In past, people used desktop for computing tasks then after some time there was a time where laptops were in demand but nowadays in present, it is the world of a new body-borne technology called Wearable computing. For consumer market, there are only two companies which provide wearable computers. Central Queensland University is one of the most richly diverse, innovative and dynamic universities in Australia with main campus in north rock Hampton. The most spectacular locations have its other campuses which include CQU campuses such as Mackay, Emerald, rock Hampton, Gladstone and Bundaberg. Here I, an ICT manager of Central Queensland University, am writing a report to be presented at the next executive meeting of Central Queensland Universityin Rock Hamptondescribing wearable computers which are used in various types of fields such in military to provide the ability to survive to soldiers in adverse conditions, in medical to provide nomad display system which has a feature to display all the records of patient into one system and in entertainment to provide easy access of game world to players.The enhancement of wearable computers in higher education system is the essential part of this report. Wearable systems can be used in education system in many ways such as it improves the quality of learning processes for students; it allows students to have access of useful information anytime and anywhere through this wearable device as it is easy to be carried out on the student’s body and this technology also helps disabled and illiterate students. This report also includes negative effects along with the advantages of these computers in such a way that sometimes this wearable technology becomes threat for students in such a way that constant use of this device makes students unhealthy as student may get affected by headache, eye problems and body ache. Negative affect on Handwriting and spelling skills of students is the other reason for such kind of problem in using wearable devices.

Table of Contents

Executive summary: 1

Introduction: 3

Wearable computers: 4

Applications of wearable computing. 4

Implementation of wearable computers on today’s higher education system: 5

What makes wearable computers different from portable computers?. 6

Benefits and drawbacks. 7

Advantages: 7

Limitations: 7

Privacy and security concern in using wearable devices. 8

Conclusion: 8

Recommendations: 9

References: 10

Introduction:

Wearable computers are the clothing and pocket based computing which consists of peripherals which are connected wirelessly and distributed around the actuators and sensors of the person’s body. Wearable devices could be anything that could be worn on the body whether it is a bulky head mounted display or a small wrist mounted system. Wearable computing requires user’s arms, hands, eyes, voice and any other body part to get engaged actively in the computing with the physical environment. Wearable computing is the theory and practice of studying and using small body-borne sensory and computational devices includes how to design, build and invent these wearable devices. Some examples of wearable computers are spy camera, spy voice, watch with computing features, video recording device and glasses with computer facilities. The inputs of the wearable computing are voice, expressions and body motion of a person. Wearable computing was started in 1991 by Steve Mann. Wearable computers are essential for computing to provide new design opportunities and new application areas as this type of computing are used in the field of military, health-care, entertainment and information systems in any organization. This type of computing exploration is also very popular in the organizations related to research. Wearable computing has the great potential of improving the quality and efficiency of human labors in the context of their performance of monitoring, maintenance, construction, engineering, manufacturing and health care delivery. With this technology, interface design specialist and computer scientists work with the experts in fabrics and textiles and clothing designers to build wearable devices so that it looks like clothing more and less like computers (Wimmer 2012). The components of wearable computers or devices may include human interface system which understands and listens to the user using combination of speech recognition, expressions and machine vision. Other component is operating system consists of a system which must communicate with the wearer, other systems and external systems always. Network is another component that is used in the wearable computing to connect this wearable device with external world and for interconnecting the various components of the device.

Wearable computers:

In the past, desktops were used for the computing tasks then laptops were the most powerful device for such tasks in the middle era of technology (Kjeldskov 2013). The one thing that makes wearable devices different is convenience as this device is easy to carry anywhere and interacts with the real world task easily by constantly turning on and other major difference is it can be powered in both ways either through battery or through human power. This device is carried out by human being in a jacket or on a belt.

Applications of wearable computing:

Face recognition: Wearable computing is used in recognizing faces of people. This face recognition system consists of face finding software which is used to find the particular faces and their information.

Communication management and information system: Due to mobility of the wearable computers, one can easily manage personal communication by the integration of email and mobile phones into a single interface. This type of computing is successfully used in information system of any organization in such a way that each and every employee can read useful information regarding business processes anywhere and anytime. As a result, it saves the manpower for other important things.

Health care and medical: In the department of health and medicine, a wearable device named “Nomad Personal display” is used in the operating room of the hospital. Through the help of this device, Doctor’s focus can be increased on patient rather than display system which displays records because all the information about the health of the patient can be easily seen by doctor through wearable device.

Military: Wearable devices are very useful to provide important information to soldiers and other military persons on the battlefield. Land warrior is the fighting system which is used in military to provide the ability to soldiers so that they can survive in the adverse conditions. This is the device which targets useful information as well as positional data.

Entertainment:In the field of entertainment, Wearable devices are used to provide the platform to players who are fully engaged with computer games or play stations. This type of computing device also helps to make interaction easy between playing device and player. To fully manipulate and move objects and elements in the game world, there will be wearable shoes or gloves available in the near future with more advancement.

Implementation of wearable computers on today’s higher education system:

With increase in modern visualization techniques, it is easy to explore available resources and discover innovative information in E-education. There are number of wearable computers available in the market to enhance the higher education system. One of the best suited Wearable computers is Google glass which is used in student’s training in such a way that it provides the real time video of useful information to students. Any other activity related to education in classroom can be easily broadcasted to the students and using these wearable computers, students can get access to this information anywhere and anytime and this process improves the way of teaching in higher education system and also saves student’s time therefore this time can be utilized on some other activity. Example of using wearable device in education system especially in medical education is showing a real time video to students by a medical professor Vallurupalli. Increased smart devices made it possible to show the exact information to the students what their professor can see.

For making the learning material more accessible, Wearable computing provides features consist of imaginative interaction patterns, innovative methods or procedures to represent information and edutainment concept. Wireless technology, multimedia technologies, teaching management systems are the technologies used for implementing e-learning in higher education system and it makes education system flexible enough(Milton 2015). These wearable devices consist of valuable built in sources of context information such as sensors, cameras, accelerometers, GPS and compasses.

Virtual reality dresses, glasses and gloves are used in the laboratories of neuroscience and psychology in order to provide the way to act towards situations caused. Finger reader is a wearable device which acts as an assistant for visual disabilities and for other people as it helps in reading the text of books and also helpful for illiterate people in reading.

What makes wearable computers different from portable computers?

Wearable computers are different from portable systems as the system running processes are same in both the systems but starting processes of both computers are quite different. The battery system in portable computers is different from wearable computers as it can be charged through battery as well as through human power. Unlike portable computers, wearable computers perform its task by constantly turning on. Wearable computers are easy to be carried out everywhere as it is a light weight device whereas portable computers are not easy to be carried out. It is quite difficult to train students using laptops or other handheld devices but wearable devices make this training easy for teachers as well as students as it transforms virtual world into real world easily(Rodrigues 2013). Through the use of wearable devices, teachers can show the information to their students about their subjects in the same way as they think about that topic or subject. Performing computing task is the primary function for laptops and other portable computers whereas wearable computers primarily provide constant support to their users with a great convenience support.

Benefits and drawbacks:

Advantages:

Hands free operation: Wearable technology has a feature of voice recognition technology which helps in eliminating the requirement of keyboard. This technology provides display capabilities along with the headset mounted communication. In higher education systems, students can access their useful information anywhere whether they are at school or at home conveniently.

Power, convenience, comfort: Powerful memory, faster processing capability, disk storage and communication capabilities of wearable devices make the task of wearable computers more convenient. Students can store large amount of information related to their subjects for a long time.

Increased discreetness: One of the positive features of wearable computing is that these devices are more discreet than other devices. A student can get alert for all its useful and important information such as related to their studies.

Limitations:

Limited bandwidth, ubiquitous access and seamless communication are the drawbacks of wearable computing. There are four categories in which the limitations of wearable computers may fall- social, economic, technical and political. The social issues with wearable computing may include security and privacy. Infrastructure maintenance, saturation, ubiquitous access, protocols and disconnected or mobility operations are the examples of technical issues with wearable computing. The examples of political issues are spectrum ownership and access rights. Commerce and billing come under economic issues with wearable computers.

One major disadvantage of wearable computing is related to health of the students that includesstudents may get affected with severe headache, back problems and eye problems due to constant use of wearable devices. Some students may lose their handwriting and spelling skills as they always do work on wearable device and in these devices there is already number of in-built spelling software available. Other limitation of using this wearable device is they are expensive as a result some institutions cannot afford such devices.

Privacy and security concern in using wearable devices:

Security is the major risk in wearable computing for end customer as well as for service provider. This security issue comes with the wearable device Google glass which has the capability of transmitting and recording images and other personal information of the person which is in the vision of wearer or user.

Conclusion:

For future expansion and growth, Wearable computing is considered to be an emerging technology filled with considerable potential and interest and nowadays this cost effective technology is available all over the world.The privacy and discreetness in wearable computers are more than portable computers such as PDA, pagers and cellular phones. In the various fields of human activities, it is the beginning for wearable computers to get accepted and this type of computing can provide long term benefits to higher education system. With wearable computing, the possibilities of improving the quality of learning processes in education system is more and the performance of wearable computing can get better with the help of students by adopting new technologies. For disabled students, it is beneficial if this wearable computing gets implemented in the education system as it makes learning process easier(Davies 2012). For example, Students with disabilities like hearing loss can get more benefit of wearable computing devices like smart glass device. With this device, wearer or user can increase its concentration on real world processes and also can have immediate access to the virtual world. Wearable computing can provide constant digital support to the user which consists of various features like GPS, sensors, input and display technology. A wearer can give quality to their task performance at workplace as well as their daily routine tasks with the new technologies of wearable computing. Brain ideas can be easily implemented into reality using wearable computing(Bento 2012). There are many new techniques of wearable technology that can enhance education system and can also improve the quality of learning process but some drawbacks of using wearable technology are there such as students may get negatively affected on their health with the use of wearable computers or devices. Some more challenges may exist with the use of wearable computing like handwriting skills of students may get affected as the whole work is on the wearable device. With the convergence of sensor technology, this type of computing helps in the field of neuroscience, medical informatics and noninvasive diagnostics(Downey 2012). In medical science, medical treatments can be improved with the help of this body-borne technology as it helps in increasing the focus of doctors on their patients. This technology is used to promote java for designing the applications as well as behavioral architecture so it becomes the platform for rapid application development. This technology reduces the complications of the user or wearer of daily life because it allows the access of the device anywhere and anytime therefore it saves the user’s time. The main reason of adopting this technology especially in the education system and medical is its increased processing power that too available in small sizes with expanded wireless telecommunications capabilities. For enabling pervasive computing to transform our society into the networked one, wearable components are the key factor to analyze the data and for providing access to entertainment, services and content at any time for anyone.

Recommendations:

Exchanging of data is the major source of stealing the data in wearable computing that causes data theft in result. Privacy policy is very essential for an organization to protect it from unauthorized users and other threats with the implementation and enforcement of a robust security policy (Armistead 2010). To protect and secure data from eavesdropping, usage of good encryption is essential as this encryption process protects data from any unauthorized access as well as it verifies the identity of any new connected device or computer. Automatic wipe is the feature which reduces the attractiveness of stolen devices. Other security issue with wearable devices is that it displays the passwords on screen easily as a result to protect such kind of PINs; one can use a biometric password which easily identifies the user of that device (Hart 2013). Mobile device management is the privacy concern for IT field so security policies need to be established by the organizations for employees of the organizations that uses such devices to define the expectations like what content will be accessible to which employee and in this way it balances the flexibility of the system along with the confidentiality and privacy requirements. Employee privacy is the advantage for the organization but it is a drawback for that particular employee because in this process, it becomes very easy to spread personal details of that employee and his/her behavior. Although monitoring each and every activity of employee is the essential part of the organization but sometimes it becomes the privacy concern for that employee.

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