Slides for my NASIG 2013 keynote speech (June 2013). I focus on mobile computing and its impact on academia.

1. Libraries, Mobile Devices, and
the Visible College

2. nitle.org

3. Communities
of practice
Research
Joint projects
Outreach

4. • Network platform:
events f2f/online
• Partnerships
• Translation

5. Trendline analysis

6. Not a librarian, but a fanboy
https://plus.google.com/photos/at/107844162817188153504?hl=en

7. I. Ecosystem
and devices
II. Places for
the new
library
III. Where things might end up

9. Beyond the PC
"When we were an agrarian
nation, all cars were trucks
because that's what you needed
on the farms." Cars became more
popular as cities rose, and things
like power steering and automatic
transmission became popular…

10. "PCs are going to be like trucks," Jobs said. "They
are still going to be around." However, he said,
only "one out of x people will need them."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20006526-56.html ; image via Wikipedia

11. Smartphones
Uses out of
class:
1. Content
delivery
2. Social
interact.
3. Content
capture

13. “The mobile phone is the primary connection
tool for most people in the world. In 2020,
while "one laptop per child" and other
initiatives to bring networked digital
communications to everyone are successful
on many levels, the mobile phone—now with
significant computing power—is the primary
Internet connection and the only one for a
majority of the people across the world,
providing information in a portable, well-
connected form at a relatively low price.”

14. Tablets 2.0
Wikipedia

15. e-book readers

16. Netbooks continue

17. Clickers, for example
• Er, Personal Response
Units
• The unsung campus
success
• Classroom pilot
• Faculty/admin meeting
demo
• Owning units: students or
institution?
• Combine with ppt

18. Smartpens
• Text scanning
(OCR)
• Audio recording
• Web service
Michael Wesch
http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=206

19. Marker-based AR
• Living antecedent: bar codes
• QR
• Microsoft Tag

20. Sensor world

21. Interface changes
•Gartner: end of the
mouse
•Touch screen (iOS)
•Handhelds (Wii)
•Nothing (Kinect)

22. Ecosystems
Ecosystems

23. Ecosystems and decisions
Combining devices, format,
services, and business
model
• Kindle: Amazon store
• iPad: iTunes book section
• Android: Play

24. e-books

25. • History: back to the 1970s
• Campus history: e-reserves

26. File formats
• txt, html, pdf
• Epub
• Kindle (.azw)
• Fictionbook,
Mobipocket
• Microsoft Reader (.lit)

27. ePub example (EPUBReader Firefox plugin)

28. File formats
Greater interactivity:
• Wikis
• Multimedia (Nook, Vook)
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/04/penguins-ipad-formatted-books-shown-off-making-
waves/

29. Fee for pdf
• Using the open Web: content, service
http://www.kunstler.com/BigSlide/

30. Major e-book projects
• Humanities E-Book 2,200
• Internet Archive “over 30,000 free ebooks”
• Project Gutenberg “1,893,588 texts”
• Connexions depends on definition

31. Project Gutenberg

32. Internet Archive texts

33. Connexions

34. Humanities E-Book (HEB)

35. …and Google Books, depending

36. Commercial providers
http://www.ebrary.com/

37. E-reader applications
• Examples:
• Stanza
(pictured)
• Calibre
• EPUBReader
(Firefox plugin)
• Microsoft
Reader
• Dbelement
(pictured)

38. Ebook advantages
• Greener
• Interactivity, multimedia affordances
• Faster publication cycle
• Lower cost
• Flexible, “flowable” presentation (font,
etc)
• Updates and errata
• Remixing (sometimes)

39. Ebook disadvantages
• Users uncomfortable with
digital
• Publishers’ nerves with
copyright
• Multimedia costs
• Wiki problems

40. The world of gaming

41. Gaming as part of mainstream culture
• Median age of gamers shoots past 35
• Industry size comparable to music
• Impacts on hardware, software,
interfaces, other industries
• Large and growing diversity of
platforms, topics, genres, niches,
players

42. Gaming as part of mainstream culture
Anecdata: number
of Facebook
CityVille players:
(as of July 2012, http://www.appdata.com/?AFB_redir=1 )
23,900,000

43. Games
serious,
public, and
political
• Oiligarchy, Molle Industries
• Jetset, Persuasive Games
• The Great Shakeout, California
• DimensionM, Tabula Digita

44. Gamification

45. Imperial gamification

46. Use games to impact
society

47. Gaming boom on mobile devices

48. Gaming extends throughout everyday life…
https://www.zombiesrungame.com/]

49. …literally
…practically
…conceptually
https://www.zombiesrungame.com/

50. Storytelling
through
games on
mobile
devices
Interstitial
storygaming
http://hitchery.com/

51. Concepts: practices
• Microcontent
increases
• Laminating the
world digitally
• Media
consumption
• Media
capture
• Social
connection
• Interface

52. Concepts: teaching in class
In class: assessment
vs constructivist
approaches
Pedagogical themes
• Anonymity yet
universality
• Aimed at large size
class, often

53. Information on demand
“Students who have superb search skills have
introduced useful material or questions into
discussion. In a few cases, I’ve had students
find pertinent archival video in response to
the drift of the conversation which I’ve then
put up on the classroom projector.”
-professor Tim Burke, Swarthmore College
http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/2009/05
/06/the-laptop-in-the-classroom/

54. Realtime search
Volokh Conspiracy, April 2007

55. Mobile study journaling
John Schott, Carleton College, 2006

56. Multitasking
• threats: distraction, wandering
index/stimulus
• generational issue
• practice: shells down, machines open
• Multitasking or Continuous Partial
Attention

57. Apps for .edu
• iPhone in the lead
• Campus life apps
• Development kits and forks

58. Campus AR game
“The ARIS engine allows game designers to
place virtual items, characters and pages in
physical space using the iPhone’s GPS or a
little barcode that can be placed on a wall or
near an object. By giving the players a story
and a number of quests, games can be built
that involve a mix of physical and virtual
activities.”
(U Wisconsin, http://arisgames.org/)

59. Emergent trends and possibles
“…Another approach to AR gaming allows
players or game masters to create virtual
people and objects, tying them to a specific
location in the real world.
Players interact with
these constructs, which
appear when the player
approaches a linked
location in the real
world.” (HR 2010)
(Mad City Mystery,
http://tinyurl.com/ybdsfzp)

60. Systems: ubiquitous computing
Mark Weiser, 1988ff
• Example: "The Computer for
the Twenty-First Century"
(1991)
“The most profound technologies are
those that disappear. They weave
themselves into the fabric of everyday
life until they are indistinguishable from
it.”

63. AR: a new layer on the Earth
• Not VR
• HUDs
• J. Spohrer, WorldBoard
“Information in places”
(IBM Systems Journal,
1999)
Language grapples:
• Magic window
• Mixed reality
• Reading the
environment
• Annotate the world
• Laminating the physical
world
• a “looking glass” into an
invisible world

64. Components
Hardware
• Mobile device (e.g.,
phone)
• Camera
• Display screen (glasses,
phone)
• Network infrastructure
• Location awareness
(GPS)
• Attitude awareness
(accelerometer)
• Compass
Software
• Local apps
• Web services
• Content server

65. First, the light stuff
• Museum tours
• GPS navigators
(Garmin)
• Location services

66. Wikitude
User geotagging
http://wikitude.me/
“World Browser”

67. http://wikitude.me/“World Browser”

68. Marker-based AR
• Another antecedent: CueCat
• Google Googles

69. Integration with social media
http://www.twitter-360.com/

70. Deeper AR
• Superimpose digital data onto local imagery
• Glasses or phone

71. Mondrian;
http://layar.com/layar-30-launched-
5-cases-to-show-the-power-
of-the-platform/
Creative arts

72. Multimedia lives here

73. AR .edu examples: iTacitus
• European Commission research project
http://www.itacitus.org/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/0
8/090812104219.htm
Palazzo Diana,
Florence

74. Stresses:
-criticism
-abuse
-perception
Backchannel
(dana boyd,
http://www.zephoria.o
rg/thoughts/archives/2
009/11/24/spectacle_a
t_we.html )

75. Increased
amount and
variety of
discussion
(for better and
for worse)
• Chat, Twitter
Backchannel
(dotguy_az)

76. Four possible futures
1.Phantom Learning
2.Open World
3.Silo World
4.Alt. Residential

77. I: Phantom learning
Post-tsunami
• Schools are rare
and distant
• Information is
plentiful and
nearby

78. The bubble burst
http://research.studentclearinghouse.org/files/TermEnrollmentReport-Spring2013.pdf

79. Learning
•Information on demand
•Instructors, peers “ “
•Grading outsourced
•Multimedia: social,
personalized

80. Institutions
•Function: content
supplements
•Faculty: adjunct rōnin
•Accreditation: online,
multiple, display-based

81. Institutions
•Library: media production
camp
•Professional development:
via social media

82. MOOCs?

83. No, MOOCs
No good categorical name:
…which sometimes indicates
the future

84. • Students spent more time in K-12
with online classes than face-to-
face ones
• K-12 as social center, working
parent support spaces
• Libraries are software
• Buildings without AR look naked

85. II: Open world
•Open content,
open access,
open source
• Very Web-centric

86. Good things
• Global conversations increase,
filter bubble pops
• More access, more
information
• Lots of creativity

87. Good things on campus
• Information prices drop
• Faculty creativity, flexibility
grow
• IT “ “ “
• Academic content unleashed
on the world

88. Not so good things
• Industries collapse
• Authorship mysterious
• Some low quality tech
(videoconf.)
• Some higher costs
• More malware + less privacy

89. How does this impact campuses?
• Tech challenges
• Outsourcing and offshoring
• PLE beats LMS
• Crowdsourcing faculty work
• Information literacy central

90. •Internet has always been
open
•Web <> money
•Online identity has always
been fictional, playful

91. III: Silo world
• Most information
experienced in
vertical stacks
• The Web is over

92. We love our stacks, and they us
• Phone, laptop, tablet
• Email
• Software, file formats
• Social media
• Multimedia: books,
music, video, gaming
• Web hosting
• videoconferencing
• Style
Apple
Google
Amazon
Microsoft
Facebook
SNP (Some New
Player)

93. How does this impact campuses?
• Information support
• IP intensifies
• Professional
development
• Faculty work
• Collaboration shaping
• LMS world

94. • Identified w/brand and IA since
elementary school
• Conceives of career aspects within
silos
• “open” = historical, or radical, or a
flaw

95. IV: Alt.residential

96. •Online/blended learning is
higher education’s new
normal
•Unbundled, reaggregated
class structures

97. •Residential education: a
specialized niche
•Tenured faculty =
community guides
•Rising positions: mentor
(WGU), data manager

98. Liberal arts campuses?
• Blended
learning is
campus norm
• Some classes
outsourced to
DL
• Classrooms in
studio mode

99. Unique physical
environments are central to
campus definition
All campus is blended learning
environment (“place as
library”)

100. Out from the digital
• Hands-on learning
(maker culture,
tinkering):
production +
studies
• 3d printing across
the curriculum

101. Augmented reality layers

102. Higher education landscape:
• Accreditation drives project-based,
studio-style pedagogy
• Libraries: rare and/or smaller
• Professional development: distance, DiY
• Second wave of campus development

103. • Most learning content has always
been online
• Have taken 1-6 DL courses by age 18
• Blended learning is normative
• Blended life “ “
• Collaboration’s norm is distant

104. NITLE
http://nitle.org
Bryan blog
http://bryanalexander.org
Bryan on Twitter
http://twitter.com/BryanAlexander