I couldn’t help but notice all the news surrounding Microsoft and their big announcements today. Today they revealed the latest features for Windows 10 and two new pieces of hardware – Surface Hub, and HoloLens. The more I read the more I was curious, so I ended up watching the keynote online. As I watched, I kept saying to myself, “Wow that would be great in education.” Of course it will be a little while before I can my hands on these cool gadgets, but in the meantime we can imagine all the cool things these tools could allow in the classroom.
Windows 10
There were several really innovative features showcased in the Windows 10 demos, but I was really impressed with the Project Spartan demo. Project Spartan is the successor to Internet Explorer and sports a new UI built upon a new rendering engine. Basically, we will see a faster and easier to use IE.
We all welcome faster and easier whenever it shows up, but new features is why Spartan is a big deal. In the demo the presenter showed that the Spartan browser will allow users to annotate directly on a live webpage. For educators this is a fantastic idea, which will unlock several powerful use cases. For example, students could take advantage of these features while researching in the Science classroom. Students could annotate as they read and highlight key facts for later. Spartan will allow these annotated pages to be shared out to OneNote, where students might be collecting artifacts from several different sources. One quick aside, OneNote will automatically add a link back to the source URL when these pages are saved into the OneNote notebook.
I was also impressed with the integration of Cortana into Windows 10. At first you might wonder how applicable this might be to a teacher or student, but I think it would be a powerful tool for more efficient work. One example that comes to mind would be a student starts a search for the water cycle and Cortana automatically starts aggregating relevant information – pictures, articles, or videos -from various sources around the internet about the water cycle. The student then has a great jump-start to their search to learn about the water cycle.
Surface Hub
When I saw Surface Hub I immediately thought about my awful experiences with distance learning classrooms while I was in college. We had old CRT monitors with low resolution cameras positioned around the room. Our teacher did the best she could to handwrite notes bold enough for us to see on the probably 32 inch screen. The room was full of equipment, which was loud and hot.
Compare that to the Surface Hub which requires one wire, which I assume is the power cable. This is a huge 84 inch display with touch and pen capability. It is equipped with microphones and cameras and runs Windows 10. I think this could virtually remove the distance feel from distance learning. With a Surface Hub the reproduction of high quality images would help make it as if the teacher was actually in the classroom.
In the demo the presenters brought up whiteboards, live webcams from other Surface Hub devices, and even an application that rendered a 3-D model of the Surface Hub.
HoloLense
I think the key factor with this technology is the fact that it is not virtual reality. Virtual reality devices completely remove the user from the environment they are in and attempts to insert them into a new virtual environment. Basically a user’s field of view is blocked by LCD screens that immerse their vision in the virtual world. The HoloLense takes a different approach. It creates augmented reality. In this approach virtual objects are displayed in a way that makes them appear as if they are real physical objects.
This key difference from virtual reality makes HoloLense a device that has great potential in the classroom. Imagine students taking a test where they are challenged with applying a concept to a virtual task. For example, students might use the HoloLense to scan a real object into the system. The HoloLense would then create a new virtual copy of the object, which now allows the student to manually adjust the height, length, and width. Students could demonstrate their understanding of scale factor by creating virtual copies that are two times, three times, and so forth of the original object. Because students are using the HoloLense they would be interacting and seeing the manipulation of the object in real time.
An experience like this would not only be a test of the understanding for the student, but would provide a learning opportunity. Students could visually see the distortion of the object when they did not correctly increase a given dimension of the object. I can’t imagine any other technology that could offer a similar experience for a student.
I could go on and on dreaming about big ideas for these technologies, but I suppose I should wrap things up at this point. I love learning about new technologies like these and to imagine how we educators could utilize them to enhance our classrooms. Maybe I have sparked your imagination and when these technologies reach our classrooms we will all have lots of great ideas out there to hit the ground running with them. Please share some of your ideas in the comments.
Technology in Education 