A Wired magazine article making the rounds on the Interwebs today features a unique program at Abilene Christian University (not far from NetSimplicity HQ) that goes beyond putting an iPhone/iTouch device in the hands of its students, it also build a curriculum around them.
The key thing to understand about that the i-device is not the point: What is the point is the ever-presence of the Web and the ubiquity of access to it.
Ignoring the Web isn’t as easy for educators as was ignoring Clif’s Notes when I was in school. In fact, ignoring the Web limits educators, because it’s not just the information contained on the Web that’s useful, it’s the tools, the applications, and – in fact - the ubiquity.
It won’t be easy, but educators will learn how to make all this work for them, and ACU is taking a great step toward figuring out how to make the Web work for them instead of against them. They need to stop worrying about how it affects critical thinking, grades, writing… and instead get excited about how the Web can help more students learn better and more efficiently… so that they can learn more.
Consider what Meeting Room Manager has done on the campus of the University of Tennesee-Knoxville. (Get our white paper on the project here.) Using our Web-based, SaaS technology and integrating it with related technologies, screens, and a campus-wide campaign, UT-Knoxville has created order to what once was a non-existent/chaotic room scheduling system.
Instead of students walking the halls in search of a place to meet or campus organizations squatting in halls without the resources (like projectors or food) they need to be productive, edtechs created a Web-based system that integrates with in-wall screens to increase visibility, usability, and efficacy of their room scheduling system.
This is what ubiquitous Web access and integration can do for education. Now it’s up to other educators to figure out what else it can do.
