Distance learning is an old-school concept. It dates back centuries and evolved in the 1800s with the development of the postal service as educators realized they could use letters to send lessons.
The 1960s saw the birth of modern distance education with the Articulated Instructional Media (AIM) project, which utilized technology to give learning access to off-campus students. Nowadays, with computers and other mobile devices, students can register for classes, communicate via e-mail and take tests online without ever setting foot in a classroom.
But according to Roger C. Schank, one of the world's leading e-learning researchers, not much has changed in the past 50 years.
"The level of improvement is minimal," said Schank, a John Evans professor emeritus at Northwestern University, and CEO of Socratic Arts and the nonprofit Engines for Education.
To Schank, author of more than 25 books including "Virtual Learning: A Revolutionary Approach to Building a Highly Skilled Workforce," the idea of distance learning has yet to move beyond the standard classroom model. A true virtual learning system, he said, would put students in simulated environments where they can learn by doing, rather than memorizing facts and formulas. For instance, a student who wants to be a lawyer would participate in simulated trials, or a biology student would do online operations.
The problem, he added, isn't the lack of resources. Schools across the globe have started employing telecourses, CD-ROM and wireless devices to educate students. But Schank said the obstacles are college admissions standards that require students to take certain classes, and the fact that few education leaders and politicians want to disrupt the status quo.
"The medium could change the nature of what school is," he said. "Everything changes when you start doing online correctly."
Twenty years from now, Schank envisions a widespread virtual education system where students can watch prerecorded videos from experts in a given field and participate in various virtual simulations, a world where the classroom — which he called "irrelevant in this society" — doesn't exist.
No one ever thinks of medical devices as fashionable, but they very well could be someday — and they could even be so fashionable that the medical component can't be seen by the naked eye.
As reported in the journal Nano Letters, researchers from the University of Michigan discovered how to make “smart” yarn that could be woven into a comfortable fabric and used to sense changes in the body’s chemical makeup. This technology could help the elderly, the military and the police.
The team dipped cotton yarn in a solution of carbon nanotubes and polymers, long organic chemical molecules, and dried it to create a black conductive fabric. Researchers placed antibodies that react with a specific protein — such as albumin, a protein in human blood — in the junctions between the carbon nanotubes. When the protein shows up in the junction, it reacts with the antibodies, changing the electrical current and the distance between the carbon nanotubes. The fabric’s electrical signal can be amplified or plugged into a communication device that could alert medical personnel.
“If somebody is in trouble, we would like him or her to be able to communicate that, even under conditions that the person is incapacitated or lost consciousness,” said Professor Nicholas Kotov, who co-authored a report about the results in Nano Letters.
The technology could spark a new generation of garments, as well as devices for recording heartbeats and detecting inflammation, Kotov said. But researchers do not know if the carbon nanotubes are toxic or if they cause other issues, such as skin irritation.
"We need to take the potential health problems with carbon nanotubes as a credible threat," he said, "and consider them and eventually find a way to eliminate this kind of threat."
Dr. Dennis W. Hong looks for invention ideas in his sleep. He is the director of Virginia Tech's Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa), and every night, he has visions of floating circles that morph into various shapes and sketches them in a journal. In the morning, he looks over his drawings.
"Most of it is junk," Hong said, but sometimes, tucked amid pages of chicken scratch, he will see potential. That's what happened in 2005 when he came up with the concept for pole-climbing serpentine robots. He brought the idea to the lab, and his team of student developers went to work.
After two years and using a portion of the lab's $5 million research funding, the two robots — the HyDRAS, which uses electric motors, and the CIRCA, which uses a compressed air muscle — were born. These smart robots were designed to climb scaffolding and buildings by wrapping around a pole and rolling upward, using sensors and cameras to inspect structures. 
"I thought we were just going to plug some stuff in and see if it works," said Nick Thayer, a mechanical engineering graduate student who helped develop the CIRCA. "But we had to figure everything out. It was really hands-on."
For its designs, Team RoMeLa won numerous awards, including the grand prize at the 2008 International Capstone Design Fair.
But Hong and his team didn't do it for the prizes. They created the climbing robots to ultimately replace construction crews tasked with dangerous jobs.
"The end goal is to keep soldiers out of harm's way," said Gabriel Goldman, who helped lead the team as part of his graduate research project. "It seems to be a better way to make an impact on society than building a robot that's a toy."
*This story is from Converge magazine's Spring 2009 Mixed & Mashed issue.
