmented reality. One additional reality there is the 360 degree videos that students can create with relatively inexpensive cameras right now. Google Tilt Brush is one such tool that could make art and other designs very interesting in the future.  Apollo Launch 11 recreates the launch of this exploration.  Focus on places you cannot go because it is too expensive, too dangerous, or just plain impossible.  The Smithsonian is doing interesting things as well:  https://americanart.si.edu/wonder360

The final session of the day discussed the Generation Z and what their attitude towards smart devices may mean for universities.  University of Central Florida and Harvard University discussed their two different approaches. We heard numbers about how many hours GenZ spends on smartphones - 12 per day, with essentially 100% of students having a smartphone and using it for pretty much everything. While we still see an increase in use of computers and tablets, the phone has overtaken all other devices in ubiquity.  UCF decided to build a comprehensive map, based on student needs.  These needs were determined by students with parking as number 1, so their app shows students where parking is available. Other key pieces are maps and student affairs, dining and special events with integrated voting features. Push notifications are something students like, so we need to take advantage of this. Harvard decided to go with student inspired and created apps through an annual competition - this means multiple apps, but it does also mean that student need is directly addressed in a very diverse and inclusive way.

And then I prowled the Exhibit Hall but did not find anything that completely blew me away.