Technology Development

Schools across the globe are going through a growth spurt of sorts, which is both painful and unavoidable. I’m talking, of course, about technology integration. Maybe your class is using a COW (Computer on Wheels) cart once a week or maybe every student in your school is suddenly holding an iPad and administrators are throwing around the dreaded phrase “going paperless.” Whatever the level of technology integration, we all seem to be in some state of transition toward new technology at any given time. The painful truth, though, is that no matter how many professional development sessions we receive or how many tools we are given, many adults struggle to adapt to new technology. We approach the new school year fully aware that our students will hack the media and turn it to their own deviant uses before we as teachers even learn to turn the device on. The solution to this problem is simple. It’s time to take a page from our students’ playbook. We need to jump quickly over the hurdles of trepidation, fear, and distrust, in order to come out ahead in the technology race.

Beat the Fear of New Technology

Not unlike the 5 Stages of Loss and Grief, all people (not just adults) go through a series of predictable reactions when confronted with new technology. Knowing that these stages are the same for everyone and that it’s not just you against the world, you can start to move through the stages more quickly. You can learn to follow the lead of your students and turn fear into excitement and ultimately, acceptance.

Stage 1- Denial

As teachers, we work hard to hone our craft. Year to year we make small adjustments to the curriculum, our lesson plans, and our classroom management systems in order to maximize our efficacy. Therefore, it can feel like a real shock when administrators declare an abrupt and sweeping change, such as a paperless classes, and 1:1 technology integration (where each student works on a device, whether it is a computer, tablet, or even their phone). Many teachers will experience an automatic response to the news. The general reaction is “This is never going to work!”

It turns out this is a normal reaction toward new technology. Even children, who seem flexible and enthusiastic about every new wave of technological development, go through an initial uncertainty. The key to successful technology adoption is to accept that you will feel frustrated and scared. It is normal. Simply acknowledging your fear can help you move through this phase more quickly. The last thing you want is to let the fear take over and for paralysis to set in. It’s OK to say “I’m freaked out and I don’t like this.” But don’t stop there. Move past the fear and try the technology.

Stage 2- Bargaining

“They can put this in my classroom, but they can’t make me use it!” Maybe you’ll tell yourself that you will learn the bare minimum. You’ll use the technology during a principal’s observation of your class, or you’ll use it in the first week of school and then put it away and go back to your regular, proven, routines. Bargaining isn’t actually a bad thing in this situation. It can smooth the pathway toward actually using the new device. Even technology enthusiasts will say “I’ll try using this but if it doesn’t work for me, I’m not going to pursue it.” As a teacher, tell yourself that you will give the technology a try. If you don’t like it, you can use it as minimally as possible, but you will at least be giving yourself permission to try it out without a heavy feeling of risk.

Stage 3- Experimentation

This is the key stage to successful technology adoption. It’s the figurative turning point for your mindset as a technology user. Once you allow yourself permission to experiment with the technology and actually begin clicking through it (whether it is a new device such as an iPad or a new website like Edmodo.com) it is through experimentation that we really overcome our fears.

While experimenting with the new technology you may hit a roadblock. Your frustration may spike, your fear may flare up again, but don’t let that stop you. Trust that you will not damage the device just by clicking around on it. You can always reboot, restart, or reload. Look for a help button, user guide, or even YouTube tutorial videos that can help you overcome these roadblocks. As you experiment, keep an open mind and look for anything interesting or helpful to you.

Stage 4- Excitement

More often than not, experimentation with a new tool will lead teachers to become excited about the application for their classroom. Teachers are by their very nature creative and innovative people. We always look at materials with an eye for differentiation and adaptation for our students. It is likely that you will begin to think of ways this new tool will fit into your lessons while you are experimenting with it. Conversations with other teachers are key to ironing out the details and paving the way toward actual application in your class. Research the technology online and read teacher blogs and reviews to get to know the product even better and see how others are applying it effectively in their classes.

Stage 5- Acceptance

The faster you can move yourself through the previous stages, the sooner you will feel confident using the new technology. Acceptance means you are ready to write this technology into your lesson plans, maximize its usefulness, and truly get the most out of this initiative for the benefit of your students.

Everyone moves through the stages of technology adoption at their own rate. However being aware that you will feel an initial push-back, you can move past your fears toward a productive level of exploration and acceptance more quickly. As teachers, we don’t always have control over new educational reforms or program initiatives in our school, but the one thing we can control is how we react to these changes. By moving past the fear we can spend our energy in more productive ways. Good luck with whatever your school has planned for the coming year. You can handle it. Even if you’re “going paperless”!

Though there seems to be an endless supply of other shoes to drop into the current economic chasm, there seems to be a general consensus that commercial real estate is going to take a significant hit. The shoe that could end up kicking commercial real estate down further and is relatively unknown or just not thought about is technology. Developed countries around the world, save a few, have never gone through such a potentially devastating economic cycle with the amount of technology we have at our disposal. What that technology allows for will greatly affect the length of the commercial real estate recession and its effects on the overall economy.

With our daily dose of eye popping layoffs, the top question on every company’s agenda is how to cut costs. When looking to cut costs the typical first question is how many people can be cut and how much of a cut in productivity can be tolerated. But with all of this technology, there is now the possibility to cut costs and keep the same amount of productivity. This wasn’t a viable option in previous recessions, but this time around companies can start sending people home to work, which is all made possible by the giant leaps in communication. People have been telecommuting for years, but with the great expansion of communications technology coupled with a downward economy, the cost cutting choice between cutting a group of employees and cutting out leased floors in a building has become a whole lot easier. The last time we saw a boom in telecommuting was the September, 11th attacks and the catalyst was the fear of travel and a shaky economy. Audio and video conferencing sales soared and using the technology was all the rage. The big problem back then was that the technology was a bit more difficult to use and everyone went back to their old ways of working after the crisis.

The difference now is that the technology has come very far and the new catalyst is a crashing economy that, in my opinion, will be an even stronger catalyst than September 11th. Fickleness and discomfort around the use of technology for basic operational issues is gone. I recently spoke at a conference about this and I asked a very simple question. Has anyone ever sent an email to the person in the office next to them? Everyone looked around like it was a trick question, but the reality is that there is no difference between sending an email to the next cubicle or around the world. This is now the same for almost all types of communicating including voice, video, text, Instant Messaging, etc., and connecting them all together in 2009’s buzzword called, unified communications. In the telecommunications arms race between the Telco’s and the cable companies, there has been such a huge push for mega bandwidth to the end customer to try and own them, that they have inadvertently made millions of households viable for high speed telecommuting. In addition to the end user having the capacity, most applications that company employees need access to have moved to secured web based applications that can be accessed through the internet over these super networks. With the actual communication media being so robust, an employer’s largest concern about sending an employee home is the potential for slacking and a loss of productivity. However, there are very sophisticated systems available to track employee’s progress and activity remotely that can resolve this issue as well. Even though this is not viable for every office worker, the ones that are allowed to do this end up being more productive; think less water cooler conversations, coffee breaks, and long lunches. There is an argument that the employees lose some of the social aspects that bind an office together, but the employees become less stressed without long commutes and early wake-ups, and they end up being happier all around with their job.

So, what does all of this have to do with the real estate market? Simply stated, with all of the supply in the technology arena the demand for physical office space is going to be reduced. Office space has always been a property type that is less desirable due to its susceptibility to economic pressures. Now more than ever companies are looking to chop space and get lean, and office space is going to take an even harder hit. With more space on the market, rinse and repeat and you will have a serious glut of space. The glut of space will end up deflating rental rates reducing cash flow and reducing market value of the properties. If the past 12 months have shown us anything, examining past trends do not help us in this market. Investor’s buying commercial real estate trying to use past trends to make future gains are going to get crushed short term. Why? Because even after the economy recovers companies are not going to take on an expense for space that they have done without through telecommuting. The Gartner Group’s last estimate was that there was 137 million teleworkers worldwide and, “This growth will mushroom as companies learn more about telework benefits and its highly advantageous return on investment, and the proliferation and use of online job boards and virtual hiring,” according to a report in Innovisions Canada.

So that is the argument for office space, but what else will technology affect? On the retail front, there is an entire generation that is getting used to conducting their lives online and that includes buying products. People that were born in the late 60’s and throughout the 70’s are a generation that has one foot in the past bricks generation and another in the future clicks generation. If I look at myself, I would say that there are some things I am not comfortable buying online but my younger colleagues and friends have no problem buying everything needed online. It’s a generational shift and it’s going to add strain on the retail property market during a downward economic cycle. Take Blockbuster for instance and their huge initiative to follow Netflix in the online ordering of movies. Right now those services are sending the DVD’s to your house without ever setting foot in a store. Many of the big cable and satellite providers in the industry are trying to make it viable to download 1000’s of titles from their cable and satellite boxes, and so far the On Demand services are on the forefront but lack in volume of titles. On another front, Telco’s are developing a robust broadband solution over IP, and in Microsoft’s case they are trying to enable downloads right into their Xbox entertainment system via the web. How many empty Blockbuster stores and other video stores is that going to push onto the market? Okay, so that’s digital media and one could argue it is an exception due to ease, but technology is enabling the ordering of many other services to be delivered right to our front doors. Are people still going to go out and shop? I would say yes because it seems that many people have turned shopping into a hobby (think better times), but with our youth becoming more introverted and more accustomed to everything being at their fingertips, maybe less than before on a per-capita basis.

Mobile technology efficiencies are not going to destroy office space or retail spaces on a whole, however it is important to understand that in an evolving technological economy, as well as a down economy, they start becoming a lot less necessary. Commercial real estate has always been a sound alternative investment but the last 12 months have proven that investing in these types of properties takes a lot of experience and more importantly, an open mind about what’s to come to gauge future cash flow and value. Betting against technology has never been a very sound investment strategy and this is definitely not the time for anyone to put their head in the proverbial sand. Perhaps you’re reminded of the story about the close minded man who opened up a typewriter store because he thought computers were just a fad for pimply faced kids?

Copyright: Dominic Mazzone, Regent Global Funds 2009

The last fifty years have produced massive leaps in technology which have literally changed the way we live as a human race. Here are five inventions and developments which have fundamentally changed our lives.

1. The moon landing. When Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin took Apollo 11 to the moon and took those first steps on August 21 1969, the excitement was felt all over the civilized world. It changed the way we perceived ourselves and also changed the boundaries we had drawn for ourselves. This provided the tipping point for technological development, after all, if we could walk on the moon, we could do anything couldn’t we?
2. The home computer. In the 1ate 1970’s and throughout 1980’the home computer was really just a gaming machine for the kids or a glorified typewriter for mum and dad to do office work on. Little did we know that within twenty years, the home computer would virtually run our lives. With the recent England football match shown exclusively on the internet for the first time, and with Facebook becoming the communication method of choice for most people under thirty, the home computer is now an essential piece of technology. I recently decided to have 30 days off my Facebook account and was virtually cut off from my whole social circle. Everything g is done by Facebook. Things such as arrangements for nights out and date and times of our five a side football games completely passed me by. It felt that without Facebook, I was some kind of recluse. A modern day suburban hermit, conspicuous by my absence.
3. The mobile phone. Being a nostalgic Englander, I get a warm glow of happiness whenever I see a red telephone box. I think of village policemen, Christmas pudding with sixpences inside and two shilling postal orders from grandmother. I can almost hear the crackle of the coal fire as we sit together with the neighbours all gathered in our living room to watch our brand new TV set. Then I remember that I was actually born in 1983 and I’ve been watching too many films with Margaret Rutherford. The mobile phone means that I can tell me other half that I love her when ever I want. The mobile phone means that I can speak to me mum to when I am shopping in town to see if she would like to go for a cup of tea. Te mobile phone means that my son can call me to let me know his school bus will be late, saving me lots of worry and heart ache. The mobile phone has brought us closer together – no bad thing!

So, you can see how three developments in technology have actually been developments in human relations and potential.

Information Technology (IT) plays a major role in the world. E-commerce and various advances in IT have made a significant impact on business operations. True globalization has come because of IT. Before discussing the country which can take credit for IT developments, let us define IT first. Several researchers define the term IT as “”an all-inclusive term that encompasses computers and telecommunication in all their forms, whatever their use”. Information technology is the capability offered by software, hardware, and telecommunications networks to deliver data in any form to individuals and organizations. Below shows the names of the people who invented the key components of Information Technology

Telephone: Telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell. By 1878, Bell had set up the first telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut.

The First electronic computer: The first electronic computer was invented by John Vincent Ansoff. He named it the Anatasoff Berry Computer, or the ABC. It was the world’s first electronic digital computer.

The first personal PC — The personal computer (PC), which is also called the microcomputer, It was designed for use by one person. The same machine was first developed for businesses in the early 1970s by Steve Wozniak & Steve Jobs.

The first internet based email: Computer engineer, Ray Tomlinson invented internet based email in 1971. The first email was sent to his friend who was sitting beside him. The first email message was “QWERTYUIOP”.

Ethernet – The physical communication technology underlying the Internet, Ethernet was created by Robert Metcalfe in 1971.

TCP/IP – In May, 1974, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) published a paper titled “A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection.” The paper’s authors – Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn – described a protocol called TCP that incorporated both connection-oriented and datagram services. This protocol later became known as TCP/IP.

Internet: No single person or organization created the Internet but multiple people developed the key technologies that later grew to become the Internet. Since TCP/IP is the heart of the Internet protocols, I would say Vinton and Robert who developed the TCP/IP protocol were significant contributors.

Now let us look at the biography of the inventors. Alexander Graham Bell who invented Telephone was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, and later on moved to Boston, USA. John Vincent Ansoff who invented the first electronic computer was from New York, USA. Steve Wozniak & Steve Jobs who developed the first personal PC are from California, USA. Ray Tomlinson is from New York. Vinton Gray is from Connecticut, USA. Robert Kahn, who worked with Vinton to invent TCP/IP protocol, is from USA. Not only the inventors but also the US government helped in IT development. Few research says During World War II, the US government funded research into tools for calculating the trajectories of artillery shells, which led to the development of various digital computer systems and technology Products.

Having said that, in my opinion many inventors and countries contributed for IT development, but these inventions played key roles in the history of Information Technology development, and most of these are from the USA. Hence I would say United States of America can take the credit for Information Technology developments. Every American should be proud of their people’s contribution to the development in IT field.