What educationally-related affordances might we enjoy from these TV-related developments?

MakingTVMorePersonal-V-NetTV-April2014

 

EducationServiceOfTheFutureApril2014

 

CONTENTS

  • Content discovery and synchronization
    With access to rich data about their subscribers and what they do, operators can improve recommendation, encourage social TV and exploit second screen synchronization.
  • Recordings get more personal
    One of the next big steps in multiscreen TV is giving people access to their personal recordings on every screen. This is the moment for nPVR to finally make its entrance.
  • Evolving the User Experience
    As service providers go beyond household level and address individuals, the role of log-ins or context will become important. There is a place for social TV and big data.
  • The role of audio in personalization
    Audio has a huge impact on how much we enjoy video services. Now it can help to personalize them. ‘Allegiance’ based audio choices are one possibility.
  • Making advertising more targeted
    Addressable advertising is in its infancy but has a bright future, helping to fund the growth of on-demand and multiscreen viewing.

 

Some excerpts from this report:

Good content should be matched by good content discovery , including recommendations. The current state-of -the-art is defined by Netflix.

Today’s TV experience is worlds apart from the one we were talking about even five years ago. We’ve witnessed exponential growth in services such as HD and have moved from a model in which one screen is watched by many, to many screens (and devices) being available to the individual viewer, what is today called TV Everywhere.  Having multiscreen access to content is driving the demand for a more personalised experience, in which the viewer can expect to see what they want, where, and when. While video on-demand (VOD) has been a great method for delivering compelling content to viewers, it is not always a truly seamless TV-like experience, and traditionally has been limited to the living room. The growing demand for the personalised experience is driving seismic change within the TV industry, and we’ve seen great strides made already, with time-shifted TV and nPVR as just two examples of how we in the industry can deliver content in the ways viewers want to watch. The next step is to move towards more advanced content discovery, effectively creating a personalised channel or playlist for the individual user.

As the tools become available to deliver personalized experiences to consumers, content owners can better create experiences that leverage their content. For example, for sports with multiple points of action, like motor racing, multiple camera angles and audio feeds will allow fans to follow the action that is relevant to their favourite racing team. And for movies, access to additional elements such as director’s commentaries, which have been available on Blu-ray discs for some time, can be made available over broadcast networks.

 

 

From DSC:
Some words and phrases that come to my mind:

  • Personalization.
  • Data driven.
  • Content discovery and recommendation engines (which could easily relate to educational playlists)
  • Training on demand
  • Learning agents
  • Web-based learner profiles
  • Learning hubs
  • What MOOCs morph into
  • More choice. More control.
  • Virtual tutoring
  • Interactivity and participation
  • Learning preferences
  • Lifelong learning
  • Reinventing oneself
  • Streams of content
  • Learning from The Living [Class] Room

 

The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

 

 

 

streams-of-content-blue-overlay

 

Tapping M2M: The Internet of Things — from zdnet.com

Excerpt:

The rise of objects that connect themselves to the internet — from cars to heart monitors to stoplights — is unleashing a wave of new possibilities for data gathering, predictive analytics, and IT automation. We discuss how to tap these nascent solutions.

 

TappingM2M-ZDNET-March2014

 

 

 

From DSC:
Several items have recently been written concerning learning ecosystems, prompted in large part by the
Ecosystem 2014 Conference.

 

Ecosystem2014ElearningGuild-March2014

 

Ecosystem 2014 – General Impressions — from in-the-middle-of-the-curve.blogspot.com by Wendy Wickham

Excerpt:

Because a Learning Ecosystem is an evolving thing. Like a forest or any other organic system.
This is NOT a “build once, maintain for eternity” thing.

 

The Ever-Changing Ecosystem — from in-the-middle-of-the-curve.blogspot.com by Wendy Wickham

Excerpt:

Brian Chapman led an introductory talk with his views on Learning Ecosystems and what they are.

What Brian hinted at, yet what jumped out at me when he showed Xerox’s Learning Ecosystem example, was that the Learning Ecosystem can (and should) encompass ALL of the tools of the workplace where people collaborate, find information, communicate.

This assumption that trainers need a “special” environment is where folks are going wrong.
This is why I have been hearing so much noise about LMSs and Talent Management Systems being “the ecosystem.’  No no no no no….

They are a part.  And a small part.

 

On Ecosystems and Learning Strategy — from learningjournal.wordpress.com by Catherine Lombardozzi

Excerpt:

The eLearning Guild is hosting an important series of conversations this week at Ecosystem 2014. Learning solutions have been expanding way beyond traditional L&D outputs for years now, and learning professionals are working to figure out the best ways to strategize more robust recommendations that include performance support, informal learning, social learning, experiential learning, developmental programs and more. These strategies present a variety of challenges in terms of design, curation, and technology, and many of us are working on how to best bring everything together in support of performance and capability development.

Learning Ecosystem Defined
I appreciate that several of the speakers seem to converge on a definition of a learning ecosystem (or performance ecosystem) as a combination of people, content, process, and technology to enable learning.  I also agree that a metaphor that suggests life and growth is important – we “grow” an ecosystem (more organic), we don’t “build” it (suggests something more technical).

 

#LSCon day 1, Leapfrogging serious lean agile innovation performance ecosystems for 90% — from kasperspiro.com by Kasper Spiro

Excerpt:

Ecosystem
This year there is a second conference next to Learning solutions: Ecosystems 2014. It is more on a strategic level. You have to have a special upgrade in order to attend the sessions, build the guild was kind enough to allow me to party crash a session. The session I attended was about ecosystems and  was presented by Lance Dublin. For him the term ecosystem was also new, so he took us on a journey to discover it with him. I got from it that an ecosystem is a living and ever changing thing that enables and facilitates learning. It should contain four elements: Process, people, Technology and content. So it is not an architecture (that is part of the ecosystem) but the whole thing. The reason we have to thing about this is the increasing speed of things, our old ways (LMS learning with courses) do not work anymore. We need something that delivers Performance at the speed of need. He gave s an impressive list of opportunities/changes, developments that should be part of an ecosystem: Mobile, Moocs, Cloud, social learning, serious games, Big data, personalization and much more. He also defined the goal of an ecosystem: Performance.

 

My recap of day 2 at #LSCon Big data, tools and the learning eco system — from by Kasper Spiro 

Excerpt:

Learning performance analysis. Aligning the eco system with the business.

They had a lot more on the ecosystem, but I will keep that for later.  I will end this session description with: You have to cultivate dynamic learners that can learn at the speed of change. Love that.

 

 


 

Additional thoughts from DSC:
When I was looking to create some graphics for this Learning Ecosystems blog, I was searching for a graphic that attempted to illustrate interconnecting nodes.  In my interpretation of a learning ecosystem, such nodes could be people, experiences, content, tools, processes, and other items that help us to learn and grow. I wanted the graphic to speak to something that was living…ever changing.  So I used this:

 

learning-ecosystems-nodes-DanielChristian

 

But here’s another example of a potential graphic that I just ran across and modified a bit (per an item from Gerd Leonhard):

 

DChristian-PotentialGraphic3PeoplesEcosystems-March2014

 

Bye bye second screen? The InAIR lets you browse the web and watch TV all in one place — from techcrunch.com by Colleen Taylor (@loyalelectron)

Excerpt:

Nowadays, many people browse the web at the same time that they’re watching TV — the phenomenon is called the “second screen.” But a new gadget called InAIR from a startup called SeeSpace wants to bring our attention back to just one screen by putting the best of the laptop, the smart phone, and the TV all together in one place.

 

InAIR-ByeByeSecondScreen-March2014

 

From DSC:
I like what Nam Do, the CEO of InAir is saying about one’s attention and how it’s divided when you are using a second screen.  That is, when you are trying to process some information from the large screen and some information from the smaller/more mobile screen on your lap or desk.  You keep looking up…then looking down. Looking up…then looking down.  By putting information in closer proximity in one’s visual channel, perhaps processing information will be more intuitive and less mentally taxing.

This fits with an app I saw yesterday called Spritz.

 

spritz-march2014

In this posting, it said:

To understand Spritz, you must understand Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP). RSVP is a common speed-reading technique used today. However, RSVP was originally developed for psychological experiments to measure human reactions to content being read. When RSVP was created, there wasn’t much digital content and most people didn’t have access to it anyway. The internet didn’t even exist yet.  With traditional RSVP, words are displayed either left-aligned or centered. Figure 1 shows an example of a center-aligned RSVP, with a dashed line on the center axis.

When you read a word, your eyes naturally fixate at one point in that word, which visually triggers the brain to recognize the word and process its meaning. In Figure 1, the preferred fixation point (character) is indicated in red. In this figure, the Optimal Recognition Position (ORP) is different for each word. For example, the ORP is only in the middle of a 3-letter word. As the length of a word increases, the percentage that the ORP shifts to the left of center also increases. The longer the word, the farther to the left of center your eyes must move to locate the ORP.

word_positioning_blog3

In the Science behind this app, it says (emphasis DSC):

Reading Basics
Traditional reading involves publishing text in lines and moving your eyes sequentially from word to word. For each word, the eye seeks a certain point within the word, which we call the “Optimal Recognition Point” or ORP. After your eyes find the ORP, your brain starts to process the meaning of the word that you’re viewing. With each new word, your eyes move, called a “saccade”, and then your eyes seek out the ORP for that word. Once the ORP is found, processing the word for meaning and context occurs and your eyes move to the next word. When your eyes encounter punctuation within and between sentences, your brain is prompted to assemble all of the words that you have read and processes them into a coherent thought.

When reading, only around 20% of your time is spent processing content. The remaining 80% is spent physically moving your eyes from word to word and scanning for the next ORP. With Spritz we help you get all that time back.

 

So, if the convergence of the television, the telephone, and the computer continues, I think Nam Do’s take on things might be very useful. If I were watching a lecture on the large screen for example, I could get some additional information in closer proximity to the professor.  If the content I wanted to see was more closely aligned with each other, perhaps my mind could take in more things…more efficiently.

 

CloserProximity-DanielChristian-LearningFromLivingClassRoom

 

 

The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

 

TVs are becoming the next app battleground — from by Emily Adler

Excerpt:

The app store phenomenon, centered on smartphones and tablets, has been the biggest story in software for the past five years.

Its next logical destination: the living room, via smart TVs and set-top boxes connected to the Internet.

  • The smart TV app revolution is inevitable: People spend four hours in front of their TVs in the U.S., and 63% of all global ad spending goes to TVs. The old guard, represented by cable and entertainment conglomerates, will not be able to fend off improvements like those that apps are bringing to mobile phones.
    .
  • The smart TV revolution will not just be led by new TVs with built-in Internet connections, it will also result from consumer adoption of less expensive game consoles or set-top boxes like Roku and Apple TV, which transform traditional TVs into smart TVs with access to app stores. At least 20% of U.S. consumers already have their TVs connected in one of these ways.

 

From DSC:

  1. Keep an eye on the convergence of the telephone, the television, and the computer.
    .
  2. Start thinking of ways that you could provide learning/educationally-based experiences with second screen apps. What would that experience look and act like?
    .
  3. If such “channels” come to fruition — and happen to coincide with MOOCs and advances in cognitive computing (such as IBM’s Watson) — the word disruption comes to mind.
    .
  4. The trick, then, will be to offer streams of content that are relevant, and up-to-date.
    .
  5. Such a platform could be used in learning hubs throughout the world, as well as in hybrid/blended classrooms — while also addressing lifelong learners from their living rooms.
    .
  6. Such a platform could take Communities of Practice to an entirely new level.

 

 

The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

 

 

streams-of-content-blue-overlay

 

 

 

Addendum/also see:

 

IoE-SmartTVs-Feb2014

 

 

 

Free online university receives accreditation, in time for graduating class of 7  — from nytimes.com by Tamar Lewin

Excerpt:

Just in time for its first graduates, the University of the People, a tuition-free four-year-old online institution built to reach underserved students around the world, announced Thursday that it had received accreditation.

“This is every exciting, especially for the students who will graduate in April, with a degree from an accredited institution,” said Shai Reshef, the Israeli entrepreneur who invested millions of dollars to create the nonprofit university. “This has been the big question for anyone who thought about enrolling. We have 1.2 million supporters on Facebook, I think second only to Harvard, and every day, there is discussion about when we will be accredited.”

Now, with accreditation from the Distance Education and Training Council, a national accrediting group, Mr. Reshef said, the university will expand significantly. He expects to have 5,000 students by 2016.

 

Also see:

 

MassiveOpenOnlineForcesEconomist-Feb2014

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Two big forces underpin a university’s costs. The first is the need for physical proximity. Adding students is expensive—they require more buildings and instructors—and so a university’s marginal cost of production is high. That means that even in a competitive market, where price converges towards marginal cost, modern education is dear.

MOOCs work completely differently. Alex Tabarrok, an economist at George Mason University and co-founder of an online-education site, Marginal Revolution University, reckons the most salient feature of the online course is its rock-bottom marginal cost: teaching additional students is virtually free.

 

The connected TV landscape: Why smart TVs and streaming gadgets are conquering the living room

The connected TV landscape: Why smart TVs and streaming gadgets are conquering the living room — from businessinsider.com.au by Mark Hoelzel

 

In the connected TV world, an app is analogous to a TV channel.

 

Some key points:

  • In total, there will be more than 759 million televisions connected to the Internet worldwide by 2018, more than doubling from 307.4 million at year-end 2013.
  • Globally, shipments of smart TVs will reach a tipping point in 2015, when they will overtake shipments of traditional TVs.
  • Two tendencies dominate the connected TV ecosystem: closed and open approaches.
  • Despite platform fragmentation, HTML5 offers at least a faint hope for increased unification between connected TVs, just as it does on mobile.
  • How will developers and operating system operators monetise smart TV apps? Media downloads, subscriptions and — to a much lesser degree — advertisements will drive the dollars. Smart TV platform operators have begun experimenting with ads.

 

GlobalNumberOfConnectedTVs

 

 

From DSC:
If in a connected TV world, an app is analogous to a TV channel…then I say let’s bring on the educationally-related, interactive, multimedia-based apps!

 

The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

 

A Cambrian moment — A special report from The Economist, by Ludwig Siegele
Cheap and ubiquitous building blocks for digital products and services have caused an explosion in startups. Ludwig Siegele weighs its significance.

 

Excerpt:

This special report will argue that something similar is now happening in the virtual realm: an entrepreneurial explosion. Digital startups are bubbling up in an astonishing variety of services and products, penetrating every nook and cranny of the economy. They are reshaping entire industries and even changing the very notion of the firm. “Software is eating the world,” says Marc Andreessen, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist.

This digital feeding frenzy has given rise to a global movement. Most big cities, from Berlin and London to Singapore and Amman, now have a sizeable startup colony (“ecosystem”). Between them they are home to hundreds of startup schools (“accelerators”) and thousands of co-working spaces where caffeinated folk in their 20s and 30s toil hunched over their laptops. All these ecosystems are highly interconnected, which explains why internet entrepreneurs are a global crowd. Like medieval journeymen, they travel from city to city, laptop not hammer in hand. A few of them spend a semester with “Unreasonable at Sea”, an accelerator on a boat which cruises the world while its passengers code. “Anyone who writes code can become an entrepreneur—anywhere in the world,” says Simon Levene, a venture capitalist in London.

 

Also see:

  • Required reading: The Economist’s Special Report on Tech Startups — from by Ryan Lawler
    Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
    But where The Economist’s report could be useful is in helping those of us who follow this world every day to see the forest for the trees. In so doing, it we could possibly better understand the broader global impact that the spread of technology is having, how we’ve gotten here, and what the big trends are driving us forward. What it really means when software eats the world, as it were.

 

 

From DSC:
How might the explosion of digital startups affect curricula in higher education? What should those of us working in higher education learn from this?
 

Mesmerizing fairy tale on the power of transmedia storytelling — from frametales.com by DRAFTFCB Madrid and posted by Filip Coertjens; with thanks to the Scoop on this from Laura Fleming (@NMHS_lms)

Cinderella2Dot0-Jan2014

 

BBC iWonder: Introducing Interactive Guides — from bbc.co.uk by Andrew Pipes

See this piece as an example of what they’ve come up with.

 

interactive guides_3_screens.jpg

Interactive guides on three screens

The BBC article also pointed to a bit older,
but very creative piece from the NYT entitled:
Snow Fall

 

Transmedia Story Stream: Don’t just read a book–play it! — from bleedingcool.com by Dan Wickline; with thanks to Digital Rocking Chair for the Scoop on this

Excerpt:

Instead of downloading a static book, Transmedia Story Stream allows readers to log into story worlds filled with fans, activities, and extended narrative that can include video, audio, casual video games or live gatherings. And just like in a video game, the book will award fans for participating in the story. Fans can earn points and badges, collect digital goodies to share, earn money for spreading word of mouth, participate in a live chat with an author or illustrator right in the book or win a phone call with a character in a story.

 

TSS_assured_destruction

 

Transmedia Story Stream

 

TransmediaStoryStream-Jan2014

 

Also see:

 

CleverWayToReopenRennovatedSpace-Amsterdam-April2013

 

Education is holding Millennials back — from blog.clomedia.com, interview with Donna Harris

Excerpt:

If you ask employers whether millenials are prepared for the workforce, there is no shortage of concern.

Being able to take charge of one’s own career, question the status quo, initiate change, be creative, solve problems, operate independently and be entrepreneurial will become increasingly crucial for career success.

Today’s workers will have dozens of jobs in their lifetimes and need a vastly different toolkit to be successful — the ability to question the status quo, initiate change, be creative, solve problems, operate independently and be entrepreneurial become crucial.

This massive change from a transactional, hierarchical, closed economy to one that is global, networked, transparent and entrepreneurial is a major challenge to our overall education system. We have large institutions, degrees take years to complete, students invest tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars, and yet employers are still saying that graduates are not well-suited for their needs. We have to rethink what we’re teaching and how we’re teaching it, with a fundamental understanding of the global economic shift we’re in the midst of.

 

The first School in the Cloud opens in the UK — from blog.ted.com by Sarah Schoengold; with thanks to Lisa Duty (@LisaDuty1) for  posting this resource on Twitter

 

A group of students explores a question at the Killingworth School in the Cloud.

A group of students explores a question at the Killingworth School in the Cloud,
as a volunteer member of the “Granny Cloud” gives them guidance from the screen.

“SOLE” –> Stands for “Self-Organized Learning Environment.”

 

Excerpt:

Sugata Mitra has opened the doors of the world’s first School in the Cloud.

Located inside George Stephenson High School in Killingworth, England, this one-room learning lab is a space where students can embark on their own learning adventures, exploring whatever questions most intrigue them. Students even designed the interior of the space — which has colorful beanbags scattered throughout and (very appropriately) fluffy clouds painted on the walls.

The Killingworth School in the Cloud is run by a committee of 12-year-old students, who manage a schedule to let different classes and groups use the lab in time slots before, during and after school.

 

Also see:

SelfOrganizedLearningEnvironments-Dec2013

 

Also see:

 

 


 

The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

 


 

 

 

 

Addendum:

 

Top 10 Characteristics of a 21st Century Classroom

Top 10 Characteristics of a 21st Century Classroom

Excerpt:

As education advances with the help of technology, it becomes very clear that the modern day classroom needs are very different from the conventional classroom needs.

The evolved 21st century classroom is a productive environment in which students can develop the skills they will require in the workplace and teachers are facilitators of their learning. The focus of a 21st century classroom is on students experiencing the environment they will enter as modern day workers and developing their higher order thinking skills, effective communication skills, collaboration skills, making them adept with using technology and all other skills that they will need in the 21st century workplace.

 

 

From DSC:
Can we THINK BIG?

 

ThinkBiggerYet-DanielChristian-August282013

 

 

Also see:

  • Moonshot Thinking
    Moonshots live in the gray area between audacious technology and pure science fiction. Instead of a mere 10% gain, a moonshot aims for a 10x improvement over what currently exists. The combination of a huge problem, a radical solution to that problem, and the breakthrough technology that just might make that solution possible, is the essence of a moonshot.
    .
  • SolveForX.com

 

SolveForX-Dec2013

 

 

 

Pharrell Williams debuts 24-hour, interactive music video for ‘Happy’ — from theverge.com by Amar Toor; with thanks to Mr. Colton Credelle for this item

 

pharrell

Excerpt:

On Thursday, at the stroke of midnight, pop impresario Pharrell Williams debuted the video for his new single, “Happy.” It’s 24 hours long.

The video, available for streaming on 24hoursofhappy.com, features various dancers lip-synching to Williams’ single throughout the course of a day in Los Angeles. The four-minute, upbeat song is played on loop, with each cycle introducing a new dancer (or dancers) at a different location. Viewers can fast-forward or move backward using a clock interface that hovers over the display, and share specific moments on Twitter or Facebook. The dancers, meanwhile, include both anonymous extras and celebrities like Magic Johnson, Steve Carrell, and of course, Williams himself.

 

Also see:

MusicVideoGoesInteractive-Dec2013

 

 

From DSC:
How might this relate to educationally-related videos?

And for those of you in marketing and retail out there, could be some sharp/beneficial applications for you all here.

 

 

IBM’s Jeopardy-winning supercomputer will power a ‘cognitive, expert personal shopper’ app next year — from businessinsider.com by Dylan Love

 

ibm watson

 

Excerpt:

The app calls upon Watson’s ability to understand the nuances of human language and uncover answers from Big Data. Consumers who use Fluid’s app will interact with rich media and dialogue with Watson, as their newfound “cognitive, expert personal shopper.

The Fluid app incorporates the information users share and questions they ask to help them make smart, satisfying purchases by putting a knowledgeable sales associate in the hands of consumers, on demand.

 

From DSC:
I am not saying that we are looking at a future whereby computers and algorithms will replace teachers, professors, trainers, coaches, mentors, etc.   However, I am saying that tools and technologies are in (and have been in) development that will be hugely beneficial in helping us stay current with our knowledge bases — and will help us remain marketable in a world that left the linear trajectory of change a while back and continues to move at an exponential rate.

 

Phase I:
How might this be applied to recommendation engines for topics/courses/modules/streams of content to explore if you are trying to learn about the most recent information on XYZ?

Phase II:
How might this be applied to actual assessments for assignments, essays, etc.?

Phase III:
???

The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

 

 

Learning from the Living (Class) Room [Grush & Christian]

CampusTechnology-12-5-13-DSCLivingClassRoom

 

Learning in ‘the Living [Class] Room’
From campustechnology.com by Mary Grush and Daniel Christian
Convergent technologies have the ability to support streams of low-cost, personalized content, both at home and in college.

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian