Location-based technology and their relevancy

Summary

In the article “Mobile, wireless, connected information clouds and learning,” Mark van’t Hooft explained the need to make our technologies more mobile and connected. He said that today’s learners want flexible learning opportunities—no bells, little schedule, etc.

Mobility, according to Hooft, is the “physical movement from location to location.” Today’s learners want to be able to put their projects on the web so that they can access it at anytime they want; hence, web-based programs such as Google Earth, provides them with the storage space of their creations.

Users also want a rich experience. They want to be able to have personal control over the technology they use. They want to create new information, to customize their contents, to share what they’ve created.

One of the outcomes of this development is the ability to create our own educational/entertainment videos. Soon, the main developer of these educational/entertainment videos will not be the traditional media but it will be our friends and neighbors.

Through cloud computing, the user will be able to place his data onto a storage space available on the internet, yet still be able to access a “cloud” of computers that can hold massive amount of information, rather than simply put data onto a personal computer which has limited storage space.

Critique
Although I believe that many people are into new gadgets, I doubt that “the physical and digital worlds” are getting as blurry as the author suggested. Perhaps it is because I live with people who tend to be more traditional, more theoretical—rather than people who are into the latest gadgets. From my experience, those whom I’ve known don’t really rely on instant message or go onto Second Life to meet other people. The idea that everyone is absorbed into the digital world is a little bit exaggerated.

Summary

Revised 10/21/2008

In the article “Location-based and context-aware education: prospects and perils,” Adam Greenfield provided an account for the increasing usage of location-based and context-aware technologies. He started out by providing a background information for the roots of "ubiquitous technologies" by applying Moore's law (which says that the power of microprocessors double every 18 months) to the every increasing capabilities of our computing systems.

Ubiquitous technology might someday track every step that we make in our daily lives, besides having the capability of locating itself in space and time. However, the idea that a context-based technology can function reasonably as well as humans is far from the truth.

Although context-aware technologies can be promising, especially when it comes to application of it toward educationally-related uses, it brings up ethical and cultural concerns. For instance, the Japanese-designed program, JAPELAS, can do some context-based programming, but it uses information that take into account a person's age, social status, profession, etc. This might seem normal for a Japanese person, but gathering information about a person’s age is not an appropriate thing to do within the U.S. culture.

Critique

Near the end of the article, the author provided an application of location-based technologies toward education. He said that the application of technologies toward real events in space is a good possibility for learning, but I think that it is not as practical as it seems. Location-based technologies might allow a person with the convenience to do day-to-day activities, but one can rarely learn enough of the basics by relying on them. As one person have said, if you don't understand Heidegger, then you will not understand Heidegger no matter where you read his works, even with the help of location-based technologies that presumably help us contextualize the ideas. Location-based technologies might provide a good aid to learning, but it only allows you to "apply what you have learned" rather than “learning something new."