Remington Typewriter Ad Image from Pinterest
It’s hard to believe now, but not that long ago, most businesses used typewriters for correspondence and paper mail to communicate with other organizations. Invoices were handprinted or typed using carbon paper to make multiple copies. File systems were all manual and involved lots and lots of paper. Product orders were placed by telephone (like the Sears catalogue) or in person. When you called an organization, you spoke to a human being and didn’t have to listen to a kajillion options just to have your call transferred to another automated system.
Jack Malgeri (2010), John Smart (2013) and Jack Ma (2016) all discuss and share the importance of organizational foresight and the need for companies to continually look forward in order to improve their product and their services. Malgeri (2010) defines foresight as “the ability to develop and maintain a forward looking perspective and to anticipate emerging opportunities and problems by continually scanning the environment for trends and new developments” (p.39). Jack Ma (2016) when discussing keys to success in the video clip, stated that companies who are currently successful today, are because they demonstrated foresight years earlier by “knowing what the problems are and identifying problems as opportunities.” One area in particular that requires a tremendous amount of foresight is technology and being able to predict what the future trends will be. As mentioned by John Smart (2015), we now have smart cars, smart cities, smart networks, automation, robotics, wrist phones and google glasses. Businesses and organizations need to be able to forecast the next best thing in order to stay successful in this ever changing environment.
Companies who can forecast technological changes that empower and enable their clients usually experience great success, such as Amazon or Apple . Technology now allows me to place my grocery order online and receive it all while sitting on my couch and wearing my pj’s. It allows me, at my own convenience to buy and ship Christmas and birthday gifts for friends and family without having to leave the comfort of my home. It allows me to be able to instantly contact others through social media at all hours of the day and to expand my personal learning network. It allows me to video conference with people on the other side of the globe, to book my holidays, to correspond, to quickly and easily share information and files, to store information that I can retrieve from anywhere at anytime by the touch of a few buttons. It allows me to pay my bills, renew my library books, sign up for classes, attend school, watch how to videos, learn a new language and research lesson plans. I can receive the news in real time, track my steps and calories, program my Roomba to vacuum (I wish I had one!), and check in on my dog (and even throw her a treat) while away from home.
Cars that drive themselves Image courtesy of www.forbes.com
My car is capable of parking itself, warns me of unsafe lane changes and will apply the brakes for me when in cruise control. Technology also enables me to cross the border more quickly through the use of eye scanners and can give me a full DNA and health report simply by providing a swab of saliva. Robotics can enable surgeons to perform complicated surgeries and police to diffuse bombs. The list goes on and on.
Not all technology is helpful though especially when it comes to customer service. There is nothing more frustrating when you would like verbal customer service help and you can only initially speak to an automated telephone system or you are redirected to another part of the world with a bad connection and/or communication is difficult due to language barriers (Mobile phone and internet/tv companies are great examples of this).
Misrepresentation of Products www.buzzfeed.com
There is also the risk of product misrepresentation when using companies such as Amazon to order online. How a product looks in a picture or is described isn’t always what arrives in your mailbox. Technology allows for product and people manipulation through the use of photoshopping, so it becomes harder and harder to know where the real person ends and the unrealistic photoshopped fake person begins. Photoshopping does a terrible disservice to our young people and sends a message that they should be constantly working towards achieving what is essentially the unattainable body/face. Another risk factor of technology lies with the protection of information shared. Cyber-hacking is a real threat now and suddenly our paper copies seem much safer and more protected in an age of information sharing and data tracking. Canada’s Simplii Financial (of which I am a customer) is an example of a recent hack and online threat where customers found themselves suddenly helpless as accounts were depleted of their funds. In education, Google Classroom is simple and easy to use, however, our School District has now banned its use due to the location of Google’s servers being outside Canada and therefore outside of Canada’s laws and protections.
However, there are Canadian companies like MyBlueprint that show incredible organizational foresight by incorporating technological advances but also retaining integral services like being able to talk to a human being. MyBlueprint was founded in 2005 as a research project in a family’s basement and has grown today to serving over 300 plus school districts, 4000 schools and 600,000 students. They are committed to excellent customer service, providing innovative educational lessons and creating a platform for students to create portfolios to showcase learning. In the short time since I was introduced to MyBlueprint, the company has continued to evolve and grow their product. Just like Jack Ma (2016) discusses in his video about success, MyBlueprint was created as an opportunity to address a problem and a lack of services/products that existed in education. The company is constantly updating and improving their product by incorporating changes to the provincial education curriculums and by asking for feedback from their end users (students and teachers) on improving formatting to make it more user friendly and engaging. As Canadian Universities seek ways to look at the whole student as opposed to just transcripts, MyBlueprint provides a safe environment for students to share their information and portfolios that better represent who they are and what they have to offer.
As consumers, we need to be aware of not just the rewards but also the risks of using technology offered by organizations today. It is our responsibility to become informed and knowledgable. When is the last time you read the legal service agreement for Facebook, Instagram or Twitter? Are you aware of which companies you choose to do business with online whose contractual fine print enables them to sell your information to third parties or track your data and purchases? Do you blindly click yes to proceed without reading the fine print? Perhaps, its time we do a little bit of research on how our mouse clicks can both help and hinder us.
References
Ma, J. ( 23 June 2016). Keys to success. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WjHZ5wLe6w
Malgeri, J. (2010). Organizational foresight and stewardship. Public Manager, 39(4), 39.
Smart, J. (July 2013). Leadership of technology change. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhdWqLNUJns
You give a great overview of how technology is incorporated into your life and lifestyle. So many conveniences, yet comes with cautions as well. I was blown away by John Smarts presentation of what the future holds – especially nanotechnology and SIMS. In the future we will be ‘matched’ with people online who have similar interests – perhaps great for innovation, invention and discovery. I like your example of MyBlueprint as I had never heard of it before. Makes sense not to reinvent the wheel when curriculum is available. This could be great for medical education as well. In your area of education, are you looking forward to further technological advances?
Thanks for your comments and your question. I have mixed feelings when it comes to further technological advances in education. When technology is used to transform learning (being able to Skype with a marine biologist or share information on a global basis) it is an amazing thing! Technology shouldn’t just be a simple replacement of outdated worksheets. I found it really difficult to adapt my teaching practices when the District stopped allowing us to use Google Classroom as it was so user friendly for students and staff. The replacement we are encouraged to use doesn’t even come to close to what we were able to do before so it can be a bit daunting. I believe the entire province also has to use a new computer system called MyED for student reporting which also has multiple glitches and which many parents don’t find user friendly. The issue I struggle with is where technology use is mandated by either the province or individual school districts. For example, we used to be allowed to upload apps onto our student iPads immediately within our individual schools and now all iPads are maintained solely by the school district and therefore we have lost a lot of professional autonomy within our classrooms and schools. It sometimes feels like we are taking two steps backwards instead of forwards.