Is ‘Immersion’ Inevitable?
Learning futurist Chris Dede takes on the millennium, and education may never be the same.
Few aspects of technology in education
are more fascinating right
now than is the gargantuan question
(the elephant in the room) of
whether learning is being irrevocably
altered by the advent of the technologically
“virtual” and the world of
cyberspace. Of course, there have
been no end of predictions on this subject
since the Internet and distance
learning first intersected, and since students
first began to multitask across
myriad devices (desktop, laptop, tablet,
cell phone, smart phone, PDA, iPod,
game device). Young people also have
discovered information sharing with
multiple, faceless strangers across
cyberspace, and have come to expect
that—just as on their MP3 players—
information can be customized, shuffled,
or repackaged to their individual
needs, in an instant.
All of these factors have contributed
to a student mindset that is nearly alien
to many educators: Where generations
of instructors have sought to focus
learners—help them peel away distractions
and experience the joy of single-
subject engagement—the current
generation of educators must face the
challenge of connecting with learners
whose minds are used to simultaneously
compartmentalized information
absorption (homework, music, cell
phone conversation, and Internet IMing,
all at the same time), and whose
ability to engage may only be aroused
by an enveloping physical (or virtually
physical) immersion experience: Think
IMAX, or, more recently, Purdue University’s
(IN) experiments in immersive
learning, which through the wonders of
technology can, for instance, transport
a student back to a garden in 18thcentury
China [see “Inside Purdue’s
Envision Center,” June 2005].
This leaves us to marvel at the latest
advances in immersive learning technologies,
and the most current higher
ed and K-12 models for their application.
But it also leaves educators to ask:
How do we get up to speed on a new
model of educating, in a millennium that
already has been moving too fast for
many of us? Where will the dollars and
resources come from for the professional
development required to get
there? What are the chances of finding
those resources in time to keep up with
our students, when we’ve already failed
to find them for vastly more basic technology
training for educators?
It may take Harvard (MA) learning
technology futurist Chris Dede to help
us sort all of this out. On August 1,
Dede will address Campus Technology
2006 conference attendees in a keynote that will take
us all on a journey through Internet2, “Alice-in-Wonderland” multi-user virtual
environment (MUVE) interfaces, and
interfaces for ubiquitous computing.
Dede will detail the technology, physical
plant, and resource/professional development
investments that must be
embraced, if educators and institutions
are to meet the—yes, inevitable—challenges
of immersive learning. To ignore
this roadmap to the future may mean a
great deal more than just falling behind;
it may mean falling out, and that may not
be an option.
—Katherine Grayson, Editor-In-Chief
What have you seen and heard? Send to: [email protected].