Gone to mobiles every one

In 2013 I wrote the concluding chapter for Experiential Learning in Virtual Worlds (edited by me and Greg Withnail). I predicted what would happen in the development of virtual worlds over the following five years. I made six different predictions. The best I did was I got one of them half-right. The rest were almost entirely wrong.

This year, I’m developing a course on Educational Futures in which I’m looking at what makes an effective, or a poor, prediction. Rather than make someone else look like an idiot, I’m looking at the predictions I made. The idea is for students to look at the text and work out how I got it so badly wrong in most of the cases.

The following is not entirely the text from the book, but I’ve only tweaked it so it will work on its own rather than as part of a concluding chapter. I’ve also added a prescience factor at the end, to sum up how well I did.

Gone to mobiles every one. As noted above, the rate of take-up of virtual worlds anticipated by Gartner in 2007 has not been realised. Some predictions also state that the rate of development of the high end graphics technology required for virtual worlds will be slowed by the adoption of mobile technology. Essid[i] notes that the tablet PCs owned by students cannot run the viewers required for Second Life, and these are now the predominant technology with which students access online learning. In addition, many apps provide innovative and offline education, such as the use of Google Sky, Zenith or Sky Safari for learning astronomy. In these apps, the learner holds up their tablet PC and through global positioning and inbuilt sensors that detect orientation, the tablet displays the position of stars, planets and Messier objects as they appear in the sky in the direction in which the tablet is pointed. This provides learning that is interactive, kinaesthetic, and in situ. Essid’s prediction is that the predominant use of mobile technology as the new wave of learning will stall the uptake of virtual worlds. As Essid states in his blog post on the subject:

One does not wish to be on the wrong side of history, and I think SL evangelists are clearly on the wrong side, unless they are early in their careers and have a Plan B for research and teaching.

[i] J. Essid, ‘Mobile: Shiny? Yes. Hyped? Yes. Fad? No’, 3rd May, 2010, http://iggyo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/mobile-shiny-yes-hyped-yes-fad-no.html

Prescience factor: 8/10. To be fair, not my prediction really, but Joe Essid’s. The increasing usage of mobile devices has meant that learning can take place anywhere, but it has caused the development of some technologies to slow down because as a platform they are more limited,  in terms of the processing power when compared to PCs, but also in due to the speed of input (two thumbs are never as fast as 10 fingers) and the readability of the screen. It’s not 10 out of 10, because I think both Joe and I underestimated the capacity and functionality that smartphones would attain by 2018. Moore’s Law is severely difficult to anticipate because it’s a geometrical increase. This example shows why it’s impossible to get your head around geometrical increases.