I’ll return to the previous topic once I get around to implementing the 3D game I described in my last post. Meanwhile, let’s circle back to something in two dimensions.
About eight years ago I heard a talk by the founder of a leading electronic whiteboard company. He said that when they first founded the company, soon after the birth of the Web, their intended market was executive briefings.
However, they kept getting calls from teachers, wanting to use the product in classrooms. At first they ignored these calls as an annoyance. But the calls kept coming — more and more over time.
It turned out that something new was happening: Because of the Web, pedagogical content was freely available on-line. Teachers wanted to project those Web pages and build lectures around them. Electronic whiteboards where the perfect way to do this.
Eventually the company got the message. It shifted most of its focus to the K-12 educational market, and soon became enormously successful.
Fast forward a decade or so. An eighth grade math teacher I know told me that there are electronic whiteboards in his school, but teachers don’t really use them. Now that all the kids have tablets, teachers are building lessons around the ability to write on a tablet and have everybody see the result on a large monitor in the front of the classroom.
The advantage of this is that it can be participatory. With the right software, any student in the class can jump in and contribute from their seat, using the tablet they are holding. Once the advantages of active, distributed and cooperative learning kick in, it is difficult for an old fashioned electronic whiteboard to compete.
User interfaces, like any organism, evolve over time, adapting to an ever changing ecosystem. What was once a cutting edge technology can all too soon become an anachronism.
To me the take-away lesson is this: Technology changes, but people do not. We can always be counted on to embrace whichever tools will best allow us to communicate with each other.
My kids got iPads at school this year. I naively thought it would replace the heavy load of textbooks and binders they haul on their backs. Nope. Just added another two pounds to it.