Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mr. Donnelley.

I'm one of the design technology teachers for Oak Academy.

I've planned, lots of lessons recently for Oak Academy.

And I think this unit of work is going to be up there with one of my favourites.

It's all about looking to the future and comparing what technology used to be like when something first came out, looking at how it's developed and then the most exciting part, what might come next.

So you're going to need some paper and a pencil.

You need that for pretty much all my lessons, just that you can jot your ideas down quickly.

So go and get those things, and I'll see you in a minute to crack on with the lesson.

In this lesson there are three things that we're going to focus on.

The first thing is we're going to look at how technology is integrated in our life.

The second thing is we're going to look at how technology has developed over time.

And then the last part, which I think is the most exciting, we're going to look at what we think the future might hold.

In this lesson, I mentioned at the introduction, you will need some paper, ideally this will be plain and a pencil.

If you've not got those things, pause the video, go and get them, and then come back and crack on with us.

As always, I always think it's a good idea just to clear up the meaning of the keywords at the start.

Then you can keep up with what I say throughout the lesson.

So there are three terms that I thought were key for your understanding.

The first one is product evolution.

Now you might know what this means by understanding the word product.

That's an item, so something that you can go buy.

And evolution is all about how it has changed over time.

So if you take a mobile phone which is probably the most common piece of technology that people carry with them, the very first ones compared to now are hugely different.

They have evolved massively, and are evolving every year that the new ones caught out.

The next term was technology push.

Now this is what a big company will try to push onto you.

So if you see an advert on the television identifying the latest new features of a phone, we'll stick with that theme.

And you think I must have that phone because I want it to be able to do a certain thing.

I remember seeing a while ago just before Christmas adverts for a new iPhone.

And it showed like a parent making a video with a child and there was a slow-mo video feature within the phone.

And I know that people would think how much fun that would be to make little videos at home and film slow-mo parts to a home film.

That's one example of technology push where the Apple company will have designed that feature as part of their phone.

And they are letting the consumer know that it's available and ready to buy.

The next is technology pull, and that comes from the consumer.

So now you may notice that the screen on the phone is getting larger and that's because the consumer spends lot of time watching films, videos, YouTube, Instagram, and so on.

So there is a demand from the consumer for a large HD screen.

So technology push is when a company will push their technology onto the client and technology pull is when the companies need to make sure that they're meeting the demand the customer I've got here one example of a busy hour in my day.

Every morning I get up at around 5:50, so this is a working week morning.

And the things that I've highlighted in pink, they're the things that technology featured to be able to help.

So I would not wake up in the morning without my alarm.

My alarm that comes from my phone and about it's very similar for some of you as well.

The next thing once I've got up had a shower and got myself dressed I've got a Wi-Fi enabled security camera there in the house.

And I turned those off before I go downstairs.

And I do that with my phone because it's all Wi-Fi enabled.

Next, I will get myself a cup of coffee and that will have been prepared the night before set with a timer.

And that starts to brew just before I come to the kitchen.

So since I get downstairs, the security camera is off and coffee is ready.

The next thing I always say, good morning, Google, And the Google Home Hub in my kitchen will say," good morning." And it will tell me what the weather is going to be like where I live.

Normally it's raining up here in Manchester.

And then it will tell me what the news of the day is, and that will be streamed direct from Sky News.

After I've done that, I enjoy a quiet bit of time sat at my kitchen table, and I make some notes of things that I need to do for the day, so my things to do list.

And I do that on my iPad.

And then after that, when the calm time is over I go upstairs and help get my two children ready.

One will go to school, one will go to nursery.

And from then on the day is busy.

So whilst I get up early it's fairly quiet and it definitely aided by technology.

What you're going to do, now, you're going to pick an hour in today, just like I did, when you're busy and I want you to write down what things you do that are helped by technology, and you will underline these points.

So pick any hour in today, please don't say, "Oh, I'm just going to play on my Xbox for an hour." And the Xbox is the technological thing that you're involved with.

Try to think of something where you're actually busy and you're doing something and technology is there to help you.

So if you look at the slide that I went through about my busy hour in the morning from waking up to leaving school, coming, leaving for school, pick an hour like that, where you've actually doing things and see what help technology has offered.

So, one quick little question, do you think that I could get through a whole day without so much technology? So if you've just listened to what I do for one hour there's technology involved quite a lot, do you think I could get through a day without some much technology? So pick one of the choices yes or no.

Absolutely, yes, I could.

I think because I've considered myself to be quite busy.

I use technology as much as I could whilst I'm busy to get things done on time but there are definitely days when I think I need a little less digital interaction especially when I go on holiday.

I always like to turn my phone off for a while.

I don't want to spend as much time scrolling on the screen, checking emails.

I think now people are accessible far too much.

And I do like to be able to have a little break from technology now and again.

I think everybody does.

And one of the best things to do, turn off your phone, pick up a book, or if like me, a pen and some paper.

And I'd love to just sit and draw and design something rather than be glued to a phone or a screen.

I've chosen here three areas of my life to focus on for the remaining parts of the lesson.

And at some point on the task, you'll need to do the same.

So if you keep up with what I'm doing now it will make sense when it comes to the task.

So one thing I've picked is using my mobile phone.

Look, I have it, like you, pretty much everywhere with me.

And I use it for most things apart from making calls believe it or not, it's a phone but I hardly ever speak to anybody on it.

I use it for so much more than making calls.

The next thing anyone watching that knows me personally, will know that I can't get from one place to another, without satellite navigation.

I either use satnav in my car or on my phone.

I'll sometimes it might be on the phone in the car.

Regularly, I ended up having to shout at my phone and it's voice activated to ask where to go to a certain place.

And before my phone could do that, I used to even sometimes during family members to send me a text message of a postcode, and that was before people had Wi-Fi on their phones.

So if we're thinking about how technology has evolved over time, I used to sometimes phone my brother and say I need to know how to get to such a place, can you have a look? He'd have a look on a computer at home, text me a postcode and he could have sent me anywhere.

And then I'd put that into a separate satnav, before I had them on cars.

And then I'd turn it up hopefully to where I intended to be.

So I'm very much dependent on satellite navigation and have no real awareness of where I'm going to be honest.

So everywhere I go, satnav will get me there.

And then the last thing, I really like listening to music, and years ago, I used to buy lots of CDs.

And the thing I liked about a CD was the packet that it came in.

I used to like getting the little inlay card outs looking at the artwork, reading about the songs that were on the disc.

That's not something that people do now.

People stream music.

So I might be in my car stream music via Bluetooth from my phone to my car when I'm driving.

And you don't need to carry CDs around.

Years ago used to have a good box full of CDs, now it's pretty much all on my phone.

In fact, my car doesn't even have a CD player.

So three areas that I focused on phone, savtnav and music.

I'd like you now to pause it and just have a think of three areas that you might focus on where technology is playing a part.

And as I said before, you're going to have to pick three areas for your research task.

So I hope by now you've had a little look, you paused the video, you thought of your three areas and you'll need these for your task.

So what can you do with a phone besides make calls? I've given you a clue with the three things I do.

I can use it mostly for email, obviously Instagram, YouTube, watching videos, making videos.

I use it all the time for taking photographs.

I use it for making driving videos that I put onto YouTube.

Use it for satnav, music.

And probably making phone calls, that's the least likely thing that I would do with my phone.

So if you can have a think, what do you do with your phone besides making calls? This is a interesting slide to have a look at.

It's going to show a variety of phones from over the years.

So look at the state of that.

No one watching this would be proud to lift that out of their bag.

Can you imagine at school, if you thought I've just got to phone to say I'm going to be home late and you lift that out of your bag, it would not happen again.

You would definitely keep it hidden away.

So people like to have a certain phone to let everyone else know that they're up to date with the latest technology and that one, that once upon a time would have been like that.

That would have been the coolest thing to own and would only have been used for making calls.

As the phones progress they change slightly.

So some of them get smaller, then they get bigger.

This one, the Nokia one, that's just showing up on the middle, that was used as a phone but also for playing games.

And then slowly the screens get bigger.

They become full colour, up to now where there's going to be full coloured screens that actually bend in the middle.

So there's a range there of how phones have developed over time.

And it's only just that phones are starting to have a flexible part so that they can still be large for the big screen but foldable to take less room in your pocket.

So pause the video, now, have a quick look through those and just see the vast change from phones maybe in the early '80s, right the way through to around now.

The next thing was satnav.

So years ago, when there was no satnav, I remember going on holiday with my parents and many times you saw, always go to friends that we'd have to pull up at the side of the road, look at the map.

We didn't ever use a compass, but it was looking at a map to try to work out where to go.

I've not looked at an actual map for years.

Yeah, I do like maps, I really enjoy the detail that's found within a map but I don't use them for finding my way.

I think life is really busy at the moment, so people quickly get in the car, put onto a dashboard where they go in and then they set off.

So maps are not used quite as much as they used to for getting from one place to another.

But they are good for planning long journeys where you can see an overview from where you start to where you end.

And they move on now to satnav.

So people used to have independent satnav devices and now it's very much integrated within a vehicle.

So pause the video and just have a little think about how technology has improved and changed with satellite navigation, from maps that you can still get.

So Ordnance Survey Maps are brilliant for going out for a walk, but yet you can still get an Ordnance Survey app that people have on their phone.

So phones pretty much try to take over every area of life with applications that you can download.

And then the last area which I chose to focus on was music.

Now, years ago, people would have vinyl.

So an LP, and they've made a bit of a comeback in recent times.

Some people argue that they sound better than digital music.

And they're highly collectible, and some of them are worth a fortune if you've got some of the original LPs of vinyl.

So vinyl is still really quite desirable but it had a moment where vinyl wasn't used so much.

People then use compact discs.

And now not as many people use compact discs they might collect vinyl.

But most music is streamed or just downloaded on a computer device or more often than not onto a phone.

So digital music is very much what people will be listening to now.

And I bet that's what you listened to in between lessons as well.

So pause the video and have a think about how you access music.

And would you consider maybe going back in time with compact discs or vinyl? So for your task, now, what you're going to do is I've chosen three areas of my life and I've investigated them with the slides that were just there.

I want you to find an aspect of your life and look at how it's developed over time.

Maybe ask an adult how something has developed over time for them and see if you can spot what might come up next.

So pick an area, have a chat to a responsible adult, if you can find one, and then try to see, start a conversation about how things have happened.

Maybe people you live with either still collect vinyl, they've got a collection of combat discs or if they've decided not to keep those anymore.

And now they've moved on to streaming music like many people have.

So pause the video, have a good read through the task and then resume to crack on with the rest.

So you just have a quick look at this slide and read through just while I'm talking.

See if you can spot any of the terms that you might've heard of before.

There is something happening at the moment and it's called Revolution 4.

0, and you can see the dates by the side of other things that I've mentioned.

So the first industrial revolution you might've heard of that and the dates between 1760 and 1840.

And the industrial revolution that was famous for moving on to have machines being used rather than hand tools.

So at that time, most things that were manufactured would be by hand.

And it was the introduction of machinery.

The second industrial revolution was all about transport, electricity and production lines, and that speeded up production to make things more cost effective.

The third industrial revolution that happened and after the First and Second World War and that was more mechanical things being replaced with digital devices.

So at the moment, lots of things are digital.

Whereas before there were mechanical with belts, drives, gears and now there's a lot more digital technology.

And that was from the third industrial revolution.

The fourth revolution, so Revolution 4.

0, that's the one that's happening now.

And it's all about smart manufacturing, machines communicating with each other, online connectivity, Wi-Fi enabled machinery all knowing where things are up to within a production line.

Now it's not uncommon to have a huge manufacturing plant and maybe only a few people working there, the machines work automatically.

There's not the same amount of people onsite.

So it's safer in one aspect but then some people would go and think that this revolution has stopped workers and stopped jobs.

That's really not true at all.

It's just a different skill required now.

So rather than being a manual worker in a production line you might think now while those people don't have a a place to have anymore but really the skill has changed to developing machines, designing the machines, programming the machines rather than piecing things together yourself.

So the Revolution 4.

0 is all about cloud technology, storing things on a cloud rather than being on a desktop or computer.

And then artificial intelligence as well, to try to get computers to make some decisions and think, and work alongside humans.

So that's really exciting and that's happening right now, and we're all part of that.

So this is the final task of the lesson.

You should now have an insight into how technology is developed over time.

And what you're going to do is have a think about the things that you've learned and try to see what is in the pipeline, so that means what's going to be coming up in the next five or 10 years.

I'll read the bottom part to you then you really clear on what to do.

It says, take some time to research what's in the pipeline.

So it means you're looking at what is coming up for that area of technology that you have interested in.

Consider sketching, how you think the next piece of technology or tech could look.

So you know how a phone works in the 1980s, what do you think one could look like in 2030 or 2040 and beyond? Now, there is an issue with this task.

You could end up just drawing something that looks like a block.

That would be not good.

And if you just drew something rectangular, like this, no one would know what that technology is.

It would just look like a rectangular block.

What I would start to do, was to think about what features that phone may have.

Would it be something that you wear in your hand? Would it be something that's actually part of you? Would you wear it? Is it something that could be linked within your hand or your face? Many times now I'll go shopping, I actually pay for something with my phone.

Could there be something that you wear that's built-in? So I know smart watches have got this feature but could there be something which is less obvious than a phone or a watch that allows you to communicate rather than it being a large physical device? The other thing to consider, the way that I'm making this lesson now for you I'm sat at home with the computer and the camera, chatting as if you were there.

Is this the future? Is this going to be the way that more lessons take place? Could it be that we don't need to leave our house as much as we do, I've started getting online shopping.

So I'll order it my iPad, have a repeat order and just amend it ever so slightly.

And then it turns up at my house every Wednesday morning and I've not had to leave.

Could it be that there is more collaboration between people at work using webcams and computers less office space could be needed.

The impact of technology at the moment is massive.

And I think the current COVID situation has made people rely on technology even more than before but could it be something that this is where we pick up from and it develops even further? It's a really exciting time for technology at the moment.

And you're in a great position to start to design and think about what might be next.

So hope you've enjoyed the lesson and you enjoy this task and you can pause the video now and make a start.

So as always, we'll just come back to our keywords at the end.

So we talked about product evolution and that's how things have changed over time.

The next term was technology push.

So if you worked for a high-tech company you might come up with some new wild crazy idea that you think everybody needs.

You might have an advertising campaign to let everybody know.

Then you'd be pushing your idea onto customers, think I want a piece of that.

And then the last bit is technology pull.

And that means that a manufacturing, engineering or technology company will be aware of what the customer and client wants, and they will make a product to meet the demands of the clients.

So it's really exciting stuff.

So things that are put out there, new technology, it's a combination between making you think you need something whilst also making something that the company know that you actually want.

So I hope you enjoyed the lesson, I really have, and I will see you in the next one.

Thank you.