Link to OER: https://sites.google.com/view/etec523a3holograms/home
We’ve all seen science fiction movies or media where a realistic projection appears and starts communicating with other people. On paper this seems like a really novel idea as surprisingly enough, holographic technology has actually existed since the 1940’s. With rapid modern advancements in Mobile Technology and our smartphones, wouldn’t it seem like a natural evolution if our devices could project a holographic image of the person we’re talking to? What about being able to interact with holographic objects within a 3D space? Would attending a lecture with a holographic teacher sound intriguing or strange to you?
If these concepts seem exciting to you, think about the possibilities holographic technology could bring to education. What would the impact be on curriculum design? Would holograms enhance the learning experience? How can holograms solve the age old dilemma of “boring education” All of these topics are answered in the OER which can be found here
The A3 is more of a forecast in general as opposed to designing an actual holographic app for education. While it would have been nice to get really creative, the current progress for 3D holograms is still undergoing constant research & development. As the technology behind it is not exactly “mature” yet, It would be more insightful if we understood the overall trend and rationale behind the technology first.
I hope you’ll all enjoy navigating through the OER and will be able to learn something new about holograms in general! Looking forward to reading your comments, feedback and thoughts in general.
Hi John, your presentation is absolutely amazing in many ways. I appreciate how you objectively analyze the learning experience in traditional education and lure into a hope for the post-industrial learner-focused learning experience. You offered rich insights into holographic technology, in terms of its existing application, potential application, and challenges. I trust you have done extensive research on this topic, and I appreciate your great efforts in bringing this novel idea to our attention. I absolutely enjoyed reading your presentation, and I have many take-aways from your forecast project. Also, it seems like holographic technology is a promising area of development in education, as both Danya and you have identified this technology to be a possible trend in future education. On top of that, while browsing other peers’ presentations, many of them also showed interest in seeing advanced technologies support learners with disabilities. Do you anticipate holographic technology to be beneficial for them, and in what ways?
Hi Vera, it’s encouraging to read such wonderful comments thanks! As a trend I would predict that holograms are generally moving towards the right direction. With more time and development, I’m confident to say that there’s a possibility that holograms will be viewed as useful teaching tools for a wide range of contexts. An increased sense of engagement would probably be the biggest benefit as properly designed holograms could change the way learners understand concepts while making learning less “conceptual” with more dimensions to learning than just words/text. If designed correctly, it’s possible for holograms to create closer connections between (i) students (ii) the context (iii) online learning and (iv) social learning if used in conjunction with fast connections such as 5/6G frameworks.
Hi Vera and John,
I echo Vera’s comments on your OER. Great work. Something that struck me when I watched the holographic experience of the whale in the gym was the potential for holographic experiences in conservation education. Few people can imagine the size and majesty of whales and other creatures. Could a holographic image of a healthy reef and then a dying reef bleached warm waters caused by global warming inspire new students to study earth sciences? I don’t imagine that the holographic professor lecturing on stage will be the same type of experience. What do you see as the best uses for holograms in education?
Thanks Tamaka, actually that’s an interesting observation which made me realize, perhaps Holograms are more effective if it shows an image that’s “unusual” or difficult to encounter in daily life (eg: coral reefs as you mentioned, rare species or planets in outer space). I agree that it could lead to a higher impact as the consequences of a particular phenomenon (eg: global warming) can be understood better. Perhaps the best holographic experiences come from things which are new to us, something akin to visual excitement.
I recently viewed an entertainment news article and video that showed how the singer just disappeared at the end of the concert in a flash. Immediately I thought of my notes from reading your forecast from earlier this week! What I think about is awesome about your OER is that many of us are commenting how we are not familiar with how a hologram works, but you were able to simplify and make it easy to understand. So when I was reading that entertainment article, I thought about the technical components and diagrams you include of how holographic technology works, and my first thought was not, oh that performer is magic, instead, I was critical and assumed it was a hologram. In the classroom, many students use and appreciate various technologies, but I also think it is so important for students to understand how these technologies work. That is one of the reasons why I love teaching coding to students they feel like they understand the technology they are using and do not feel overpowered by it. Great work, John.
Hi Agnes, thanks for sharing your ideas and comments! Now I’m curious to know whether the singer was truly a hologram or simply used stage illusions/magic tricks to disappear. I think this brings up a great point where if the tech is intriguing enough, students will be motivated to learn/find out how it works in addition to learning from it. Hopefully the process to create holograms will be easier/more streamlined in the future so that anyone who is interested will be able to make one while understanding the process behind how they’re made. I wonder how students would react if the teacher suddenly disappears in class and reemerges from the back door and goes “surprise! that was actually a hologram of me”. Maybe that could liven things up in the classroom haha.
Hi John! I’d like to start off with how nicely designed your presentation is. You did a fabulous job laying out information and making it engaging for your audience (ie: questions to consider). I like the way the questions allowed you to pause and ponder your thoughts and feelings towards the information. I have recently started thinking more and more about holograms and how much relief they could bring to our society (school, grief, social connection, etc…). Although we have similar technology that mimics holograms (ie: VR sets), I am the person who suffers from extreme motion sickness. I unfortunately cannot participate in any VR games as the quick movements and inclusion of the headset causes my motion sickness to kick in. However, holograms could solve this for me as I am still present in my own reality but am including virtual images without the need for a headset. I think bringing holograms to life in an educational setting could not only be engaging for students but encouraging. The inclusion of holograms could also break barriers for those who find it hard to be present in school. This is a great idea that could bring a lot of light to the world of education, I hope to see the use of holograms become more president in our society (without the price tag of course!) Well done, John!
Hi Megan, thanks for the wonderful comments! I also get motion sickness quite easily for VR experiences/software which have sudden camera movements. I remember trying this particular software for not much longer than 3 minutes and had to stop as it made me feel extremely nauseous. Hopefully holograms will be able to solve this issue and lower the risk of inducing motion sickness for users. I like how you brought up ideas on social connection, one of my main points of inspiration came from online learning and the lack of a social environment in the past 2 years. Being able to see, learn and interact with people on screen (eg: Zoom) vs a full projection could have different emotional effects on people (eg: it’s like when Kim Kardashian was able to view/listen to a hologram of her father). I wonder how an increase sense of emotion would connect to learning, would students feel more involved/attached to the context? Well said, hopefully in the future, holograms will be a key form of tech to reduce the barriers which prevents open education from reaching a wider audience.
Hi John, thanks for sharing this work with us and all future ETEC 523 students. I think you did an excellent job creating this comprehensive OER and forecast with in-depth analysis. I was excited to see your project was about holograms, since it’s a topic that came up in some of our discussions throughout the semester, but didn’t have the opportunity to go deeply into it. The videos presented throughout the OER were engaging and impressive and I think you’re correct in the argument that one of the cons of holograms is that they don’t depend on wearable technologies. I think that if hologram capabilities are integrated into mobile devices, as in the examples presented on the OER, we can expect a revolution in many fields and communication technologies. From an educational perspective, it’s evident that seeing 3D objects can greatly improve learning, as studies show that it enables better and faster comprehension, as well as retention. You list a couple of cons on the OER, which I find common in other emerging technologies, such as costs of production. I think that if we look to the past, we would find current popular technologies that faced similar issues, and can conclude that, in time, Holograms could overcome these challenges. If these become popular and widely used, it will be interesting to think about how our life continues to migrate from the physical to the digital world and wonder if the latter will become the most prominent, at some point.
Hi Eduardo, thanks for the kind comments. Hopefully I didn’t focus too much on the drawbacks of holograms haha, but yes I do agree that holograms have the potential to be developed further in the future. The wearable technology observation is interesting as during the course of compiling the OER, there were times when I was confused as to whether holograms which required special glasses to view would still be considered as holograms or a form of AR? Perhaps the most ideal format would be similar to the ones we see in movies where no additional equipment is needed. As for the future, do you think people would be able to adapt to interfaces/input methods which are “touchless”? If we look at our phones, keyboards or any buttons which needs to be pressed nearly all of the are physical/mechanical with feedback. Would it feel strange if we’re suddenly typing on flat surfaces or pressing buttons in the air in the form of holographic interfaces?
Hello John. I was wondering the same thing while imagining a future in which holograms have become very popular. It would be very much like a mirage effect, would it? We would be moving more dramatically into a digital reality. I get that sense when I see a large group of people immersed in their phones, as it becomes apparent that they are experiencing a digital reality, doing things that could also be done in the physical world (relating, playing, expressing, etc). Will the advancement of technology lead to a total migration to the digital world as in the Matrix? We’ll see! I think that if, at some point, digital experiences are able to include other sensory dimensions (touching, particulaly) it might happen!
Hi Eduardo, you’re correct! It seems like whenever we’re in public there’s a large number of people who prefer to stare down at their phones. Maybe if holograms were mixed with our physical environment/reality, this could solve the problem of individuals being too absorbed in their digital spaces. Wow, if it ends up like the Matrix then things might get blurry as we won’t be able to tell what’s tangible/physical and digital. It’s a mind boggling thought to experience a hologram that’s convincing enough for people to believe it’s a real, physical person in front of them.
John, I find your concept very intriguing and I have not thought about holograms a lot. I remember specifically I went to a Celine Dion show in Las Vegas many years back and she had a hologram of Stevie Wonder playing the piano, everyone in the crowd thought that we were actually being treated to Stevie Wonder live and were definitely a bit disappointing when we realized we weren’t, but the imaging was so high quality even back in 2011. I think that bringing holograms to life in classrooms can be very powerful for showcasing so many things. I am really thinking about science lessons and when I need to teach evolution and how the students would be very engaged in seeing prehistoric figures in a hologram form.
Hi Sonia, thanks for sharing your experiences. I’ve never watched a concert with a hologram performer, it sounds quite exciting to experience it together with a live audience! This actually got me to think whether holograms work better if they’re projected to a larger crowd as opposed to one to one use. The “wow” factor seems to be more impactful when more people experience it. I agree, as with similar forms of VR/AR/MR, holograms definitely have the ability to be used as a time capsule to project concepts which are impossible to replicate in real life. Getting students to imagine how Dinosaurs lived is one thing, allowing them to visually see it in action through holograms definitely makes a difference in my opinion. To add a step further, it would be even more immersive if students could interact with them to see finer details such as fossils etc.
Hi John – great job creating this OER on hologram technology. This concept is still fairly new to me (though I have recently done the mobile phone hologram in my friend’s science class!), but I do appreciate how it differs from AR/VR/MR technology. Though there is a degree of novelty that will eventually wear off, like how videos/movies in class are now very commonplace, I think there is huge educational potential here because of their interactive and immersive nature. Just to confirm, the whale video is fake right? I can’t seem to find a definitive answer on this lol. If not, I wonder how expensive and time consuming it was to put something of that scale together?
Hi Aaron, thanks for the comments! Yes the whale video is apparently fake, I had to do some research to confirm this as initially, I also thought it was real! I agree with the novelty aspect as I would question exactly how much difference would talking to a hologram bring when compared to our current options of tele communications? I’m personally quite content with Zoom, FaceTime etc as holograms still feel slightly gimmicky at this stage. If developed further with more advanced capabilities and affordable prices, I’m confident to say that they’ll probably be useful in a range of educational applications. Though with anything “3D” (eg: TVs, movies) there might be some difficulty in getting the mainstream market to fully embrace this form of technology if the reasons to use it aren’t compelling enough.