Thomas Cane's Blog on Digital Futures in Education

In this blog post I will be exploring some potential futures of education in regards to the ever increasing influence of technology. As technology develops, the field of education often adopts new devices into its arsenal of teaching tools, ranging from mobile phone apps and websites for homework to the introduction of interactive whiteboards to enhance the presentation quality offered by teachers. In this regard, I will look at the potential futures afforded to education by augmented reality technology, adaptive response algorithms, and distance learning opportunities and the positive and negative aspects of their introduction. Historically, research has looked to recreational technology like video games in order to identify the core features that help to maintain children’s motivation whilst playing in order to improve educational games (Hedberg, & Alexander, 1994). This has led to education following and adopting recreational technologies for their own use in order to ma...

In this blog post, I will be offering a brief discussion on the affordances and potential constraints of utilising Augmented Reality (AR) technology within an educational context. Affordances have been defined by Norman (1988, p. 9, as cited in Churchill, Fox, & King, 2012, p. 251) as “the   perceived   and   actual   properties   of   the   thing,   primarily   those   fundamental   properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used”. My understanding of this definition in relation to technology is that affordances of a piece of technology refers to the potential uses of the technology within an educational setting. One potential use of AR technology is through “location-based AR”. This version of AR can revolve around an interactive problem-solving video game such as having students work in teams to try to solve a suspicious death using team work and their knowledge of scientific concepts to understand...