My big Christmas gift this year was a pair of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
We found a great Black Friday deal on them — and a great discount on prescription lenses. So I pleaded and convinced my wife to get them for me as a gift. (Thankfully, it didn’t take too much pleading.)
Try to ignore the five o’clock shadow …
Meet my Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses ...
If you’re not familiar, here’s a quick rundown of the Ray-Ban Metas …
- Camera in the top left corner of the lenses (for images and videos) with a trigger button on the right side arm of the glasses
- Speakers in the side arms right above my ears (for music, calls, etc.)
- Meta AI responds to “hey Meta” and can answer verbal questions AND snap a photo to see what I see
- Everything syncs to the Meta View app on my phone
- Glasses charge in a Ray-Ban brown leather case equipped with a portable battery charger
- You can live stream with them to Instagram or Facebook
At first, I was afraid they would be a silly, unnecessary luxury.
But after using them for a month, I absolutely, 100 percent LOVE them.
- I don’t have to get my phone out to take a picture.
- I can take POV videos that see what I see (like my recent “day in the life” video from the FETC Conference)
- I can get quick questions answered in my ear with Meta AI
- Meta AI can tell me what I’m looking at
- Without ear buds in my ears, I can listen to music and take calls while still hearing ambient sounds around me
However, it didn’t take long to realize something …
The implications on the classroom.
I’ve already seen it on social media.
- “Students are going to use these!”
- “What if they just get all the answers with them?”
- “We need to create a policy for these wearable AI devices.”
- “Can we ban them if they’re prescription glasses?”
Here’s the takeaway message …
Wearable AI devices are coming. And it’s going to add a new layer of concerns and considerations about AI in the classroom.
- Smart glasses will only become “smarter,” with more powerful AI models and more features (like in-lens screens and heads-up displays)
- Wearables like the Humane pin will make AI responses more accessible and efficient
- Always-listening devices like the Friend pendant are gaining traction and introduce all sorts of issues
… and if you want to get really out-there and futuristic, just read about the nanobots that Ray Kurzweil predicts in 20 years. (They would be tech in our bloodstream that create a brain-computer interface and expand our memory and thinking abilities.)
But back to today’s wearable AI tech. After wearing smart glasses for a month, I have some thoughts about AI devices in schools …
1. In many ways, it’s no different than Google searching.
Obviously, an AI model process and delivers responses way differently than a search engine. But hear me out …
The first concerns about wearables will be students looking up answers to classwork.
I’ve seen educators on social media bemoaning the students who quietly whisper “hey Meta” and ask a bunch of questions to it.
Folks, this isn’t a new issue. And it’s definitely not a smart glasses / wearable AI issue.
It’s a relevance issue. It’s a motivation issue. It’s not even really a technology issue.
Here’s the real issue …
2. Attention is a currency. And students are spending less of it on learning.
We live in a world with access to the whole world’s knowledge at our fingertips. And now we have technology that will analyze and compile it in seconds in a way that’s easy to understand.
And we’re still teaching as if it doesn’t exist.
There’s a new valuable currency for humans.
Attention.
Humans have a finite amount of attention — like a currency — and we decide where we’re going to spend it.
If students don’t see the relevance (or the importance or the end goal), they have more ways to save their currency — their attention — and spend it elsewhere.
In a way, they’re like savvy savers who don’t want to blow their hard-earned money on frivolous things.
We can talk a hard line — say that “students should get to work” and “do what they’re told” and “earn that grade” because “that’s what gets them ahead in life.”
But if we want to get really real, this is a relevance and a motivation issue. Let’s not write school policies to try to legislate compliance. Let’s do whatever we can to work on the real, root cause of students spending less of their attention on learning.
3. This wearable technology will continue to evolve.
Today’s wearable AI devices are just the start. You can already see where it’s headed.
- Two Harvard University students hooked smart glasses up to a facial recognition system that feeds them real-time info about people seen through the smart glasses video feed.
- A Columbia University student connected smart glasses to an AI-powered chess assistant who fed him every move through the headphones/speakers in the glasses.
We’ve come to a reckoning with technology in a few ways here …
One — This technology exists. And it’ll continue to develop.
We can’t pretend that it doesn’t exist, and we can’t hope that it regresses or disappears.
Because it exists, we have to help students understand its place — and our place as human beings.
- When should you get AI help?
- On what kinds of tasks do you want to use AI so you don’t have to spend your attention currency?
- What tasks are important enough to want to use your attention — and how do you justify them?
- What are the consequences if you overuse AI — or if your balance isn’t, well … balanced?
Two — A key question: “Why don’t you want to learn this yourself?”
This is a hard question.
If we use it in a coercive way, we won’t get the truth.
Re-read it with an aggressive tone: “Why don’t you want to learn this yourself? Just do the work!!!”
If a student hears that, they get defensive and go into self-preservation mode.
But if we’re vulnerable and if WE aren’t defensive — and just want the truth — we can learn a lot.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
You can lead a student to class, but you can’t make them learn.
They might be compliant if we make them … but that doesn’t mean that they’re learning.
(Isn’t it interesting that technology — AI today, remote teaching during the pandemic — shines a light on issues with education we’ve had for ages? And yet many want to paint the technology as the scapegoat …)
4. Timeless human thinking skills might be the answer.
In a presentation at the FETC Conference in Orlando last week, I made my passionate plea to prioritize human thinking skills in a world that’s becoming increasingly dependent on AI.
My presentation, called “Tomorrow Glasses,” emphasized these steps to develop those human thinking skills:
- Embrace the power of questions
- Build creativity into learning
- Talk about AI practically and in context
- Build your AI literacy
- Encourage ethical discussions
- Stop focusing on AI cheating
Conclusion: AI wearable technology is an example of a shift.
Sure, you can use smart glasses and other AI wearable technology to “cheat.”
But it isn’t much better at “cheating” than other tech that we have had around for a while.
The issues haven’t changed that much. This is just new technology that highlights the same situation we’ve dealt with in education for a while now.
It does also highlight a shift … a shift that’s coming … a shift that’s already here …
It’s a shift in our relationship with knowledge … with learning … with understanding.
What skills are we equipping our students with? Are they relevant? Do they prepare them for the future?
This isn’t a “memorization is dead” essay.
When we remember important facts and concepts, we use it to fuel our thinking … and human thinking is far from dead.
Rather, we need to know when technology should support our thinking — and how — and in what ways.
The sooner that we start to grapple with that — in classrooms, in schools, in conversations, in school board meetings — the quicker we can all get on board with an education that’s relevant to our students’ future.
