Essential Question: Design an object that could be classified as belonging to “The Internet of Things” and describe how it could contribute to your classroom.
IoT (The Internet of Things) is something that I have been involved with in my IT career for some time now. We have fake Amazon re-order buttons on everything, even the coffee machine. The term is very trendy and becoming a household term. The definition of IoT is simple: it’s about connecting devices over the internet, letting them talk to us, applications, and each other (theguardian.com).
Having “always connected” or networked devices that are sending alerts to a station, is a concept has been around for some time now. Think of your big copy machine at work, it sends a message to the administrator when the supplies are low. Your home printed probably sends you a message when the ink is almost out as well.
I could tell you about endless Oracle inventions that have the IoT concept, including shopping carts at Target that track the objects in your cart and can send you a coupon for cookies if you pass by the aisle, patches that can go on baby clothes (wearable technology) that tell the bottle warmer to power on because the baby is starting to wake, and my favorite is the devices that go in the ground for farmers. They tell the station which areas are dry and which areas need more fertilizer.
How do we implement IoT into the classroom? The wearable technology such as arm bands can tell the behavior of a student. They can report when the students start to get restless so the teacher knows when to take a break, or when she has everybody attentions because they are still and probably listening. She can even see from the report which interests seem to spike attention versus boredom.
Wearable technology is only one concept of IoT that can be implemented into classrooms. I have used the electronic voting devices to answer Delphi surveys; they are free apps now for the same concepts.
Sources:
Kobie, N. (2015, May 06). What is the internet of things? Retrieved June 13, 2016, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/06/what-is-the-internet-of-things-google
Meyers, M. (2014, December 03). Can the Internet of Things make education more student-focused? – Government 2020. Retrieved June 13, 2016, from http://government-2020.dupress.com/can-internet-things-make-education-student-focused/
Morgan, J. (2014, May 13). A Simple Explanation Of ‘The Internet Of Things’ Retrieved June 13, 2016, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2014/05/13/simple-explanation-internet-things-that-anyone-can-understand/#292f436f6828
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Are the arm bands your IOT device? I couldn’t tell if this was your idea or not.
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The arm bands aren’t my invention, I wish they were lol. I would create functions for the armbands that would implement my IoT classroom ideas.
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Thank you for the variety of items that are already part of the IoT. In all the study this week, I never thought about the devices that help farmers and I have never heard of the wearable clothing on babies.
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Josie, I like the idea of the wearable arm bands collecting data on students behavior in order to inform instruction. You mentioned the reports helping to track students’ interests. This is important because teaching within or connecting to student interest helps students to be much more motivated. If they are interested in a topic they also are more willing to tackle challenging tasks. I’m also thinking the reports could tell if there is a time of day in which students are more restless–perhaps a good time to plan for a movement break. Aleta (https://aleta57.wordpress.com/2016/06/16/edet-678wk-5-essential-question-design-an-object-that-could-be-classified-as-belonging-to-the-internet-of-things-and-describe-how-it-could-contribute-to-your-classroom/) brought up a good point in her blog post that I think is important to remember–we also need to use our intuition and knowledge of students to make decisions and can’t rely totally on technology. She discussed how a doctor was concerned that if parents of babies relied too much on the data they got from technology based devices on their baby that they might not learn to read the cues that their baby gives. So, in the classroom the technology would be a tool to help us collect data but our sense and knowledge of students would always come first 🙂
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