Back to school: how will wearables fit in?
LOS ANGELES - Majd Nassif wears his new Apple Watch to class every day at the University of Southern California, and you might think that a professor might be concerned.
After all, he could glance down at his wrist and perhaps pick up some clues to a test, or while away during the class checking his Facebook.
No problems so far. Yet.
“A lot of them don’t know it’s a smartwatch,” Nassif says of the new tech device which provides notifications, apps and e-mail monitoring from the wrist. “So no one notices.”
Perhaps they will take a closer look as the new school year kicks in. Wearables--in the form of fitness monitors from Jawbone, Fitbit and Nike, and smartwatches, from the likes of Apple, Samsung and LG, have been a much discussed new product category.
The two biggest hits so far are the Fitbit and Apple Watch. The Fitbit sold 11 million devices in 2014, and analysts say Apple has so far sold just over 2 million Apple Watches, which debuted in April.
Still, tech experts expect more students to be popping into classes in the coming years with wearable products.
They are the next step beyond smartphones, which, like the rest of the world, are everywhere on campus.
When we visited USC here, during a summer session, students told of having the occasional professor demand that smartwatches be put away before starting a test, the same request he has for smartphones.
But it's not all fun and games. USC student Erin McGillivray told us how a teacher asked her to stop looking at her phone during class--only to discover that it was her digital version of the textbook on a four-inch screen.
Professor Robert Hernandez, who teaches at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, takes a different view. He told us he’s not concerned about having more digital devices in the classroom.
“It’s not any different from the cellphone or me competing with their laptops and Facebook,” he says. He cites a recent study that said 91% of us have a smartphone within arm’s reach 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, “whether that’s in the pocket, purse or nightstand. So the phone is essentially a wearable. To take the leap and put it on your wrist is not a big one at all.”
And in the classroom, which has Wifi, and where students pull out their laptops and keep them open for the class, “this is a place of learning,” says Hernandez, “Not a daycare center. If they engage, they engage, if they don’t, it affects their grades."
“The challenge is on me. If i’m boring, and not engaging, I don’t blame them for tuning out.”
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