Talking about the speed of innovation is very relevant to developing OTL, and one of the best examples of how much the pace of innovation has increased is the advent of Driverless cars from Google.
Just a few years ago, it seemed like an impossible task to equip a car with real time and mobile accumulation and processing of all the environmental data that a driverless car requires, although Google was certainly trying, going through various prototypes, and starting with limited pre-determined routes.
Their newest prototype without steering wheel or pedals was released at the end of May this year. One might assume then, that Google feels confident the technology has now been developed to a useable and safe state. Another YouTube talking with Eric Schmidt of Google says they are still testing their new prototype, so this isn’t a consumer level product that one can buy or use… for probably a year or two or three.
Article about what’s going on in England here. Googling about the Google driverless cars also brings up a host of stories. Here’s the wikipedia link:
What does this have to do with cloud based learning tools, other than pace of innovation?
Well, if people didn’t have to physically drive, and something could be done about those who get carsick, all that time and energy we currently expend driving as chauffeurs for kids, or commuting to work, etc, could be “online learning time”. Or depending on who was in the car too, maybe F2F collaborative real time learning could take place in the car using cloud tools.