If you're like me, you don't have cable at home, because I can pay less for a subscription to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime (all together), than I can for cable and on two of the three I don't have to watch any commercials. This becomes challenging for those of us that want to be well educated about our 2016 presidential candidates and see them debate. This post isn't going to be about whether you should vote republican, democrat, independent, or another party; however, I encourage you to VOTE. This post is going to focus on the technology behind the debate itself.
It is very significant that the CNN/Facebook 2016 presidential debate on October 13th, 2015 was live-streamed. This meant that for the younger audience that typically uses their phone, tablet, computer, or blue-ray player for the content can see in real-time the interaction between the candidates.
Although normally one would need to have a subscription to view news from CNNgo (CNN's app) or login to cnn.com, the network is providing free streaming for all the 2016 presidential candidate debates. Simultaneous devices numbered 980,000, which is about 60,000 higher than the GOP debate on 9/16/15 (http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/13/media/cnn-democratic-debate-live-stream-record/).
In the first televised debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960, the total viewership of the debate was 70 million. Interest in the political campaign has decreased significantly since the rise of the television era and during the 2012 presidential cycle, the debates brought in 7.7 and 8.3 million viewers. Contrarily, the GOP debates for the 2016 presidential election have had 23 - 24 million viewers so far (http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/cnn-democratic-debate-ratings-expectations-214664)
I'm anxious to see what the total viewership for the first democratic debate with the television viewers calculated in is and am wondering how the live-streaming of debates will impact voter turn-out.
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
The Future of Technology - And Why We Should Be Worried
Last week, I shared my experience about the use of my telephone versus my dad's use of his telephone and reflected on how the various uses of technology have changed over the last thirty years. Today, I want to share more about what I've learned about the future of technology and why we should be worried.
Technological optimists said that one day we'd have driver-less cars. Today, that is slowly becoming a reality. Robots are taking over the jobs that blue collar workers did fifty years ago and the jobs that our students are being trained for with the factory-model style of education.
When I look at my own children, I want to know how to best train them for a future of jobs that aren't known to us yet. They are three and five. The experts are saying that beyond basic literacy and basic numeracy, the next most important concept to foster in our children is creativity.
Why?
Creativity spawns entrepreneurship, which is where the growth of the economy will come from. Currently, entrepreneurship is on the decline and so is the middle class. This is what the experts are actually most worried about. The income disparity will be the destruction of the US Economy more than any jobs that are being replaced by robots.
With this, it's important to note that robots are becoming much better at doing things that only humans could do a few years ago. Andrew McAfee, a leading economist from MIT and Harvard, states in his TED talks that translation is a good example of that. It used to take a human to translate a document, now machines can do the job okay (not perfect, but okay). His projection is that in a few short years, they won't be one or two times better, they will be 16 times better. Therefore, we need to change how we are preparing our children for the future. You can view his speech here.
In the short term, we can promote entrepreneurship, encourage education beyond the compulsory age, and double-down on infrastructure; however, unless we address the economic challenges that we are facing, machines will take our jobs.
Technological optimists said that one day we'd have driver-less cars. Today, that is slowly becoming a reality. Robots are taking over the jobs that blue collar workers did fifty years ago and the jobs that our students are being trained for with the factory-model style of education.
When I look at my own children, I want to know how to best train them for a future of jobs that aren't known to us yet. They are three and five. The experts are saying that beyond basic literacy and basic numeracy, the next most important concept to foster in our children is creativity.
Why?
Creativity spawns entrepreneurship, which is where the growth of the economy will come from. Currently, entrepreneurship is on the decline and so is the middle class. This is what the experts are actually most worried about. The income disparity will be the destruction of the US Economy more than any jobs that are being replaced by robots.
With this, it's important to note that robots are becoming much better at doing things that only humans could do a few years ago. Andrew McAfee, a leading economist from MIT and Harvard, states in his TED talks that translation is a good example of that. It used to take a human to translate a document, now machines can do the job okay (not perfect, but okay). His projection is that in a few short years, they won't be one or two times better, they will be 16 times better. Therefore, we need to change how we are preparing our children for the future. You can view his speech here.
In the short term, we can promote entrepreneurship, encourage education beyond the compulsory age, and double-down on infrastructure; however, unless we address the economic challenges that we are facing, machines will take our jobs.
Friday, October 9, 2015
The Electronic Future
When I think about how much technology has changed our world over the last thirty years (my lifetime, essentially), I wonder how much more the world will change during the next thirty. Thirteen years ago, I spent a semester in Mexico. At that time, the internet was available in internet cafes and SmartPhones weren't around. In fact, even cell phones weren't dominating the world at that point and the house where we stayed in Mexico had a landline, on which I would occasionally receive phone calls from my parents. The trick was that you actually had to know when they'd be calling and be around to take the phone call. Electronic communication was blossoming and for a brief period of time my dad embraced it by using the call letters of his radio persona to create a hotmail account. This account died the minute I stepped foot back into the US and we still can't get him to text, but he will at least read them.
There are a few divisions like that between my parents and myself. I'll compare and contrast my dad today though. Let's take a look at telephones first. The first difference between my household and my dad's is that I have zero desire for a landline. In fact, we didn't even have the electricians run a phone line in the house we built in 2012. (And we've had no desire for that connection). However, my dad and stepmom still employ a house phone, which I may call after I have called both cell phones, texted both of them, and called or texted my sister to see if she had heard from either of them in a couple of days; however, it's not even programmed into my cell phone. The reason I don't want a landline stems from the brief period time where I did have one. I received two types of phone calls: one from telemarketers, and one from my mom and my mother-in-law (by this time, I'd trained my dad to just use my cell phone). In addition to the physical ownership of a landline, the way that we utilize our cell phones is quite different. My cell phone is my lifeline to the world. I receive email on it, use it for Facebook, play virtual games on it, and about 1% of the time use it for the intent of actually calling someone. Contrarily, my dad uses his phone 99% of the time for calling, and 1% of the time for checking the time. (Oh, and it better sound like a telephone ring, because it is after all, a phone). With an age difference of less than 30 years, the way that we use a telephone is quite different, which makes me wonder how will my children's use of the telephone (or whatever it morphs into) look like 30 years from now.
Next, let's look at television. My husband and I own two television sets, my dad and stepmom own three. They have cable television. We have a trilogy of Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, and refuse to pay for cable (because it has 15 minutes of commercials in an hour long TV show). The majority of our multimedia viewing takes place via one of the three online subscription services and could be on our iPad, SmartPhones, iPods, or blue-ray player. And our blue-ray player isn't even hooked up to a television set. It's hooked up to a projector, which projects on the entire living room wall. Again, I wonder how will my children view entertainment in the future.
What will the electronic future look like for our children?
There are a few divisions like that between my parents and myself. I'll compare and contrast my dad today though. Let's take a look at telephones first. The first difference between my household and my dad's is that I have zero desire for a landline. In fact, we didn't even have the electricians run a phone line in the house we built in 2012. (And we've had no desire for that connection). However, my dad and stepmom still employ a house phone, which I may call after I have called both cell phones, texted both of them, and called or texted my sister to see if she had heard from either of them in a couple of days; however, it's not even programmed into my cell phone. The reason I don't want a landline stems from the brief period time where I did have one. I received two types of phone calls: one from telemarketers, and one from my mom and my mother-in-law (by this time, I'd trained my dad to just use my cell phone). In addition to the physical ownership of a landline, the way that we utilize our cell phones is quite different. My cell phone is my lifeline to the world. I receive email on it, use it for Facebook, play virtual games on it, and about 1% of the time use it for the intent of actually calling someone. Contrarily, my dad uses his phone 99% of the time for calling, and 1% of the time for checking the time. (Oh, and it better sound like a telephone ring, because it is after all, a phone). With an age difference of less than 30 years, the way that we use a telephone is quite different, which makes me wonder how will my children's use of the telephone (or whatever it morphs into) look like 30 years from now.
Next, let's look at television. My husband and I own two television sets, my dad and stepmom own three. They have cable television. We have a trilogy of Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, and refuse to pay for cable (because it has 15 minutes of commercials in an hour long TV show). The majority of our multimedia viewing takes place via one of the three online subscription services and could be on our iPad, SmartPhones, iPods, or blue-ray player. And our blue-ray player isn't even hooked up to a television set. It's hooked up to a projector, which projects on the entire living room wall. Again, I wonder how will my children view entertainment in the future.
What will the electronic future look like for our children?
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Greatest Needs Facing Iowa Students & Educators Using Online & Blended Learning
Last week, I discussed the global digital landscape and how the digital divide is impacting the global economy and posed the question about why is it important to us. Today, I want to focus on the greatest needs facing Iowa students and educators using online and blended learning.
In Iowa, the ICN (Iowa Communications Network) was ran throughout the state beginning in 1989 with a promise that students could unilaterally learn whether they were at Indian Hills Community College, Kirkwood Community College, Iowa Lakes Community College, or any of the other 12 community colleges in the state. Today, the fiber optic backbone reaches all 99 counties in Iowa and extends to 500 sites throughout the state including K-12 buildings, libraries, hospitals, and both private and public colleges and universities and totals 3100 miles of its own backbone and leases another 3500 miles of backbone. The ultimate goal was that no one would be more than 15 miles away from an accessible ICN point.
Having the state's network in every county helps ease some of the digital divide, but there's still a divide happening in areas where carriers aren't fronting broadband costs because it would be cost prohibitive. In addition, there is a difference between what is available in a more urban area and what is available in rural areas. Students who can access the internet via broadband connections at home exist where there are local internet service providers or rural cooperatives; however, the further away from an urban area someone is, the less options they have when it comes to internet service and/or providers.
Three years ago, I lived in a town that had two options for internet. One ISP offered DSL; the other offered cable internet. Being that the town only had a population of approximately 2500, there was very little competition, which meant that if we wanted cable TV and high-speed internet, our monthly bill totaled more than $127/month. In addition, the service never had to be good, because we didn't have any other provider we could go with unless we wanted to reduce our bandwidth.
I also lived in an area in the early 2000's where the only option for internet was dial-up. This was a mere seven miles outside of a town with a population of more than 25,000 people and DSL was the most popular high-speed internet at that time. However, being outside the city limits the possibility of DSL wasn't even an option. The only option that I had at that time was to pay for a landline and add dial-up internet to it.
Another example where the digital divide among the Iowa landscape was apparent was two years ago when a family member lived outside of a small southern Iowa town next near the Mississippi River. The only two options for internet in that area were satellite or dial-up. This meant that although the family could access the internet, it wasn't an ideal setting for someone that might be looking for a job, streaming videos, or even online banking.
In the early 2000's the normal procedure for finding and securing a job wasn't necessarily by going online and filling out a job application; however, today it is extremely important to be able to access the internet to search and apply for jobs. In addition, the classrooms from the early 2000's looked like the classrooms from the 1960's, 70's, 80's, or 90's. However, as devices became more interactive, classrooms shifted. Today, you can find classrooms with interactive white boards, 1:1 devices, and interaction among students and teachers via blogs, wikis, and sometimes social media.
Even distance learning has shifted from making the teacher the center of the classroom to putting the student in the center and providing access to anytime, anywhere classes. This model of asynchronous learning helps students truly learn the material and be more focused on the meta-cognition of learning than on what the teacher is saying.
With these shifts in the educational setting and the move to having more flipped classrooms it is possible to get in the trap of the "have" and "have-not" students. One of the variables that plays into this is the availability of high-speed internet (which as of today is greater than 4 mbps) in all areas, regardless of whether someone lives in a rural area or an urban area.
In Iowa, the ICN (Iowa Communications Network) was ran throughout the state beginning in 1989 with a promise that students could unilaterally learn whether they were at Indian Hills Community College, Kirkwood Community College, Iowa Lakes Community College, or any of the other 12 community colleges in the state. Today, the fiber optic backbone reaches all 99 counties in Iowa and extends to 500 sites throughout the state including K-12 buildings, libraries, hospitals, and both private and public colleges and universities and totals 3100 miles of its own backbone and leases another 3500 miles of backbone. The ultimate goal was that no one would be more than 15 miles away from an accessible ICN point.
Having the state's network in every county helps ease some of the digital divide, but there's still a divide happening in areas where carriers aren't fronting broadband costs because it would be cost prohibitive. In addition, there is a difference between what is available in a more urban area and what is available in rural areas. Students who can access the internet via broadband connections at home exist where there are local internet service providers or rural cooperatives; however, the further away from an urban area someone is, the less options they have when it comes to internet service and/or providers.
Three years ago, I lived in a town that had two options for internet. One ISP offered DSL; the other offered cable internet. Being that the town only had a population of approximately 2500, there was very little competition, which meant that if we wanted cable TV and high-speed internet, our monthly bill totaled more than $127/month. In addition, the service never had to be good, because we didn't have any other provider we could go with unless we wanted to reduce our bandwidth.
I also lived in an area in the early 2000's where the only option for internet was dial-up. This was a mere seven miles outside of a town with a population of more than 25,000 people and DSL was the most popular high-speed internet at that time. However, being outside the city limits the possibility of DSL wasn't even an option. The only option that I had at that time was to pay for a landline and add dial-up internet to it.
Another example where the digital divide among the Iowa landscape was apparent was two years ago when a family member lived outside of a small southern Iowa town next near the Mississippi River. The only two options for internet in that area were satellite or dial-up. This meant that although the family could access the internet, it wasn't an ideal setting for someone that might be looking for a job, streaming videos, or even online banking.
In the early 2000's the normal procedure for finding and securing a job wasn't necessarily by going online and filling out a job application; however, today it is extremely important to be able to access the internet to search and apply for jobs. In addition, the classrooms from the early 2000's looked like the classrooms from the 1960's, 70's, 80's, or 90's. However, as devices became more interactive, classrooms shifted. Today, you can find classrooms with interactive white boards, 1:1 devices, and interaction among students and teachers via blogs, wikis, and sometimes social media.
Even distance learning has shifted from making the teacher the center of the classroom to putting the student in the center and providing access to anytime, anywhere classes. This model of asynchronous learning helps students truly learn the material and be more focused on the meta-cognition of learning than on what the teacher is saying.
With these shifts in the educational setting and the move to having more flipped classrooms it is possible to get in the trap of the "have" and "have-not" students. One of the variables that plays into this is the availability of high-speed internet (which as of today is greater than 4 mbps) in all areas, regardless of whether someone lives in a rural area or an urban area.
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