Matt Ratto, assistant professor in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information and co-inventor and CEO of Shotlst, a UTEST company, was featured in the Globe and Mail on October 22 in an article by Nick Rockel on how emerging technology will change the education experience.

Here’s an excerpt:

Asked what the technological tools in university classrooms will look and feel like by 2020, Matt Ratto admits he’s no futurist. But the assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information is helping shape the future – by changing students’ relationship with technology.

“When people think about classroom technology, they think about things that you might buy to put in the classroom, like big monitors or touch interfaces,” says Ratto, who directs the ThingTank Lab at U of T. “[But] the really innovative classroom technologies that we’ll see coming up in the next few years, they’re not technologies that turn students into passive users. They’re technologies that provide the possibility for them to be active creators.”

. . .

By 2020, it’s likely that emerging technologies ranging from smart objects to game-based learning will be commonplace in universities. In some cases, they may make the traditional classroom less important. But how much these technologies will disrupt the age-old university model is unclear.

Ratto’s research focuses on the Internet of Things, which he defines as the movement of digital technologies off screens and into the physical environment. “We’re increasingly interacting with digital content not just through screens and keyboards but through various types of tactile and other interfaces,” Ratto says, giving the Microsoft Kinect as
an example.

Rockel’s full article is available on the Globe‘s website; note that depending on when you access the content, it may be restricted by a pay wall.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, marketing and communication manager.