Pew recently conducted a survey of 895 technology “stakeholders,” comprised of both technology experts and individuals who represent the Internet savvy public. The survey presented “potential-future scenarios to which respondents [reacted] with their expectations based on current knowledge and attitudes.”  According to Pew,

“Respondents to the Future of the Internet IV survey, fielded from Dec. 2, 2009 to Jan. 11, 2010, were asked to consider the future of the Internet-connected world between now and 2020 and the likely innovation that will occur. They were asked to assess 10 different “tension pairs” – each pair offering two different 2020 scenarios with the same overall theme and opposite outcomes – and they were asked to select the one most likely choice of two statements. The tension pairs and their alternative outcomes were constructed to reflect previous statements about the likely evolution of the Internet.”

To complete the study, Pew based their survey on the following five questions.

Pew’s first question addresses the widespread concern that the Internet is adversely impacting people’s thinking skills. In 2008 Nicholas Carr, writing for the Atlantic Monthly, wrote a provocative piece with the cover line, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr argues that the nature of online searching and reading are limiting people’s ability to concentrate in a way that promotes “The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds.” Carr’s argument has touched off a firestorm in academic circles. In response, Pew decided to probe Carr’s concerns as part of their study. Is the Internet making us stupid? According to the survey,

“Google won’t make us stupid: 76% of these experts agreed with the statement, “By 2020, people’s use of the Internet has enhanced human intelligence; as people are allowed unprecedented access to more information they become smarter and make better choices. Nicholas Carr was wrong: Google does not make us stupid.”

Pew’s second question focuses on the impact the Internet will have on important literacy skills. According to the report,

“Reading, writing, and the rendering of knowledge will be improved: 65% agreed with the statement by 2020 “it will be clear that the Internet has enhanced and improved reading, writing and the rendering of knowledge.” Still, 32% of the respondents expressed concerns that by 2020 “it will be clear that the Internet has diminished and endangered reading, writing and the rendering of knowledge.”

Pew’s third question is interesting: Will the technologists be able to effectively identify important trends in innovation? The survey found the following:

“Innovation will continue to catch us by surprise: 80% of the experts agreed that the “hot gadgets and applications that will capture the imaginations of users in 2020 will often come ‘out of the blue.’”

Pew’s fourth question addresses an important concern of most educators: Will information continue to flow freely and with minimal regulation of the Internet? Again, the respondents to Pew’s survey provided interesting insight.

“Respondents hope information will flow relatively freely online, though there will be flashpoints over control of the internet. Concerns over control of the Internet were expressed in answers to a question about the end-to-end principle. 61% responded that the Internet will remain as its founders envisioned, however many who agreed with the statement that “most disagreements over the way information flows online will be resolved in favor of a minimum number of restrictions” also noted that their response was a “hope” and not necessarily their true expectation. 33% chose to agree with the statement that “the Internet will mostly become a technology where intermediary institutions that control the architecture and …content will be successful in gaining the right to manage information and the method by which people access it.”

Pew’s final question addresses an important concern most technologists have with the growing threat to online anonymity. According to the 895 respondents,

“Anonymous online activity will be challenged, though a modest majority still think it will possible in 2020: There more of a split verdict among the expert respondents about the fate on online anonymity. Some 55% agreed that Internet users will still be able to communicate anonymously, while 41% agreed that by 2020 “anonymous online activity is sharply curtailed.”

What will the Internet look like in 2020? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Follow me on Twitter!

Cloud Computing

If schools are going to use technology to improve organizational processes, it’s important their leaders consider moving many of the school’s daily operations onto a cloud-based network. This enables the sort of communication that can only be accomplished by utilizing the  networking and information sharing power of a cloud system. I enjoyed a post on this topic from a few months ago, entitled “Heads in the Cloud.” The author discusses a few ways his school uses Google to communicate more effectively. Here are a few ideas I really liked:

1. Noticeboards– “[the author's school] no longer use a noticeboard in the staffroom as all staff log into our Google site from anywhere in the world and the first thing they see is our ‘virtual’ noticeboard and a staff calendar, which outlines what’s going on over the next few days.
   All staff can add events to the staff calendar or add announcements on the Virtual Noticeboard.  Although we are a small school, there are, on average, 4-5 announcements made each week.  These range from reminders about meetings to announcements about new resources.  Teachers often post up announcements that they have uploaded new resources to our resource sharing section.  The calendar also gets used for smaller events that don’t generally make it on to traditional staffroom noticeboards.  For example, people can see who’s gone on EPV days, if the principal (me) is at a meeting or if a psychologist is in.  Another cool feature of the “Announcements” section is the ability for staff to comment.  For example, last week I made an announcement on the site asking staff which week they would prefer parent-teacher meetings and gave a date to answer by.  50% of the staff left a comment on the site and the dates were chosen.”
2. Staff Meetings– “ ‘Will you stick x on the agenda please?’ is an often forgotten job, which can lead to disgruntled staff members.  In my school, if a staff member wants to add something to the staff meeting, we have a “live” agenda document which can be added to by anyone.  A few days before the meeting, the document is “closed” and the agenda is set.”
3. Learning Support– “I have found the “cloud” one of the best things for Learning Support.  One of my aims of Learning Support was to have weekly booster sessions for children who might not have grasped a concept during class, for whatever reason.  I wanted to free up a 15 minute session for 5 days so the support staff could teach that concept to get them back in the fold.  Sometimes a child doesn’t need a long period of Learning Support so this was ideal.  However, it would be almost impossible to manage without my cloud.If a teacher feels that a child (or small group of children) require a boost in a certain area of the curriculum, they can book a “catch-up session”.  This involves them filling out a simple form.  The Learning Support team then “grab” and book a particular session for a particular week.  The teacher can then, at a glance, see when their child will be given this session.  It works on a first come first served basis.  It’s working really really well in my school.
   Another cool thing for our Learning Support team is to have access to any of our assessment results.  Our Micra-T and Sigma-T results can be seen in a table so that we can pinpoint and prioritise who will be allocated Learning Support.”

If you are using cloud computing at your school, please share your ideas!

Follow me on Twitter!

1. Google Apps for Education– “Google Apps Education Edition is a free suite of hosted communication & collaboration applications designed for schools and universities.” The suite includes apps to help teachers communicate (Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Talk) and collaborate (Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Groups, and Google Video).

2. Evernote– Evernote is a great tool to save ideas, things you see during the school day, and important information. Teachers and administrators can use this app from their smartphones to create a note on a student or class, clip a web page to look at later, take a photo, grab a screen shot, or save an audio file. Evernote is a wonderful tool that can help busy teachers easily capture important information and quickly organize it. I access Evernote from my smartphone during the school day to organize my thoughts and record important school-related information. When I get a chance to sit down at my desk (and I have a little more time to think),  I access Evernote from my desktop to update and further organize the information I captured with my smartphone.

3. Basecamp– Basecamp is a terrific project management application. Users can easily share files, assign tasks, organize information, and manage deadlines. Basecamp is a wonderful tool for site administrators, department chairs, or site committees.

4. Dimdim– This app enables users to easily screen share. Users can deliver presentations online, share videos, or other types of interactive information. The best part of Dimdim is that it is 100% browser-based and, therefore, doesn’t require instillation or downloading of software. Dimdim is a great way for teachers and administrators to share information, host online meetings, and participate in professional development activities.

5. Mindmeister– Mindmeister is a mind-mapping tool that can help educators design, organize, and share complex ideas. Mindmeister is a great tool to map and design curriculum, organize department strategies, or outline a district policy. Another similar app I use on my smartphone is Thinking Space. Although it’s not quite as good as Mindmeister, I like being able to access the tool on my smartphone while I’m meeting with teachers, sharing ideas, or organizing my thoughts (on the run!).

Follow me on Twitter!

Here are three related articles from Inside Learning Technologies magazine:

1. Using Free Public Social Media Tools, October 2009
2. Using Google Tools, November 2009
3. Using Free, Public Social Media Tools, Elgg, January 2010

Follow me on Twitter!

How to Run a Meeting Like Google– Carmine Gallo, Business Week

Digital Textbooks Open a New Chapter in the History of US Education– eSchool News

Twitter for Teachers: A Collaborative Effort to Teach Teachers about Twitter– Twitter for Teachers

R2D2, Where Are You?– Shawn, edbuzz

Start the New Year Off Right with the Essential Tools for Educators– Steven Anderson, Blogging about the Web 2.0 Classroom

8 Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2010– Sarah Perez, Read Write Web

Student Learns Homeschooling Can Be a High Tech Lesson– SnoValley Star

November Hotlist– Judy Brown, mLearnopedia

Follow me on Twitter!

Game Lessons– The Economist

Even More Research: Technology Is Making Kids Better Writers, Not Worse– Tech Dirt

Top Gear for Elementary School Students– Wired

Google Algorithm Predicts When Species Will Go 404, Not Found– Hadley Leggett, Wired

Is Technology Creating the “Dumbest Generation”– Shawn, edbuzz

Stare into the Abyss of Curriculum-Tech Integration– Miguel Guhlin, Around the Corner

Five Tips for Helping Students Become Better Bloggers– Sue Wyatt, Blog Walker

What Every Learning and Development Professional Needs to Know about E-Learning,–Clive Shepherd, Clive on Learning

Getting Students More Learning Time Online– Cathy Cavanaugh, Center for American Progress

ByApp: A Simple Task Management Tool– Free Technology for Teachers

A Challenge to the Multitask Assumption– Clive Shepherd, Clive on Learning

Alpine Online Case Study– Michael Horn, Disrupting Class

Models for Learning Questions– Tony Karrer, eLearning Technology

The Science of Motivation– Danial Pink, TED

More Questions Than Answers on Google Books– Tom Krazit, cnet

The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine– Robert Capps, Wired

Look Ma, No Pen! Electronic Impulses Can Reproduce Handwriting– Hadley Leggett, Wired

TPACK Explores Effective Ed-Tech Integration– Laura Devaney, eSchool News

Tips and Tutorials for Everything Google– Free Technology for Teachers

Statistics Show Social Media Is Bigger than You Think– Socialnomics

Texting girl falls into NYC manhole– Andre Yoskowitz, Afterdawn.com

Richard Baraniuk on open-source learning– Richard Baraniuk, TED

Psyched Out– The Economist

Network Skills– Tony Karrer, e-Learning Technology

Intel Social Media Guidelines– Intel

Google Calendar Goes Gadgety– Adam DuVander, Programmable Web

Dave Eggers Confident that America’s Literature-Devouring Youth Will Save Print– The Cajun Boy

Layoffs prompt teachers to move online– Laura Devaney, e-School News

Software rivalry gives schools more choice– e-School News

Classrooms Go High-Tech to Engage Students– Megan Scott, U.S. News

10 Internet technologies that educators should be informed about– Emerging Internet Technologies for Education

New thoughts on getting started in e-learning– Clive Shepherd, Clive on Learning

Google Maps Knows Where You Are– Adam DuVander, Programmable Web

Free online course helps students plan careers– Laura Devaney, e-School News

Task force tells how to keep kids safe online– Maya Prabhu, e-School News

NECC 2009 looks at education’s future– e-School News

Tommy J’s Crib Is 18th Century Place of Gadget Geekery– Jim Merithew, Wired

Google vs. Microsoft: What You Need to Know– Ryan Singel, Wired

In his talk, Professor von Ahn pointed out that in 2003, the world spent 6 billion hours playing solitaire. This was contrasted with the 7 million hours necessary to construct the Empire State Building or the 20 million man hours required to complete the Panama Canal. Professor von Ahn proposes that: Using human skills and abilities, it is possible to solve large-scale computational problems and teach computers many of the basic human talents.

The first example provided is reCaptcha. Professor von Ahn developed reCaptcha, a new form of Captcha that helps digitize books. In reCaptcha, the images of words displayed to the user come directly from old books that are being digitized; they are words that optical character recognition could not identify. It is estimated that 200 million Captcha’s are solved dail by humans around the world. reCaptcha was designed with the purpose of using crowdsourcing, to identify distorted text. Once a piece of text has been agreed upon by the necessary number of humans, it is re-inserted to help in the digitization of the book.

Professor von Ahn next turned his attention to the use of computer games to achieve his goal of solving large-scale computational problems that computers aren’t capable of solving. Google images provided a perfect case study. In this situation, a user may search for an image by keyword, however, the implemented method of tagging these images was woefully inadequate. Far too often, images had no relation to the keywords associated with an image. To solve this problem von Ahn invented the ESP Game. ESP takes two players that don’t know one another with an objective to get them to type the same word without communication. Both players share an image and words are provided by the players that describe the shared image. As users agree on keywords they become taboo or unusable. This helps spur the further identification of keywords to be associated with an image.

Professor von Ahn stated that already 50 million tags had been agreed upon by 200,000 players. A surprising number of which play for more than 20 hours a week and sessions of 15 hours are not unknown. These numbers lead to belief that if 5,000 players played simultaneously, all of the images in Google would have been agreed upon by humans in a few weeks. While the ESP game is rather addictive and has proven a hit (licensed to Google), the obsessive nature it fostered, bothered Professor von Ahn and a maximum of 15 consecutive hours (10 for .edu) has been imposed, after which, the the system will lock you out.

An interesting side note mentioned regarding the ESP game project, was the acquisition of user data. Students constructed prgrams that could accurately determine several demographics of ESP users. After assessing a couple of responses from players, in 98% of the cases, gender could be accurately identified, while age could be fairly accurately determined in 85% of the cases. This could potentially provide very powerful tools for marketers, as well as training material for computers.

Professor von Ahn mentioned the strong bond created between partners that play the ESP game. Partners that perform well together not surprisingly, find a warmth and connection. These have led to some users wanting to date their anonymous partners and describe the game as “anonymous intimacy”, “like crack”, “a great way to learn English”

In what manner can this be applied to today’s classroom activities? Where can crowdsourcing provide learning opportunities? Small inefficiencies in procedures or schedules can grow over the school year to an enormous figure. For example: Two minutes, five periods per day of wasted time, turns into 30 hours over a 180 day school year. How can we recycle these wasted human cycles?

L:uis von Ahn has several current projects including the ones mentioned in this article. See the URLs below for more information:

• http://gwap.com
• Luis von Ahn’s blog