Video, Drones, and Policing - The Path Forward

In the past few decades, better policing has been responsible for a steady decrease in almost every form of crime in the United States.  Broken Windows policing, largely instituted in the 1990s, works, and everyone in the country has benefited from safer communities.

That said, no system is perfect and police officers make mistakes.  Increasingly, those mistakes are documented for the country in the form of videos captured via the personal smartphones of those on the scene when an incident occurs. In some cases, police have tried, and continue to try, to assert their right to quell the use of cameras, but that's a mistake. Instead, the police should embrace this new era of video accountability and take it even further.

Part of the solution is for officers to each wear a personal camera, but there's even more they can do. Another solution is for police everywhere to use new drone technology and HD video devices to capture every aspect of every scene in which they're engaging a potentially troublesome situation. Cameras on each officer, cameras mounted on police dashboards, wide angle cameras mounted on the roofs of police cars, and advanced personal drones with cameras. The philosophy for police organizations everywhere should be, "you want video, we got your video!"

For example, imagine using the new Lily Camera at a scene similar to the one which took place in McKinney, TX.  The police arrive at the scene, see what is going on, and one officer reaches back and unhooks the drone from it's clip and throws it up into the air. The props engage on the drone and it ascends to a height of 15 or so feet and begins to follow the officer as he walks toward the scene, video camera actively recording everything as it goes.  At the same time, the other officer engages the camera on the roof of the police car and orients it toward the scene to capture a fixed, ground level view of the scene.  And both officers' personal cameras activate for the first-person view of the scene.

Clearly, no officer is perfect and they will know, and feel acutely, that they are under the microscope. The fact is, whether the police do this or not, they are under a microscope.  They are and will be increasingly as video technology improves. So let's just acknowledge reality and insure that video taken is full and complete and can be used to show the public exactly what has happened rather than relying on footage edited by an individual or a news agency, possibly to present the most negative, confrontational, and dramatic impression possible.

Not all news agency behave this way, but there are a growing number of smaller organizations which derive ratings from drama. For them, the more drama, the better, even if it's not a perfectly accurate depiction of what happened. News agencies like that will be far less likely to slant a story if a full and complete version of the video exists and is available right from the start. Witnesses at a scene may also be less likely to slant their stories if they know they too are on video at the scene.

Full and complete coverage protects the interests of the police and the public in that it helps everyone to know exactly what happened.  And rather than telling people not to record video, the police should welcome it.  This says two very important things to the public:

1. We, the police, hold ourselves to the highest standard of behavior
2. We welcome public scrutiny

I think, in general, the public knows police officers aren't perfect and make mistakes. Police are, rightfully, held in high regard by the public, and this will over time help maintain their reputation as honest, hard working women and men who protect citizens and communities where we live and work.

The path forward is simple:

1. Accept the reality of officers being constantly captured on video as they go about their jobs
2. Embrace the video revolution and leverage it to protect the interests of the public and the police themselves. 

Yes, video footage of incidents have been a challenge for police. At the same time, it represents an opportunity. The clock cannot be turned back, so it makes sense to embrace that opportunity and use it in such a way that it offers maximum benefit to the police and the public.

Khan Academy: The Future of eLearning?

One of the best designed new learning sites I've ever laid eyes on exists in the form of KhanAcademy.org.  This started as a learning site for kids but is quickly evolving into an open content site for all ages in every area of study.  The system used there to benchmark skills and set users at the right learning level on topics is amazing, and I would say to Learning Management Service companies out there; pay attention or you're going to get left behind!

Want to know more about the origin of the Khan Academy site?  Here's Sal Khan giving a TED Talk a few years ago:

Real-World Examples of Successful Classroom Technology Adoption

I promised in my post from a few days back that I would offer some real-world examples of successful classroom technology adoption reflecting the "three requirements I spelled out in that post. Just as a reminder, the three Classrom Technology Integration (CTI) requirements for insuring widespread adoption are:

1. Must be user-friendly, intuitive, and cost-effective
2. Must mimic some existing technology in the classroom
3. Must add some new value over previous technology

I know the first requirement is a bit of a "duh!", but I think we all see too many examples where technology gets way too complicated and thus is left around to collect dust. These are our early 21st century paperweights.

So, let me now offer two examples, and the possible next step from our current state.  

EXAMPLE 1:

Example 1 is the move from school slate and chalk, to pencil and paper, to a possible move one day to some form of tablet device:

Yes, this a very simplistic example; however, it also perfectly demonstrates the three requirements. The move away from the slate came because pencil and paper was a very easy transition to make and is cost effective. The pencil/paper option was a perfect mimic of the slate option, but added tremendous value in that you did not have to erase your work but could instead just turn the page. Thus students could retain all their lessons from the day for study later.

Will we see a move to tablets in the future? Some schools, colleges, and companies have already begun to experiment with this option. 

Advantages include the ability to take notes, load classwork and homework, and submit all of it for review, automatic scoring by the system, saving teachers a great deal of time, the ability to track subject-related strengths and weaknesses so as to better target solutions, and many other possibilities. Weaknesses include cost, higher level of complexity, and the need for regular onsite tech support.

EXAMPLE 2: 

Example 2 is somewhat similar to the previous example in that it's the move from classroom blackboards, which were the norm even when I was in college, to the whiteboard, to a possible future of some kind of Smartboard:

The move from blackboard to whiteboard is a no-brainer, even though that move is relatively recent from a long-term historical viewpoint.  Whiteboards are cheaper, cleaner, easier to maintain (unless you decide you want to use regular markers on the board rather than dry erase markers), and easier to view from any point in the classroom.  In addition, it's easier to use various marker colors in creating lists or illustrating concepts.  Yes, there was colored chalk, but how often did teachers / professors use colored chalk?  From my memory, almost never.

The move from blackboard to whitebard clearly follows all three CTI requirements, though the move to a classroom "Smarboard" system may not.  Having used Smartboards in the past, they do offer some distinct advantages, such as the ability to display the board to both in-room and remote participants, the ability to view and play many types of media, and the ability to create lists and diagrams just as one would with a whiteboard, only with the ability to save the work and send it out to participants.  In addition, teachers could load curricula to their boards, including interactive assignments and reuse content over and over again without having to take time to write anything themselves. if a curriculum program is updated, the content is automatically updated for the Smartboard as well, thus saving teachers a great deal of administration time.

Weaknesses include the cost (many thousands of dollars per unit) as well as the complexity of learning how to effectively utilize the system.  Time saved writing assignments on a board would be lost to pulling up files or other various tasks.  Also needed are improvements to the overall usability of the Smartboard systems.

That said, we're now seeing the appearance of Smart Television systems which will ultimately become much cheaper and may become the solution of choice for classrooms.  Private businesses are already starting to integrate Smart TV systems for their use.  Colleges and universities will follow (if they haven't already, and K-12 systems will then likely adopt the systems as well.  

In addition, the use of Smart TV systems give numerous companies the opportunity to develop "learning apps" to use with the boards, which will greatly lower the cost of each system while expanding usability and effectiveness.  

It goes without saying that eventually, if tablets and Smartboards do become the next generation of classroom technology, they'll need to be integrated in some manner.  This too becomes an opportunity for companies and one can already see some forethought on the part of Google with their recently launched Google Classroom system.  

So, what are your thoughts?  Are the CTI principles flawed in any way you can see?  Are there better examples?  I look forward to your comments.