When Meta held its annual conference at the end of September, the tech giant announced it is betting that the next wave of computing will come in the form of shrewd eyeglasses.
Mark Zuckberberg, Meta’s founder and CEO, held up what he described as the first working prototype of Orion, which lets wearers see both the physical world and a computer display hovering in the field of vision.
“They’re not a headset,” he said on stage as he announced the device, which looked like a set of unusually chunky eyeglasses. “This is the physical world with holograms overlaid on it.”
For educators, this might not come as welcome news.
After all, one of the hottest topics in edtech these days is the growing practice of banning smartphones in schools, after teachers have reported that the devices distract students from classroom activities and socializing in person with others. And a growing body of research, popularized by the Jonathan Haidt book “The Anxious Generation,” argues that smartphone and social media exploit harms the mental health of teenagers.
When it’s proving tough enough to regulate the appropriate exploit of smartphones, what will it be like to manage a rush of kids wearing computers on their faces?
Some edtech experts see upsides, though, when the technology is ready to be used for educational activities.
The idea of using VR headsets to enter an educational multiverse — the last substantial idea Meta was touting when it changed its corporate name three years ago from Facebook — hasn’t caught on widely, in part because getting a classroom full of students fitted with headsets and holding controllers can be hard for teachers (not to mention steep to obtain all that gear). But if shrewd glasses become economical enough for a cart to be wheeled in with enough pairs for each student, so they can all do some activity together that blends the virtual world with in-person interactions, they could be a better fit.
“Augmented reality allows for more sharing and collaborative work than VR,” says Maya Georgieva, who runs an innovation center for VR and AR at The New School in New York City. “Lots of these augmented reality applications build on the notion of active learning and experiential learning naturally.”
And there is some initial research that has found that augmented reality experiences in education can lead to improvements in learning outcomes since, as one recent research paper put it, “they transform the learning process into a full-body experience.”
Cheating Glasses?
The Orion glasses that Zuckerberg previewed last week are not ready for prime time — in fact the Meta CEO said they won’t be released to the general public until 2027.
(EdSurge receives philanthropic support from the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, which is co-owned by Meta’s CEO. Learn more about EdSurge ethics and policies here and supporters here.)
But the company already sells shrewd eyeglasses through a partnership with sunglass-maker Ray-Ban, which are now retailing for around $300. And other companies make similar products as well.
These gadgets, which have been on the market for a couple of years in some form, don’t have a display. But they do have a diminutive built-in computer, a camera, a microphone and speakers. And recent advances in AI mean that newer models can serve as a talking version of a chatbot that users can access when they’re away from their computer or smartphone.
While so far the number of students who own shrewd glasses appears low, there have already been some reports of students using shrewd glasses to try to cheat.
This year in Tokyo, for instance, an 18-year-old allegedly used shrewd glasses to try to cheat on a university entrance exam. He apparently took pictures of his exam questions, posted them online during the test, and users on X, formerly Twitter, gave him the answers (which he could presumably hear read to him on his shrewd glasses). He was detected and his test scores were invalidated.
Meanwhile, students are sharing videos on TikTok where they explain how to exploit shrewd glasses to cheat, even low-end models that have few “smart” features.
“Using these blue light smart glasses on a test would be absolutely diabolical,” says one TikTok user’s video, describing a pair of glasses that can simply pair with a smartphone by bluetooth and cost only about $30. “They look like regular glasses, but they have speakers and microphones in them so you can cheat on a test. So just prerecord your test or your answers or watch a video while you’re at the test and just listen to it and no one can tell that you’re looking or listening to anything.”
On Reddit discussions, professors have been wondering whether this technology will make it even harder to know whether the work students are doing is their own, compounding the problems caused by ChatGPT and other up-to-date AI tools that have given students up-to-date ways to cheat on homework that are hard to detect.
One commenter even suggested just giving up on doing tests and assignments and trying to find up-to-date ways of assessing student knowledge. “I think we have too many assessments that have limited benefit and no one here wants to run a police state to check if students actually did what they say they did,” the user wrote. “I would appreciate if anyone has a functional viable alternative to the current standard. The old way will benefit the well off and dishonest, while the underprivileged and moral will suffer (not that this is new either).”
Some of the school and state policies that ban smartphones might also apply to these up-to-date shrewd glasses. A state law in Florida, for instance, restricts the exploit of “wireless communication devices,” which could include glasses, watches, or any up-to-date gadget that gets invented that connects electronically.
“I would compare it very much to when smartphones really came on the scene and became a regular part of our everyday lives,” says Kyle Bowen, a longtime edtech expert who is now deputy chief information officer at Arizona State University, noting that these glasses might impact a range of activities if they catch on, including education.
There could be upsides in college classrooms, he predicts.
The benefit he sees for shrewd glasses is the pairing of AI and the devices, so that students might be able to get real-time feedback about, say a lab exercise, by asking the chatbot to weigh in on what it sees through the camera of the glasses as students go about the task.
