Yesterday I talked about FunF, which connects data from a variety of different sources to your information landscape. Today I link to this discussion from Vicki Davis of WeMo, which is a set of devices and an application to let you manage your personal appliances. Basically, weMo provides a plug-in switch controlled remotely by the application. "WeMo. Just plug your lamp, or fan, or stereo (almost anything) into the WeMo Switch, and you're ready to control it with the WeMo app." So how will this play in education? Again, you can't look at individual applications, you have to look at the overall landscape they premonstrate. Imagine a world in which you set up network of connections such that events in the world trigger changes in your environment - temperature drops outside, heat increases inside, traffic is slow on the freeway, alarm sounds earlier. Simple at first, but interactivity can produce resonance, cascade phenomena, and other odd behaviours in your appliances. What sort of skill set does it take to set up such a network? What skills does setting up such a network engender?
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