Future Of Education – Valuing Student Voices

Workshop With Alexandra Crosby

Attending and participating in the futuring workshop/focus group a few weeks ago, a small number of students engaged in a research collaboration project and it encouraged us to speculate about the future, more specifically about the future of tertiary education. Our society in the 21st century, is undergoing dramatic and rapid changes in areas to do with technological advancements and it is inevitable that these changes will affect the education systems, not only in Australia, but on a global scale as it has opened avenues veering away from traditional teaching methods.

We discussed issues regarding communal and individual learning and the impacts each would have on us as students, as well as society and the economy. Online and long distance education is currently becoming much more in demand and popular, with the number of students applying to study in this manner as well as the number of courses available, ‘it is imperative that administrators and instructors, monitor the current and future direction in order to meet the challenges of tomorrow’ (Song 2010) This research project forced us to be open minded and raised questions, such as ‘What would Individual learning look like?’ and ‘how accessible tertiary education would be’.

Among the students we mutually agreed that the majority of tertiary education would most probably be more individual, due to the effects of technology and its relationship with humans as well as globalisation. Using the futuring technique involving the quadrant method, proved valuable, however was challenging to wrap your head around what factors would interrelate with one another, yet contradict and change outcomes of the future e.g.: the ‘x axis’ would have individual lifestyle vs. communal and the ‘y axis’ would have population growth.

During the workshop I was challenged to not predict a near future, but really think about 35 years from now. In order to do this, i looked back 35 years to grasp a perspective on the rate of advancement. It was then that I discovered that 35 years from now, tertiary education would most probably be individual style learning as opposed to our current social and communal environments. Classrooms, may not even exist and nor will lecturers, instead electronic holograms or computer tutorials would replace the tactile environment we now are privileged to study in.

While also using the quadrant method, we brainstormed various possibilities as well as reflecting back to our childhood and teenage years, to discover the main forms of learning. The workshop continued to stimulate and challenge me into generating ideas for the future and to develop and compare strategies and solutions for the future.

The workshop provided me with an insight into not just the future of education, but also into how we could adapt and use futuring techniques for our second assessment task. It enriched my understanding and appreciation for futuring and how and why creative fields are so important in the future of the economy. It allowed me to engage with other students and think outside the box, revealing areas i had not previously given any thought to.

References:

Song, H, 2010, Distance Learning Technology, Current Instruction, and the Future of Education: Applications of Today, Practices of Tomorrow,IGI Global, Hershey, USA.

Visualising the Speculative Object – Some Resources

Hey guys, I’ve collected a bunch of After Effects and Photoshop tutorials to help us visualise the object a bit more. Xiao and Brianna, since you guys are Vis Com maybe have a look at the tutorials and let me know if you wanna go through with one of them for the final render of the object’s interface?

Below are also some essays I gathered on speculative design. I will analyse one of the readings and blog about it in the future, maybe you guys are also happy to read a couple so it enriches our design and grounds it in some form of academic thinking? Let me know what you guys think!

How We Future – Review of Dunne & Raby “Speculative Everything”
The Rhetoric of Design for Debate: triggering conversation with an “uncanny enough”artefact
Sam Kinsley At 10 Things I Learnt 2012
Design as Speculation

Speculative Object Concepts

In coming up with a speculative product, there were a number of feelings I wanted to convey. The world of 2050 is a bleak place, according to the narrative that we conjured up. This is a world that has seen a decrease in physical social interaction, in favor of moving these interactions towards virtual spaces. This is because of the untapped possibilities represented by these spaces, especially in the possibility of a virtual world that allows for people to escape the bleakness of reality. When I was drawing up some sketches for such a product, I wrote down a number of words that hopefully would capture the feelings I wanted to convey with this product.

Oppressive, to show a society that has become subservient to the machine. Monolithic, to draw out a sense of awe when viewing this product, and viewing this product when people are using it; I know this runs counter to dictionary definitions of monolithic but I think of the feeling I get when I first watched 2001: A Space Odyssey with it’s monoliths (http://artificialorder.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/08_monolith-2.jpg), and that’s a feeling I wanted to convey. Imposing, to showcase a feeling that this product holds a great power over it’s users. Intrusive, to give the feeling that this product is “taking over”, a feeling that I associate with the proliferation of white earbuds following the release of the iPod. But most of all, this product needs to be inviting, so that all of these other feelings could be captured.

To present this, my concepts centered around the idea of a VR “ring”, something that encompasses the eyes and the ears. In doing so, the two primary input methods for humans is covered by Flux. This means that a user can be passed information very easily. Someone could easily move to playing games, or just using the 2050 equivalent of apps for the device without needing to adjust, or press any buttons. This idea of covering both the ears and eyes, to me, is very oppressive. What you perceive is no longer “pure” in the sense that it’s filtered through the machine, the ideas you conceive are no longer yours, and the information you receive may very well be entirely manufactured. Living about an hour from uni means that a lot of my time is spent on buses, doing polls on the types of devices people use and the way they spend their time. To me, nothing is more symbolic of the intrusive than a bus full of people silently sitting engaged with the content on their Flux. Because of this, I needed Flux to be small and unintrusive physically, as well as being lightweight and easy to have on your person at all times. These features combined with a striking colour scheme serve to make Flux an inviting product when it’s combined with the software features we would be touting. I felt the best way to showcase these and similar feelings was through this ring format. Here are some of my concepts that will lead to the prototype (when it’s finalised)…

The original ring concept. Ideally, the head goes in the middle. If I were to flesh this out further, there would be small outcroppings that sit it in on the ears and give it a sense of place about the face.

A tapered version of the original ring, to better provide for the bridge of the nose, and also to make it look a bit more inviting.

A ring with the back cutout, and little bits for the ears to fit into. Allows for a more extreme taper as well.

And similar to the above, but just for one side of the face. Personally, I’m not as much of a fan of this one just because I like the idea of something being all covering.

Energy Of The Future

In the year 2050, what will our main energy source be? How will it affect the way we use appliances and everyday electronic devices? In a high technological world we will rely on ready time data to keep track of our energy consumption. For our future scenario assignment we have explored a new energy which is completely renewable and never depletes, it is low cost and efficient and does not rely on inconsistent supplies to power the earth.

Photace Energy

‘Energy that leaves the world better then when we found It’

• Safe
• Secure
• Healthy
• Durable

What is Photace Energy?

Photace energy is the process of extracting power from surrounding planets while they are in orbit and projecting it back down to earth through floating modules launched into space. There are no carbon emissions, no higher costs and it produces more energy then ground based energy projectors and it is one of the safest and most secure ways to provide energy to your homes.

Why Photace Energy?

Photace energy has no negative impacts on the environment, our motivation in producing such a system was the ‘severe environmental and supply problems’ (Prosser 2008) we faced in the last 20 years. Forget weather interfering with your household energy supplies, Photace energy is producing energy around the clock, regardless of what is going on. The last 30 years has shown us an ‘80% increase in energy consumption’ (Prosser 2008) , so there is no doubt Photace energy is the smarter more affordable way to power your day, no carbon emissions, no extreme costs, it is the upcoming world-leading renewable energy source leading us to a sustainable future.

How will Photace Energy Help the world?

‘Developing nations, including population giants China and India, have entered their most energy-intensive phase of economic growth as they industrialise, build infrastructure, and increase their use of transportation’ ( Grundy 2008) Photace energy is a completely renewable and affordable energy source, that does not deplete, we are allowing third world countries to have access to this through meeting the ‘supply and demand’ tensions. With the world population having increased by 40% in the last 30 years (Grundy 2008 ) this energy source is a revolutionary transition into making the world a sustainable and enjoyable place to live in. In poses no health threats to our environment or ourselves and is sure to leave ‘our world better then we found it’.

– Projecting this ‘new energy’ into the future for our second assessment provided us with many challenges. We faced multiple complications in covering the loop holes of not only our renewable energy, but also our predicted and projected future. When exploring areas such as futuring, it is important to keep and open mind and uncover the negative and positive aspects of every future, look at the limitations and consequences but also reveal the benefits.

Every aspect of design at one point faces the challenges of futuring, in order to keep up and prevent unforeseen issues. The denim brand, Levi Straus & Co conducted a futuring scenarios project, to assist the fashion industry in understanding the threats of the unknown and what the future holds, as not even fashion is impervious to the negative impacts of uncertainty. They explored futuring techniques and developed four scenarios, researching areas from climate change and resource depletion to population growth, just as we have conducted in our assessment. It is through coming to thoroughly understand what futuring is and why creatives use this, that a real appreciation has developed, making me more eager to look at these assessments as if they were in a real life situation.

 

References:

Holmgren, D, 2008, Mapping the cultural implications of Peak Oil and Climate Change,<http://www.futurescenarios.org/content/view/31/51/index.html>

Origin Energy, Viewed September 13 2014, <http://www.originenergy.com.au/4227/Renewable-energy>

Prosser, T, 2008, Shell Scenarios Attempt to Bracket The Energy Future, viewe September 14, 2014, <http://timprosserfuturing.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/shell-scenarios-attempt-to-bracket-the-energy-future/>

Shell Global, 2008, Shell Energy Scenarios, Holland, viewed September 14 2014, <http://s00.static-shell.com/content/dam/shell/static/future-energy/downloads/shell-scenarios/shell-energy-scenarios2050.pdf>

Apocalypse Now?

Depictions of the future have been constantly shifting and changing over time, repositioning the way we think about our planet in the context of what we deem to be important today. We can see this shift in the representations of the future in popular culture of the 70s and 80s – movies and television shows we’re focussed on the rapid development of technology, and the way these technologies might have a positive impact on our day-to-day lives. Holograms, time travel, flying cars we’re heavily shown in media – fun and innovative ways of improving situations of that time revolving around transport, globalisation and the way we communicate. The future was seen as an exciting time, something to look forward too; ultimately a time of creativity and positive rapid technological change.

Our current depictions of the future are not so light and fun. The apocalypse genre that is so rampantly seen in movies and television show a world where the humanity has been overrun with horrific environmental and technological consequences. Worlds have been torn apart through political unrest and a lack of resources in The Hunger Games, robots built for warfare have turned on their creators and have begun attacking human society in Pacific Rim, the world is torn apart by an uncontrolled disease in Cognation. These examples show the future as a bleak, terrible place to live. These depictions of a society failing through its own undoing, either through a depletion of resources, a lack of investment in health sciences, or a focus on technological warfare, aim to send a warning. That if we do not stop what we are doing right now, this is the future we will experience.

What does that say about our cultural state of mind, that humanity is doomed to die in some horrible apocalypse? This shift from a thriving, innovative society, to this grim representation has been gradual and slow, but a look into the media that we consume tells us that this is where we see ourselves in fifty, one hundred, five-hundred years. Are these narratives a clear warning of what is to come, or just a heightened dramatic musings of a bored screenwriter? In either case, we have to think about the future we want, and perhaps project a more positive approach to the way we depict these futures in pop culture.