Friday, December 28, 2012

e-Paper of the Future?



It's almost 2013, and with that, I wish everyone sincere wishes to a wonderful new year.  Although not quite 2013 yet, the tenth edition 2013 findings from the New Media Consortium Horizon Project is out. The report identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education. Twelve emerging technologies are identified across the horizon over the next one to five years.

Flexible Displays is one technology I'm highlighting here.  Organic light emitting diode displays (OLED), which first entered the mass market in 2004 is different from traditional glass-based LCD units as OLED displays are manufactured on thin, pliable plastics, prompting the term "flexible displays.”  The arrival of the world’s thinnest OLED display in 2008 by Samsung introduced a screen that was pliable and could easily be folded — features that gave rise to the ideas of unbreakable smartphones and bendable tablets. By 2009, popular news outlets including CBS and Entertainment Weekly were including “video in print” inserts in smaller circulations of their magazines, demonstrating the new technology. Opportunities offered by flexible OLED screens in educational settings is now being experimented for e-texts, e-readers, and tablets.  Flexible displays can wrap around curved surfaces, allowing for the possibility of smart tables and desks!

What is the relevance for Teaching, Learning, Research, or Creative Inquiry?
  •  Flexible screens can easily be attached to objects or furniture, regardless of their shape, and can even be worn — making them far more adaptable and portable than standard computer screens and mobile devices.
  • Prototypes for flexible displays in the form of “e-paper” that can be crumbled up and discarded just like real paper.  This will be revolutionary to e-book publishers, librarians, and others to reimagine how digital textbooks and e-readers are produced and delivered with inexpensive low-cost e-reading devices (on paper!)  


Monday, December 24, 2012

The Weightless Economy According to Chris Anderson



Best known for his coinage of the "long tail" and then the "free economy," Chris Anderson editor of Wired magazine is at it again with his latest innovation: the "maker."   We're in the midst of a 'new industrial revolution,' -- the first one took off in Britain between 1700 and 1850 with factories and industry mills; the second one was in 1850 to the 1920s with the T-Ford Model assembly line and the Taylor's scientific management.   The Web has allowed for a do-it-yourself (DIY) model that's paved the way for a 'weightless economy' in which trade is intangible information, services, and intellectual property rather than physical goods - literally realizing Marx's assertion that "all that is solid melts into air."

Makerspace should be a key term in 2013 and beyond.   Digital experts such as Don Tascott has discussed elements of this in Macrowikinomics but Anderson furthers the boundaries of the digital into the physical arguing that entrepreneurship can be democratized and opened up to anyone with an internet connection.  But why stop there?  Makerspaces can exist in learning and education.   The blogosphere is already buzzing with early prototypes of makerspaces, including the a recent Forbes article about Fayetteville Free Library's first makerspace lab featuring 3D printers and a hackers laboratory.

Education is the next realm.  Take a look at the website Makerspace, which takes  the makerspace concept and applies it in an educational context. Why not allow educators and students to learn from one another? Makerspace introduces high schools to small-scale, distributed digital design and manufacturing technologies in order to help their students realize the creative potential of cutting-edge hardware and software tools. The goal is to show students that they can have an idea, design it on a computer, and make it into a real object. It supports this goal by designing tools (software and hardware) that are low-cost with interfaces that are powerful, yet intuitive. Its byline is simply:
Building a resource for Educators and Makers working to inspire young people to make projects in art, craft, engineering, green design, math, music, science, technology, and more