The lack of an iPhone 5 announcement killed much of the buzz around Siri. People haven’t really grasped what it means to be able to talk to your phone yet. Once it starts shipping, expect to still see people talking in stilted, mechanical voices with specific phrases. After a while, people will get used to the technology and they’ll begin to communicate with the natural cadence Siri was designed to handle.
Once that happens, we’re looking at a technological revolution, especially in education where young students can begin to interface with their phones, computers and gaming consoles in ways we didn’t think were possible, even those of us who were born in the age of desktop computers.
Schools will be the forefront of this technology because of the great potential for learning. Imagine a student sitting down to read a book, but this book is housed on her iPhone. She doesn’t have to flip pages since the book is listening to her read. She stumbles across a word, then pauses. The phone pronounces the word for her, and she asks what it means. The phone answers. She sounds it out again and continues reading.
Another student sits in the corner learning about the presidents. He listens and follows along with the words while the iPhone tells him about how Lincoln chopped down a cherry tree. At the end of the story the phone asks him what he remembers from the story. If he gets an answer wrong, the phone corrects him and tells him a little bit more about that piece to make sure he remembers it.
It’s all entirely possible with Siri’s high level of voice integration. Online learning has gone from a student sitting down at a computer who is told to type things based on phonetics to the computer as a handheld device that interacts with students young enough to only read picture books.
Of course, the technology would have been impressive even if it was just controlling the phone. But Apple’s decision to integrate Siri with apps is revolutionary. App designers will hopefully have built up both the intellectual and funding resources to be able to work with this new layer of programming. The best of them will rise to the top and offer apps that are sure to help students, though.
Voice activated technology has been around for years and has entrenched itself into more than just smartphones. The Xbox 360’s Kinect will release the most-anticipated game for the system later this year that has full voice-integration. Mass Effect 3 will let players control their characters with voice commands. The motion control portion of Kinect hasn’t really taken off yet, but with Mass Effect 3, the voice controls likely will.
What does that mean for education? Most likely, family friendly games that focus on reading commands out to the screen and a heavier emphasis on reading fluently and clearly from a system that has typically been relegated solely to the entertainment portion of students’ lives.
As always, Apple and Microsoft are ahead of competitors when it comes to the newest in technology. As the market stands now, you can barely get your Android powered phones to call your mother without having to resort to touch controls, and you certainly can’t find your way with a GPS without some small-screen action. With the technology taking off, though, you’re going to see big shifts in the way we teach our children in the next five years.
Jesse Langley is a freelance writer living near Chicago. He spends the majority of his time with his family, writing, or cooking. He is a strong advocate for online learning.