Module 2 - Wearable Technology Smartwatches – Working with McLuhan’s Tetrad

Wearable Technology

Smartwatches – Working with McLuhan’s Tetrad

McLuhan, a Canadian University communication theory professor and philosopher, introduce a context for examining media effects on society through the tetrad. By definition, a Tetrad is simply a set or grouping of four things (Dictionary, 2013). McLuhan used his tetrad method as an informative tool for exploration of an object, through a metaphoric framework (McLuhan & Powers, 1989). McLuhan’s tetrad allowed him to apply four laws, outlined as questions, to a wide array of human endeavors (McLuhan & Powers, 1989). McLuhan’s tetrad gives us a practical tool for looking at our culture.

According to Thornburg (2013e), McLuhan designed four questions to investigate a medium under examination using the context of his tetrad:

1      What does the medium enhance?

2      What does the medium make obsolete?

3      What does the medium retrieve or revive that had been made obsolescent?

4      What does the medium reverse into when pushed to extremes?

McLuhan designed the tetrad as a pedagogical tool to examine the effects on society of any medium/technology by dividing its effects into four categories and displaying them simultaneously (McLuhan & Powers, 1989). Thornburg (2013e) further states that “by virtue of being introduced, a new technology (or medium) carries with it seeds of destruction paving the way for the next one to follow” (p. 2). Thus, Educators can use McLuhan’s Tetrad to discover more about the technology (or medium) being considered. In addition, Thornburg (2013e) tells us that it is very important to know if a technology that is being considered is being pushed into obsolescence, and what technology will replace it. This information will help Educators better decide which technologies to consider for their workplace.

The technology that our Learning Community is researching is Wearable Technologies, specifically Smartwatches. Wearable technology recalls a wonderful time of my youth, when I would be spellbound watching television reruns of the 1960’s shows Get Smart and Star Trek. Agent Maxwell Smart would use his shoe phone to speak to the Chief at CONTORL or Agent 99, out in the field, and when Captain Kirk and Scottie would speak to one another using their Star Trek wrist communicator.

In 2015, Smartwatches emerged into overall societal use for communication as the members of the USS Enterprise used way back in the 1960’s on the television show Star Trek. Side Note: At the time of researching Wearable Technology for this blog post, I came across a new emerging Wearable Technology, the Smartshoe. Here is a link to read about it: http://www.tgdaily.com-www.tgdaily.com/mobile/120856-who-needs-a-smartwatch-when-you-can-have-smart-shoes. From the creative minds of the writing staffs for Get Smart and Star Trek, one could deduce that these two 21^st century, emerging technologies were hinted at as being available to the masses in the near future. 

As far as Smartwatches are concerned, currently this wearable technology can be employed to assist students and educators in easier forms of communication, without using a tablet, smartphone or computer, thus enhancing and optimize teaching and learning experiences overall.  

Tetrade for Wearable Technology – Smartwatches

Enhances – Smartwatches enhance communication by email, text or phone call. There is no need to carry a laptop or other mobile devices if your smartwatch has the same communication capacity. Smartwatches coupled with Mobile Cloud Storage will enhance data storage and retrieval.

Obsoletes – Smartwatches are pushing the personal computer into obsolescence. Cameras and Keyboards are also moving towards obsolescence based on voice commands (Siri or Kortana) and camera features of the Smartwatch.

Rekindle/Retrieval – As previously stated, the wearable wrist communicator was first employed as a theoretical technological device from the 1960’s television series Star Trek. Currently, Smartwatches can send and received phone calls, thus, residential phones and cell phones are rekindled. One can send and receive emails and text messages from a Smartwatch though voice commands, gestures, signs and other adaptive assistive technology apps, which rekindles thoughts of sign language. Smartwatches also rekindle digital calculator watches from the 1980’s.

Reversal – Holographic Communication and devices such as the Holographic Television will send text messaging and emails into obsoletion, since these types of information can be exchanged in a 3D face-to-face way. Teleporting (seen on Star Trek and other Sci-Fi movies and shows of the 1950’s and 1960’s) will also make emails, phone calls and text messaging obsolete, in theory by being able to make live contact with another human being to have a personal conversation in the exact same time or less that it would take for the phone call to go through or the email or text message to arrive.

References

Allan, D. (2014). Who needs a smartwatch when you can have smart shoes?. Tech Guru Daily. Retrieved from http://www.tgdaily.com-www.tgdaily.com/mobile/120856-who-needs-a-smartwatch-when-you-can-have-smart-shoes

Dictionary, M. W. (2013). Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online.

McLuhan, M., & Powers, B. R. (1989). The global village: Transformations in world life and media in the 21st century. Oxford University Press, USA.

Thornburg, D. (2013e). Emerging technologies and McLuhan's laws of media. Lake Barrington, IL: Thornburg Center for Space Exploration

Module 1 - Identifying an Emerged Technology Cloud Computing

Introduction

As a student, do you remember the times you would place important documents on a Floppy Disk? As I recall, my Floppy Disks were notorious for not working in another computer, no matter how careful I was in transporting them. As time marched on, to use word processing files, or PowerPoint presentations on another computer, it was necessary to save these files on a CD-ROM disk or thumb drive. You then traveled with your valued information on such a disk or drive, so you could load your information onto another computer, while holding your breath until the document or PowerPoint slides loaded and actually worked. Thank Goodness, those days are in the past, and Cloud Computing has emerged. The safety, stability, and ease-of-use of cloud computing in education is resulting in widespread adoption in educational institutions, utilizing such web-based apps as Microsoft Office 365 for Education and Google Classroom and Drive, just to name a few.

Cloud Computing is a general term for the delivery of hosted services over the Internet. Identified in 2011 as an emerging technology by the New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Report, Cloud Computing and storage has emerged in becoming a valuable educational tools (Alabbadi, 2011). As an educator, if you are using some form of web-based tools, then you are enabling further student-educator collaboration through the use of Cloud Computing.

Challenges

Some of the challenges of employing Cloud Computing are that not all applications are build with a Web-Based version for use in cloud, as well as, data security, regulatory compliance concerns, lock-in and privacy concerns. I will address two of these challenges, Web-Based Apps and Data Security.

Web-Based Apps are designed for access through a Web browser or an application client that serves as a user interface (Heilig & Voß, 2014). Not all applications and software that educators currently use are web-based. Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint are leading productivity software used in almost every classroom. Up until a few years ago, there was not a web-based version of the Microsoft Office suite. In 2013, Microsoft decided to expand its powerful productivity tools into a Web-Based version titled Microsoft Office 365 for Education. Before 2013, educators and students used Google Docs as one primary productivity tool for producing and sharing Cloud documents. Both Microsoft Office 365 and Google Docs, through Google Drive are regarded as the top 2 Cloud document productivity tools for educational purposes.

When employing cloud computing services, schools / school districts must have a well-defined understanding of potential security risks associated with cloud computing, and set realistic expectations with their cloud provider (Heilig & Voß, 2014). There are three different service categories in which Educational Administrators must consider. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) each model brings different security levels, requirements and responsibilities. Without going into great detail, these three levels of security indicated which side of the cloud (Cloud Administration or School District Administration) is responsible for certain security controls and accountability.  

Societal Needs and Benefits

Cloud computing is changing and impacting our lives in many ways. Education Administrators have come to realize the many benefits of cloud technology and have begun to adopt its technology tools for several reasons (Mansuri, Verma, & Laxkar, 2014). Cloud Computing gives students the ability to access curriculum data for online coursework and to participate in group activities anywhere, anytime, and virtually anyway they choose, employing a variety of technology tools from desktop computers to tablets and smartphones. Education Institutions are reducing expenses considerably by combining business automation processes to modernize the management of student records, course enrollments, as well as, student assignments and attendance tracking.  

On a more societal level, Cloud Computing tools offer educational benefits to students from developing countries (Shanahan, Harrison, & May, 2015). In addition, access is now instantly available and in many instances free due to the proliferation of websites providing educational material and cloud knowledge-sharing communities.

Pitfalls and Advantages

A potential pitfall of Cloud Computing is downtime. Downtime can mean a loss of data or access to data if the cloud provider is off-line (Puthal, Sahoo, Mishra, & Swain, 2015). No cloud service supplier, even the most recommended and responsible, would claim invulnerability to service outages. Cloud computing systems are internet based, which means their access is fully dependent on the users Internet connection. Therefore, like any hardware, cloud platforms themselves can fail for a myriad of reasons. When the institution's internet connection goes down, all of its applications drop offline.

One advantageous way to combat downtime is to demand a service level agreement (SLA) from the Cloud service provider that is employed, guaranteeing up-times in excess of 99.55%, which equals 1.83 days of downtime a year, or 3.60 hours of downtime a month. Maximizing downtime will reduce stress for everyone, administrators, educators, students and parents and Cloud providers alike.

In conclusion, educational institutions have been quick to realize the advantages of cloud technology and have been eagerly adopting the Cloud for several reasons, including the ability for students to access data anywhere, anytime, using a plethora of computing and mobile devices, to enroll in online classes and to participate in group activities.  

If you would like to learn more about Cloud Computing use for Education, I would recommend the following scholarly journal article: González-Martínez, J. A., Bote-Lorenzo, M. L., Gómez-Sánchez, E., & Cano-Parra, R. (2015). Cloud computing and education: A state-of-the-art survey. Computers & Education, 80, 132-151. In addition, here are links to a website called TechKnowledge, they share my enthusiasm for Cloud Computing.

TechKnowledge

http://techknowledge.org.uk and http://techknowledge.org.uk/blog/cloud-computing/

References:

Alabbadi, M. M. (2011, September). Cloud computing for education and learning: Education and learning as a service (ELaaS). In Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL), 2011 14th International Conference on (pp. 589-594). IEEE.

González-Martínez, J. A., Bote-Lorenzo, M. L., Gómez-Sánchez, E., & Cano-Parra, R. (2015). Cloud computing and education: A state-of-the-art survey. Computers & Education, 80, 132-151.

Heilig, L., & Voß, S. (2014). Decision analytics for cloud computing: a classification and literature review. Tutorials in Operations Research–Bridging Data and Decisions, 1-26.

Mansuri, A. M., Verma, M., & Laxkar, P. (2014). Benefit of Cloud Computing for Educational Institutions and Online Marketing. Information Security and Computer Fraud, 2(1), 5-9.

Shanahan, H., Harrison, A., & May, S. T. (2015). Teaching Data Science and Cloud Computing in Low and Middle Income Countries. Advanced Techniques in Biology & Medicine, 2015.

Puthal, D., Sahoo, B. P. S., Mishra, S., & Swain, S. (2015, January). Cloud computing features, issues, and challenges: a big picture. In Computational Intelligence and Networks (CINE), 2015 International Conference on (pp. 116-123). IEEE.