Wearables

The rapidly developing wearable technology sector is a further step into the inevitable age of singularity. Wearable technology and its impact on human behaviour, and inevitably teaching and learning, is both compelling and frightening. I have worked in the wearable tech space and I see as many dangers as I do benefits, however. And I can’t help but wonder if this entanglement in wearable tech is leading us further and further away from what it means to be human.

As a fitness professional in my professional practice I have noted how wearables have consistently been featured as one of the top fitness trends in the last couple of years. I think that they allow people to take ownership of their health and fitness which is an important factor for learning about their health and developing a sense of accountability and responsibility for staying healthy and active. I think there is a lot of potential for wearables as an educational tool for health and fitness and that it will continue to gain in popularity and will continue to be developed with further sophistication and capabilities beyond what we can even imagine now. I personally have a wearable fitness tracker and have found it both educational and insightful to my activity and sleep habits. It also motivates me to do more and take better care of my health and fitness.

Wearable tech is an exciting landscape that is broadening rapidly. I can personally attest to the difference that accurate real-time data can impact someone's life. China is currently getting some of their students to wear a headband that scans their brain activity. It has LED lights on the band that indicate concentration levels. Aside from the potential privacy concerns, I think there is some real potential here to help students. I don't love the idea of policing kids' attention, but using something like this to find out how to get students into the zone of proximal development would be groundbreaking. Using students neurological data could aid educators to plan learning activities that hit the sweet spot of moderate stress - not too easy and boring and not so difficult they give up. There are many metrics that could be used to benefit teaching and learning: Eye tracking, neurological data, heart rate, skin temperature, respiration, etc. The big question is how it is used and what happens with the data.

I think there is huge potential in wearable technology as an educational tool to assist in the apprenticeship of learners. Though Google Glass wasn't a commercial success, it is being used in some industries (medical, manufacturing, etc.) to provide on the job training and results have shown its use to be efficient and effective. Imagine being able to quickly access information visually when you are performing a task or learning a set of steps and not having to stop to open a manual, go to your computer, or find someone to walk you through it. Other emerging technologies and advancements will increase the potential of wearables, their processing power and access to data.

I believe wearable technology is an inevitability of our technological advancement. In fact, wearables are already on the market, and many people utilize them on a daily basis whether they recognize it or not. This trend seems to be advancing quickly, and eventually, will evolve into implantables where this technology will become a more permanent fixture within the human body. Moreover, there has been much debate over wearable/implantable technology being coupled with AI & Machine Learning mechanisms - This would, as some argue, indicate our next evolutionary step as human beings, that is, becoming fully integrated with technology. Consider figure 2 in this article: https://technologyandsociety.org/implantable-technology/. It asserts that as we analyze history, we recognize that the distance between out physical bodies and our technologies have been reducing. It is only natural to assume that the next step is complete integration.