Everyone has an I-pod, right? Look around, about 90% of people under the age of 30 are listening to one right now. Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but the explosion of portable listening devices has provided a valuable new tool in learning; the podcast. The podcast is so effective as a learning tool because it is so mobile. Nearly every college student owns a digital listening device, which makes the podcast unique because lectures can be listened to anytime anywhere; on the bus, working out, or driving a car (I think this is illegal but I know someone who did it once...). This incredible flexibility is just one more step toward ubiquitous learning.
Now, lifelogging...I find it kind of creepy, but people are doing it. Lifelogging consists of strapping on a digital recording device and capturing every moment of your life. I think it could have incredible benefits; the "I told you so" being one of the greatest in my mind. For example, your wife says, "you never told me that you were going to go out with your friends tonight"; queue the tape...."honey I'm going out with the guys tonight". Beautiful! On a more serious note, people recording every moment of their life could be very valuable; deterring crime, recording family history and helping doctors diagnose physical and mental conditions. On the flip side, every flaw and every mistake a person ever made would be on tape. Might this risk knocking respected family and historic figures off the pedestals that we place them? Some experts say that lifelogging will be commonplace in the near future...I don't' see it happening, but time will tell.
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2 comments:
I agree with you completely Mike. There are so many people listening to their iPods. I am wondering how many percents of them use iPods in addition to entertainment. :) From the survey that we read in the podcast week, most people who listen to podcasts listen to episodes by using their laptops or desktops.
I think to some degree, functions of devices are fixed! For instance, mobile phones for learning !? to access online courses? I wouldn't want to do that. Or maybe I will think about it after I buy an iPhone :)
The idea of lifelogging is interesting. Because of the popularity of blogs, digital cameras/ online albums, and other social networking sites, I think the issue becomes not only who keep the logs but who has the right to keep the logs and change the logs.
Recently, one of my friends in Taiwan she called me and said she found out her son, who is thinking to drop-out college, plays games with his friends all day. She found out by googling her son's name. After reading his son's roommate's blog, she realized the issue. Is it one of the educational applications of blogs??
I've heard people hiring some companies to clean inappropriate information that anyone can search and find online. It becomes important to build one's reputation online :) The tricky part is .. those companies would post more irrelevant information about the person or good things about the person and make those positive posts show first on google search results -- based on studies, most people don't have the patience after reading three pages of search results. Isn't that funny ?
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