Blogging: Being Redefined

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22531543/
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/


Last week Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was interviewed during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Gates made some interesting comments such as the realm of the digital world would soon be changing. “We are at the dawn of a new digital decade, Mr. Gates said. While the last decade of computing was driven by the keyboard and the mouse, the new frontier will be about more human ways of interacting with computers, from touch screens, to motion sensors and speech recognition technology.” In a different article, Gates was quoted “the keyboard and mouse will be a thing of the past”.

I wonder how this will affect the world of blogging, and more specifically blogging and education. I believe the term ‘blogging’ would have to be redefined to incorporate the many forms of the new technology. People would no longer poster their comments to each other using just text and pictures. They would now be able to further incorporate the sense of touch, smell (which has been rumored to be developed by MS), and sound.

All students would greatly benefit from this new form of technology. In particular students who have certain learning disabilities would have more options available to them that would be able to adapt to their needs.

At the primary level, visual learners would be able to trace out letters using solely their hands and receive imitate feedback. At the senior levels, simple science experiments could be conducted numerous times on-line at school and at home. These new tactile methods of learning would greatly aid in comprehension and reinforcement of the learning material.

Gates has stated that he will soon retire this year, and spend his time working on special software projects, that include education initiatives.

I understand that implementing this type of technology into our educational system will take a long time, but I am excited for this new digital age and the possibilities it holds.