The Sixth Sense - are we ready?

Having just attended the two-day NSW DET "Connected Learning 2009" conference (and presenting in a session last Wednesday), I'm internalising a lot of new ideas that will need to be interpreted and translated into my daily professional practice.

This year's conference was subtitled "Transforming Learning and Teaching". Colleen Foley and I were pleased we had plenty of school principals at our session! But there was so much information to convey in a 50 minute session of a two-day conference - at which all attendees were giving up two days of their vacation. Which is hardly ideal.

Some of the points raised by the keynote speakers were so important, thought-provoking and challenging. The presentations by Mark Treadwell and Peter Blassina, particularly, were quite mind-blowing. If you haven't seen the TED talk on "The Sixth Sense" by Pattie Maes (MIT Media Lab), as discussed by Peter Blassina at the conference, it's a must-see:
http://www.ted.com/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html



After that video, we were all feeling more than a little inadequate, and yet incredibly excited by the possibilities. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, here I was thinking my iPhone was pretty clever, and a harbinger of how students of the future would still be needing the help of teacher-librarians to plough through our information world. If "The Sixth Sense" becomes a commercial reality, the learning curve starts anew before the current one is even finished. Are any of us ready for the next paradigm shift?


Outside the Novotel Sydney Hotel, Brighton-le-Sands,
for the Connected Learning conference.