The Future of Learning and Education Is Already in Your Pocket

The term "personal digital assistant" (PDA) gained global popularity in 1992 when Apple CEO, John Sculley announced the advent of Apple's Newton at the huge Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Scully's pocket-sized PDA idea, resulting in the Newton, caught on and continues through the diverse PDA variations available today, today dominated by the iPhone.

The Future in Your Pocket

Source: Google Images Public Domaine

PDAs have morphed into an array of pocket-sized digital devices—Blackberry, Palm, iPhone, Copilot, Siri, Alexa, Cortana ,and more. Devices fitting the PDA description have been proliferating for more than a quarter century.

My purpose with this article is to suggest the importance of conducting research on the potential effects of pocket-size, AI-driven PDAs in education. Immediacy changes access and opportunity, because results are gotten faster and in new ways. This has significant implications for both classroom and online education and learning.

Through media psychology, we can better understand and explain the learning impact of the various PDA-type devices. I recommend that we begin to explore, “the good, the bad and the ugly” educational effects of the PDA in education from preschool through graduate school (P20). By studying the effects at each educational level, we can identify needs and ways to improve learning opportunities. One example is that PDA access creates a new sense of immediacy and opportunity. The implications are significant.

At the beginning, PDAs performed limited tasks, such as setting reminders, sending messages, and playing music and videos.. With sophisticated 21st century advances that include understanding natural language, AI algorithms now enable assistants to decipher context, intent, sentiment, answer questions, make predictions and offer advice. They respond in a more natural, fluid, conversational manner to increasingly complicated and nuanced requests for tasks such as weather forecasts, business planning, reservations, mapping and travel directions.

In its more human-like response mode, AI can now provide information and give us advice on:

• Connecting and communicating with target users through messages, posts, tweets, and more
• Sharing content such as photos, videos, and more
• Reaching groups and various online communities based on access and topical interest
• Accessing history, news, and information on current affairs
• Receiving all manner of information, from education to global healthcare, travel, and economics
• Being the dominant gateway for communication, expression, news, marketing and entertainment, public policy, and education both online and in the classroom.

Social media and PDAs, chat bots, and avatars are increasingly technologically advanced. Their synthetic humanness increases their ability to influence, at the same time decreasing our human defensiveness and resistance. Their capacity to influence imposes an intellectual and moral obligation on AI creators to educate users that despite its positives, use of social media in education also poses an array of dangers, including:

• Spread of misinformation
• Compromise of privacy and information vulnerabilities
• Social media addiction
• Cyberbullying and harassment
• Social isolation
• Scams and frauds.

Social media-centric PDAs are now deeply embedded in the fabric of digital society worldwide. Miniaturization is contributing to social and educational change, including formal education and independent learning. There is a growing and increasingly critical need for valid, reliable research in all areas of education and learning at all levels.

The future of digital assistants lies in contextual awareness and thoughtful use in supporting human teachers and learners. Targeted research offers steps toward analysis of the obstacles and opportunities in global education.

Charles Darwin opined that “it is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Immediacy and responsiveness to change in access to information and knowledge can improve learning and formal education. The PDA enhances access to information and knowledge, and I suggest that a big part of your/our future in learning, may be in your pocket. Research will help tell us how and why.