The IT industry is launching new markets worth more than $2 trillion, IBM CEO says — from finance.yahoo.com by Julie Bort

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

She says IBM is on track to meet her promise to investors, made last year, of hitting $40 billion worth of revenue in a bunch of new and more profitable markets by 2018.

These include big data/analytics, cloud computing, security, social and mobile. The company has already hit $29 billion in these “strategic imperative” areas, and they are now 36% of IBM’s $82 billion of revenue, she said.

These new markets, which IBM calls “decision support” represent a $2 trillion market. Plus IBM sees a bunch of other growth markets.

1. Machine learning (which IBM calls ‘cognitive computing”) is at the heart of the $2 trillion market IBM sees developing by 2025. This is where smart computers that can learn, can understand all kinds of data (even audio, photos, videos), reason, talk, make decisions and learn.

Companies will use this to make all of their important decisions she believes. And it will be used to solve other problems like managing and curing illness. Watson is already being used by medical device manufacturer Medtronic to help patients predict dangerous low-blood sugar events up to two hours before they occur.

Decision support will create $2 trillion worth of IT spending beyond the $1 trillion companies already spend on software, services and hardware.

 

The tide is turning: High school is coming back — from reallearningct.com by Ann Cronin; with thanks to Mr. Rob Bobeldyk, Assistant Director Teaching & Learning, Calvin Information Technology, for this resource

Excerpt:

The report points out that the college application process itself sends the message to young people that their individual success, rather than concern for others and the common good, is paramount. The report calls for specific changes that will improve the emotional and psychological health of adolescents, increase opportunities for a broader range of students, and contribute to shaping a national culture different from the one we now have. The new application will redefine the roles of AP courses, extracurricular activities, standardized tests, and community service in admission decisions.

Turning the Tide doesn’t use the term “party” but endorses that concept. The new application process will state clearly that “a large number of AP or IB courses per year are often not as valuable as sustained achievement in a limited number of areas”. The report recommends that the college application process identify students who are passionate about an area of study, students who find intellectual engagement in that area, not the ones who “game the system” with a long list of AP courses.

According to Turning the Tide, students similarly try to “game the system” with a long list of extra-curricular activities. Admissions officers are dismissive of the “brag lists” of a large number of activities in which they suspect students may have minimal commitment and surface involvement.

Thank you, Harvard. Thank you, Yale. Thank you, University of North Carolina. Thank you, M.I.T.. Thank you, Holy Cross. Thank you, Connecticut College. Thank you, Trinity. Thanks to all the other 44 colleges and universities who have endorsed these changes in the college application process.

 

From DSC:
Don’t rule out tvOS for some powerful learning experiences / new affordances.  The convergence of the television, the telephone, and the computer continues…and is now coming into your home. Trainers, faculty members, teachers, developers, and others will want to keep an eye on this space. The opportunities are enormous, especially as second screen-based apps and new forms of human computer interfaces (HCI) unfold.

The following items come to my mind:

Online-based communities of practice. Virtual reality, virtual tutoring. Intelligent systems. Artificial intelligence. Global learning. 24×7, lifelong learning. Career development. Flipping the classroom. Homeschooling.  Learning hubs. Online learning. Virtual schools. Webinars on steroids.

With the reach of these powerful technologies (that continue to develop), I would recommend trying to stay informed on what’s happening in the world of tvOS-based apps in the future. Towards that end, below are some items that might help.


 

techtalk-apple-feb2016

 

 

 

Apple releases Apple TV Tech Talks video series for building better tvOS apps — by AppleInsider Staff

Excerpt:

Apple on Wednesday released to developers a series of videos focusing on Apple TV and its tvOS operating system, offering a detailed look at the underlying SDK, resources and best practices associated with coding for the platform.

 

Also see:

 

TVTechTalk-fe3b2016

 

 

Addendum on 2/26/16:

  • Apple Adds Multiple New App Categories to tvOS App Store — from macrumors.com by Juli Clover
    Excerpt:
    [On 2/25/16] Apple updated the tvOS App Store to add several new app categories to make it easier for Apple TV 4 owners to find content on their devices. As outlined by AfterPad, a site that showcases Apple TV apps, the new categories are rolling out to Apple TV users and may not be available to everyone just yet. Some users may only see the new categories under Purchased Apps until the rollout is complete.

 

 

Per Mark Cappel, Senior Editor at MoneyGeek.com (emphasis DSC):

MoneyGeek.com has spent the last few months expanding our site to produce comprehensive financial planning resources for people with disabilities for all stages of life. Our guides are helpful for families and students with disabilities searching for financial aid and scholarship options, parents and persons with disabilities planning financially for home modifications, and more.

See:

 

students-disabilities-feb2016

 
 

Google Cloud Vision API enters Beta, open to all to try!

Excerpt:

[On Thursday, February 18, 2016, we announced] the beta release of Google Cloud Vision API. Now anyone can submit their images to the Cloud Vision API to understand the contents of those images — from detecting everyday objects (for example, “sports car,” “sushi,” or “eagle”) to reading text within the image or identifying product logos.

With the beta release of Cloud Vision API, you can access the API with location of images stored in Google Cloud Storage, along with existing support of embedding an image as part of the API request. We’re also announcing pricing for Cloud Vision API and added additional capabilities to identify the dominant color of an image. For example, you can now apply Label Detection on an image for as little as $2 per 1,000 images or Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for $0.60 for 1,000 images. Pricing will be effective, starting March 1st.

 

GoogleCloudVisionAPI-Feb2016

 

 

From DSC:
Talk about a potential money maker with significant profit margins! Geez.  A serious, new business model.

 

 

Also see:

 

 

 

Harvard’s new official tour app leverages augmented reality — from betaboston.com

 

New York Times showcases virtual reality technology — from browndailyherald.com by Harry August
Virtual reality, used to craft more immersive storytelling, risks providing less narrative context

 

Oculus preview event to highlight multiplayer games — from uploadvr.com

 

Woofbert are using VR to bring great art to everyone — from roadtovr.com by Kent Bye
Voices of VR Podcast – Episode #303

 

Woofbert VR

woofbertVR-Feb2016

 

Microsoft developing video calling that projects people in front of yYou — from gadgets.ndtv.com by Robin Sinha

 

Facebook has created a new ‘Social VR’ team to explore how we’ll communicate in virtual reality — from businessinsider.com by Jillian D’Onfro

 

I planned out my last vacation in virtual reality — here’s what it was like — from Business Insider By Brandt Ranj

 

Augmented reality looks to future where screens vanish — from interaksyon.com by Glenn Chapman

 

VR And AR will be mobile’s demand driver, not its replacement — from techcrunch.com by Mike Hoefflinger

Excerpt:

Projections for the big players
If things go in this direction, here’s how it may play out for The Big Six:

  • Apple…
  • Google…
  • Facebook…
  • Samsung…
  • Sony…
  • Microsoft…

 

 

Addendum:

 

LeapMotion-Feb2016

 

 

 

5-minute film festival: Resources for filmmaking in the classroom — from edutopia.org by Amy Erin Borovoy

Excerpt:

I’ll admit I’m a bit biased here since I’m a filmmaker by trade, but I truly believe the process of planning and making videos can offer tremendous learning opportunities for students of almost any age. Not only is the idea of telling stories with video really engaging for many kids, filmmaking is ripe with opportunities to connect to almost every academic subject area. As the technology to shoot and edit films becomes more ubiquitous, where is a teacher with no experience in video production to begin? I’ve shared some resources below to help you and your students get started on making blockbusters of your own.

 

 

2020 Vision: Experts Predict the Future of Virtual Reality — from vrscout.com by Eric Chevalier

Excerpt:

  1. VR will be the new internet.
  2. You will spend your flights in virtual reality.
  3. AR will beat VR.
  4. There will be no MMO. [yet]
  5. Virtual reality will change the film industry.
  6. Parallax technology won’t be able to support augmented reality.
  7. The space we’ll explore won’t be in the sky.
  8. We will see a MMO game with a million subscribers.
  9. The Divine Comedy will provide a model for successful VR storytelling.
  10. Robots will touch you in VR and you’ll like it.
  11. Journalism will be forever transformed.

 

 

 

Teachers-in-training-VR-Feb2016

 

Teachers-in-training learn through virtual reality — from thedmonline.com by Madeleine Beck

Excerpt:

The UM School of Education is using a program that allows teachers-in-training to practice classroom skills in a virtual setting before sending them into local elementary and secondary schools.

The simulated TeachLivE classroom consists of an 80-inch monitor with five student avatars. Each avatar has his or her own personality.

“All five avatar children are actually controlled by somebody in Florida, an actor or actress,”  Dean of the School of Education David Rock said. “They’re set up with equipment so that if the actor raises his hand in Florida, the avatar child will raise his hand on the screen.”

 

 

EON Reality launches EON Creator AVR, a do-it-yourself augmented and virtual reality knowledge content creation application for teachers and students
EON Creator AVR empowers students and teachers to make engaging AR and VR knowledge transfer applications without programming skills.

Excerpt:

IRVINE, CA, February 16th, 2016 – EON Reality Inc., the world leader in Virtual Reality based knowledge transfer for industry, education, and edutainment, announced the upcoming release of EON Creator AVR (Augmented Virtual Reality), a mobile based application that enables users to easily create, share, collaborate, and publish Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) knowledge content. Using EON Reality’s patent pending Augmented Virtual Reality (AVR) technology, EON Creator AVR combines both Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality with a large AR/VR component library and assessment database to create one of a kind learning experiences. EON Creator AVR also leverages built in intelligence to help students and teachers quickly create highly interactive learning content directly on their tablets, smart phones, VR headsets, or AR glasses without requiring programming skills.

 

eonreality-feb2016

 

 

5 top augmented reality apps for education — from hongkiat.com by Gabriela Jugaru

Excerpt:

1. Google Sky Map
This is an augmented reality app which makes learning about astronomy interesting and fun. Instead of looking at descriptions of constellations in a book and then attempting to identify them in the sky, you can use Google Sky Map to directly identify stars and constellations using the camera on your smartphone.

Google Sky Map

 

 

 

How virtual reality could soon help stroke victims recover — from cnet.com by Max Taves
A $100 million investment in a Swiss startup highlights how VR offers more than just fun and games.

Excerpt:

Doctors could soon start prescribing an unusual solution to help stroke victims in the US: virtual reality goggles.

That’s the hope of Switzerland-based MindMaze, which on Wednesday got a $100 million investment to bring its blend of virtual reality hardware and neuroscience to market. The four-year-old startup’s technology has already won approval from regulators in Europe, where its applications for brain injury victims showcase what could soon be possible in the United States.

MindMaze’s 34-year-old founder and CEO Tej Tadi explains how: Imagine a stroke victim who’s lost control of her left hand but can still move her right hand. After putting on MindMaze goggles, the patient sees a 3-D image, or avatar, of her left hand that moves as she moves her right hand.

“That triggers areas in the brain to say, ‘Wait, let’s regain control of this hand’,” says Tadi. “The hand that was not working now works.” And that process of tricking the brain into seeing something that’s actually not there in the real world accelerates recovery, he says.

 

 

The Associated Press is partnering with AMD for more virtual reality journalism — from theverge.com by Adi Robertson

Excerpt:

After moving into virtual reality video journalism last year, the Associated Press is partnering with chip maker AMD for a new push into VR. Today, the companies announced that they’re launching a web portal for AP virtual reality, promising more journalistic endeavors soon — including “lifelike VR environments” built with the help of AMD.

Several news outlets have now started producing 360-degree videos, which can be watched through a Google Cardboard headset or a smartphone. The New York Times, which partnered with production house Vrse.works, offers documentary video about topics like child refugees and the 2016 presidential election in a dedicated NYT VR app. Vice has similarly partnered with Vrse.works, and ABC News worked with Jaunt to record a 360-degree version of a tour in North Korea. So far, the AP has partnered with a VR studio called RYOT, whose past work includes a short film about the April 2015 earthquake in Nepal.

 

 

Blippar’s new augmented reality app is supposed to recognize any object you point it at (video) — from recode.net by Lauren Goode

Excerpt:

But it’s safe to say that augmented reality is coming into a new phase: The contextual information being supplied is getting smarter, and people are gradually becoming more aware of the capabilities of AR and virtual reality (some are even excited to wear headsets, if you can believe it). So Blippar, in an effort to evolve along with the rest of the AR world, has just launched a new version of its smartphone app that is supposed to recognize literally any object you point at it — whether it has been “tagged” with an AR code or not.

 

 

 

Meta Unveils Incredible Augmented Reality Headset at TED — from uploadvr.com

Excerpt:

Redwood City-based Meta showed its latest AR glasses live on stage at TED in Vancouver.

The Meta 2 was demonstrated live by CEO Meron Gribetz with a person-to-person “call” showing a hand-off of a 3D model from a holographic person. Gribetz’ perspective was shown through the glasses as he reached out and took a model of a brain — a 3D hologram — from the hands of a colleague he saw projected in front of him.

“We’re all going to be throwing away our external monitors,” Gribetz said.

 

 

 

 

 

Some items from Bryan Alexander:

 

 

Excerpt:

Today’s students expect their entire experience with an institution to mirror what they see from major online retailers and service providers; personalized, supportive and flexible. However, institutions are having to deliver on these heightened expectations with smaller budgets and less capacity to increase prices than ever before.

Scaling is absolutely critical for higher education institutions in today’s marketplace. Through scaling, institutions can “do more with less”—they can meet the sky-high expectations of today’s discerning students while keeping their costs and prices low.

This Feature highlights some of the approaches today’s institutions are taking to achieving scale.

 

 

A new vision for paying for higher education — from usnews.com by Lauren Camera
How do you build the federal student loan system from the ground up?

Excerpt:

As it stands now, the current system for financing higher education is particularly unfair for poor students, many of whom are forced to borrow more money than their wealthier peers, graduate at a much lower rate and go into default at a much higher rate.

To be sure, the average six-year graduation rate for students seeking a bachelor’s degree is 59.4 percent, but a recent survey of more than 1,000 public and private four-year colleges found that only 51 percent of Pell recipients graduate. And at community colleges, only 23 percent of first-time, full-time students ever receive a degree.

 

 

Is it time for colleges to withdraw from their outdated schedules? — from pri.org by Caroline Lester

Excerpt:

We asked a few college grads what they’d like to change about the current system. Their answers spanned from increasing accessibility, to eliminating lectures, to creating greater support services for students at risk of dropping out.

That last point is key: the vast majority of students who start college don’t graduate.

Community college, state schools, and private universities — six-year completion rates are falling. To Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University, this means something is wrong.

Crow believes that the best way to address America’s higher education woes is to lower the cost of a college education while personalizing teaching. He proposes three big changes…

 

 

Credentialing, free tuition top this week’s news — from ecampusnews.com by Laura Devaney

 

 

 

Some items from Jeff Selingo:

JeffSelingo-Feb2016

 

 

A brief excerpt from newsletter from one of Michigan’s Senators, Debbie Stabenow:

62 percent of students in Michigan graduate #InTheRed with student loan debt. A student who graduated from a 4-year Michigan college or university in 2014 owes on average almost $30,000 in loans, making Michigan 9th in the country on average student loan debt.  Student loan debt in the United States is over $1.3 trillion and is the 2nd highest form of consumer debt.

 

 

…and back from March 2015:

 

RethinkingHE-March2015

 

 

 

Finding our voice: Instructional Designers in higher education — from er.educause.edu by Sandra Miller and Gayle Stein

Key Takeaways

  • A New Jersey workshop on instructional design gave attendees the opportunity to learn about instructional designers’ roles at different institutions and brainstorm good ideas, tips and tricks, important contributions to the field, and how to overcome shared challenges.
  • Instructional technologists and video production coordinators also are involved in the instructional design process, helping faculty learn how to use instructional tools.
  • A major challenge for instructional designers is faculty resistance to new pedagogies and deliveries — not just to hybrid and online courses.
  • Institutional acknowledgement of skill acquisition in their professional development can lead faculty to place a higher value on technology integration in teaching and learning.

What Instructional Designers Do
Instructional designers take on a variety of roles. They can be course development focused or technology focused. They can be facilitators, mentors, trainers, collaborators, reviewers, and mediators, and more likely some combination of those. They often have different roles to fill in addition to instructional design: they may supervise computer labs, have responsibility for classroom technology, and/or oversee video production facilities.

The instructional designers who attended the NJEDge.Net Instructional Design Symposium are involved in:

  • Providing both pedagogical and technology training, sometimes simultaneously and sometimes separately
  • Moving courses between learning management systems
  • Creating new online courses or transitioning face-to-face courses to online formats
  • Producing video and other multimedia
  • Supporting a variety of software that faculty want to use to create their courses or
  • Training faculty to teach more effectively using technology
  • Supporting students using LMSs
  • Ensuring that courses meet federal requirements for accessibility
  • Lobbying for funding for faculty who are taking time to create online courses
  • Creating challenging assessments to minimize cheating

Instructional technologists and video production coordinators also are involved in the instructional design process. They help faculty learn how to use instructional tools such as lecture capture, synchronous meetings, asynchronous discussions, collaborative document writing, group work, clickers, learning management systems, video production, and video editing.

 

The instructional designers found that it made a difference in terms of trust and respect accorded them when they sat on the academic side of the house. (Nonetheless, the majority of instructional designers at the symposium report to the IT side and ultimately (usually) to the financial/administrative side, despite their preference for the academic side.)

 

 

A prediction from DSC:
Those institutions who develop and use internal teams of specialists will be the winners in the future.

Below are some of the forces that will reward those institutions who pursue such a strategy in order to design, create, and provide their offerings/services include:

  • The rise of personalized/adaptive learning (data mining, learning analytics are also included in this bullet point)
  • The increased use of artificial intelligence and the development of intelligent systems/assistants/tutoring
  • Higher ed’s need to scale and reduce the going rates/prices of obtaining degrees — yet maintaining quality
  • Rapid technological changes and an ever increasing amount to know as instructional technologists (this is also true with videographers, multimedia developers, copyright experts, and other members of the team)
  • New discoveries and advances w/in the various disciplines — which require faculty members’ focus to stay on top of their disciplines
  • The changing expectations of students, and how they prefer to learn
  • The rise of alternatives to institutions of traditional higher education who, from their very start, develop and use internal teams of specialists (all the more relevant if these alternative organizations obtain the financial backing of the Federal Government)

The trick is how such teams should actually operate so as not to become bottlenecks in keeping the curricula relevant and up-to-date. After all, it takes time and resources to effectively design, create, and deliver blended and/or online courses.

 

 

1 John 4:11 & Zechariah 7:9

1 John 4:11 New International Version (NIV)

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

 

 

Zechariah 7:9 New International Version (NIV)

“This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.

 

 

 

 

Google brings the physical web to your phone — from techweekeurope.co.uk by Michael Moore
Google plans to make your smartphone a portal to the world around you thanks to a new smart browser.

 

 

Excerpt:

Google plans to make your smartphone a portal to the world around you thanks to a new smart browser.

The company’s next version of Chrome for Android, version 49 (currently in beta), will be able to alert users to low-energy beacons near to them, which can then be interacted with for interesting information or offers.

This means that walking past a tube station will send a pop-up alert about the next departure, or vouchers being sent when walking past a favourite shop, which is all part of what Google is calling ‘The Physical Web’.

 

 

DanielChristian-Combining-Digital-Physical-Worlds-Oct2014

 

 

 

Addendum on 2/19/16:

The campus: Where AV meets IoT — from avnetwork.com by Carolyn Heinze

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

At the classroom level, Dey believes that GIoTTO offers the potential for improved audiovisual experiences. “[There is] the use of sensing technology to detect changes in the environment, [where] you may want to change the audiovisual settings in a classroom, to detecting where people are in a classroom to change audiovisual settings, to even detecting: why is my projector not actually projecting on the screen?” he illustrated. This last use case can speed up troubleshooting, therefore decreasing help desk calls, he added. “Building on that, obviously we have tons of seminar rooms and other rooms that are meant for specific audiovisual needs, and you can imagine that putting additional sensing technology in those spaces would enable us to be more creative in understanding how those spaces get used, and how we can improve those spaces at the same time.”

 

 

The Research Pirates of the Dark Web — from theatlantic.com by Kaveh Waddell; with thanks to Faculty Row for this item
After getting shut down late last year, a website that allows free access to paywalled academic papers has sprung back up in a shadowy corner of the Internet.

Excerpt:

There’s a battle raging over whether academic research should be free, and it’s overflowing into the dark web.

Most modern scholarly work remains locked behind paywalls, and unless your computer is on the network of a university with an expensive subscription, you have to pay a fee, often around 30 dollars, to access each paper.

Many scholars say this system makes publishers rich—Elsevier, a company that controls access to more than 2,000 journals, has a market capitalization about equal to that of Delta Airlines—but does not benefit the academics that conducted the research, or the public at large. Others worry that free academic journals would have a hard time upholding the rigorous standards and peer reviews that the most prestigious paid journals are famous for.

 

From DSC:
The article below made me wonder about how beacons might be used within libraries. Some possibilities that came to my mind:

  • That patrons’ devices (such as wearables, smartphones, laptops, and tablets) act as beacons, alerting sensors that another beacon is nearby and to automatically launch a particular app and bring up a particular “page,” video, and/or audio-based file
  • Send patrons personalized recommendations of new content/releases, based upon the items that they’ve checked out in the past or based upon their interests that are stored in the profiles that the library has on record for them
  • Provide information about a certain poster, exhibition, or section of the library — all based on proximity of the patron to the relevant item/space

 

 


 

New mobile app makes using the library more intuitive and experiential — from news.cision.com
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library to pilot a mobile app for the iOS platform that includes a digital library card, easier experience getting to content, and service highlights “beamed” to users’ mobile devices as they move within branches.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

In March, 2016, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library will launch a new and innovative mobile application for the iOS platform, developed by Skookum and funded by an LSTA Project Access and Digitization Grant. This new app is an extension of the Library’s ongoing commitment to serving customers who are increasingly using mobile technology. It includes a pilot to assess the benefits to customers of receiving “push” notifications on their mobile devices informing them of library services as they enter and move about a library branch.

The new mobile app is also designed to work in conjunction with iBeacon technology in order to increase and extend the user experience while inside the library. iBeacon is the name of “indoor proximity system” technology that enables a smart phone or other device to perform actions when in close proximity to an iBeacon device. A mobile app user near one of the installed devices in a library branch can receive personalized notifications to their mobile device. As they enter and move about the branch, they’ll learn about resources, services and programs that may be beneficial to their visit. During the pilot phase, the app will integrate with devices located in three branches: Main Library, ImaginOn and Hickory Grove.

 

 

 

Addendums on 2/19/16:

 

apps-with-estimote-feb2016

 

li-fi-vs-ibeacon-jan2016

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian