Using devices like these, students of all ages might be able to take some serious field trips:
For example…implementing and leveraging such a network of remote-controlled devices*, students could:
- Tour the Louvre in Paris
- Be backstage at a Broadway musical or checking out a live performance of Macbeth
- Watch a filming of a National Geographic Special in the Fiji Islands
- Attend an IEEE International Conference in Taiwan
- Attend an Educause Conference or a Sloan C event to get further knowledge about how to maximize your time studying online or within a hybrid environment
- Tour The Exploratorium in San Francisco
- Tour the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago
- Be a fly on the wall during a Senate hearing/debate
- See how changes are made in the assembly lines at a Ford plant
- Or perhaps, when a student wheels their device to a particular area — such as the front row of a conference, the signal automatically switches to the main speaker/event (keynote speakers, panel, etc. via machine-to-machine communications)
- Invite guest speakers into a class: pastors, authors, poets, composers, etc.
- Work with local/virtual teams on how to heighten public awareness re: a project that deals with sustainability
- Virtually head to another country to immerse themselves in another country’s language — and, vice versa, help them learn the students’ native languages
For accountability — as well as for setting aside intentional time to process the information — students would update their own blogs about what they experienced, heard, and saw. They would need to include at least one image, along with the text they write about their experience. Or perhaps a brief/edited piece of digital video or audio of some of the statements that they heard that really resonated with them, or that they had further questions on. The default setting on such postings would be to be kept private, but if the teacher and the student felt that a posting could/should be made public, a quick setting could be checked to publish it out there for others to see/experience.
Real world. Engaging. Passing over more choice and control to the students so that they can pursue what they are passionate about.
* These mobile devices could also be hooked up to translation engines as well as to suites of web-based collaboration tools.