“Any new technology tends to go through a 25-year adoption cycle.”
-Marc Andresson, founder of Netscape
It’s spring, of course, which means we’re winding down the school year. Hopefully, all of you are doing well and the weather where you are is starting to turn if not nice, then at least less icy.
As we head ever closer to Infocomm, our thoughts inevitably turn to the shiny and new technologies that will be unveiled there. And of course, we’re all starting to think about how we’ll spend next year’s budget on them. In doing that I have a few points I hope you will consider when planning out new uses of technology. I also hope to highlight some technology that while not exactly new, has some new uses in our post-pandemic world.
Anyone who, like me, went to Disney’s Animal Kingdom during the first year it was open and rode the Kilimanjaro Safaris ride might remember that there was originally a plot involving poachers and a murdered elephant. That was removed after the first year because it was traumatizing children whose parents thought it was just an animal ride. The same concept applies to emerging technologies, particularly in classroom design. Given that we have to get stakeholder input in how we design classrooms and that can often be (mis)informed by trends and changes in pedagogical theory we need to take requests for emerging technologies with a grain of salt. With that said, the advantage of newer technologies is that they are often more accessible than older ones. Therefore I want to address things to look for in adopting new technologies and some red flags to avoid.
First of all, we need to remember to avoid the temptation to buy new just because its new. What i mean by that is that the further we go outside existing systems, the more likely it is that we’ll increase the cognitive load on our faculty and student users. It becomes an accessibility issue as we move away from what people traditionally use.
Seeking similarity in control and function is a good way to maintain accessibility.
Similarly, since our manufacturers LOVE to have new fancy terms for features, we need to take a multipronged approach to reduce the instructor’s cognitive load. First of all, we need to get ahead of the terminology by not using it when we talk to clients. It can cause confusion if they’re used to one input and then are confronted with another term on the controls. When we install new systems, we need to ensure that we are keeping the labeling consistent. This goes as much for changeovers from hard button controls to touch panels as it does in rolling out new systems.
Speaking of controls, one of the biggest trends in the last decade has been putting touchpanels in place of buttons. And at the end of the day, nothing is going to stop that, but I want to point out something commonly overlooked. Those touch panels can’t use braille. And while there may be accessibility options I haven’t encountered on them, it’s not readily apparent to me where they are. If we install a touch panel, we need to also retain a button panel we can put braille markings on. It’s only right.
Before I sound too much like a naysayer, I do want to highlight a few (still) emerging products that can be useful in making the classroom more accessible. First off, and I know I’m always highlighting this, but assistive listening devices that don’t require facility-specific receivers. These devices have evolved beyond where they were when I first highlighted them in 2019 and have become far more versatile, baking in Dante compatibility and the ability to process multiple streams of audio. Pairing those with translation systems and captioning systems allows for an even wider range of learners and attendees at public events to have full access. As we’ve learned through the pandemic, there are any number of reasons that audio may not be perfectly heard by attendees, and installing these tools would help mitigate that.
Finally, and I know this is seriously unpopular right now, we need to keep up with advances in technologies to support hybrid and remote learning and continue to incorporate them into our classrooms. It’s not just a matter of a pandemic or weather, by continually modernizing the technologies we use for hybrid learning our classrooms become more accessible. In my career, I’ve worked exclusively at East Coast schools, all of which contain a significant number of buildings that not only predate the ADA but predate the inclusion of people with disabilities in learning. As a result, many have classrooms that are not necessarily accessible, or whose accessibility is contingent on things like elevators remaining functional. By making sure that all classes can be taught in a hybrid format, we’re ensuring that all our students, our customers, are able to get what they paid for and really what they earned by being accepted to our schools.
We need to make sure that while we never stop innovating, we also maintain familiarity in the minds of our clients.
At the end of the day, as new technologies emerge we need to make sure that we are continuing to support our diverse faculty and students. While it may seem like a perfect answer is simply to replace existing systems with shiny new ones, sometimes the new is the opposite of what we need, instead, we need to make sure that while we never stop innovating, we also maintain familiarity in the minds of our clients. In doing so we can chart a course forward, using technology that is leading-edge but proven to work. We have to be forever innovating, without a doubt, but since technology changes so quickly we need to be cognizant of how our choices affect our users.