Per Jack Du Mez at Calvin College, use this app to randomly call on your students — while instilling a game-like environment into your active learning classroom (ALC)!
Description:
Randomly is an app made specifically for teachers and professors. It allows educators to enter their students into individual classes. They can then use the Random Name Selector feature to randomly call on a student to answer a question by one of two ways: Truly random, where repeated names are allowed, or a one pass – where all students are called once before they are called again. The device you’re using will even call out (vocally) the student’s name for you!
This app can also be used to randomly generate groups for you. You can split your class into groups by number of groups or by number of students per group. It intelligently knows what to do with any remaining students too!
This app supports Apple Watch, so you can call on your students with the use of your Apple Watch!
From DSC: In the future, given facial and voice recognition software, I could see an Augmented Reality (AR)-based application whereby a faculty member or a teacher could see icons hovering over the students — letting the faculty member/teacher know who has been called upon recently and who hasn’t been called upon recently (with settings to change the length of time for this type of tracking — i.e., this student has been called upon in this class session, or in the last week, or in the last month, etc.).
College students across the country — from the University of Southern California to the University of Minnesota to Southern Methodist University — are also experimenting with virtual reality applications via clubs, design labs and hackathons.
The tech industry is taking note.
Among the bigger showcases for the technology took place last month, when the University of Southern California’s Virtual Reality Club (VRSC) hosted its first annual Virtual Reality Festival and Demo Day, a showcase of projects and panels with The Walt Disney Company as its title sponsor.
Students traveled from the University of California-San Diego, UCLA, Chapman University, Loyola Marymount University and the University of Colorado-Boulder to attend the fest. The judges were industry professionals from companies including NVIDIA, Google, Maker Studios and Industrial Light and Magic’s X Lab.
Some $25,000 in prizes were split among winners in four categories: 360 Live-Action Videos, 360 Animation, Interactive VR Games and Immersive Technology/Augmented Reality (AR). VR/AR categories ranged from health care to games, journalism, interactive design and interpretive dance.
We first launched support for 360-degree videos back in March 2015. From musicians to athletes to brands, creators have done some incredible things with this technology. Now, they’ll be able to do even more to bring fans directly into their world, with 360-degree live streaming. And after years of live streaming Coachella for fans around the world who can’t attend the festival, this year we’re bringing you the festival like never before by live streaming select artist performances in 360 degrees this weekend. Starting today, we’re also launching spatial audio for on-demand YouTube videos. Just as watching a concert in 360 degrees can give you an unmatched immersive experience, spatial audio allows you to listen along as you do in real life, where depth, distance and intensity all play a role. Try out this playlist on your Android device.
CWRU was among the first in higher education to begin working with HoloLens, back in 2014. They’ve since discovered new ways the tech could help transform education. One of their current focuses is changing how students experience medical-science courses.
“This is a curriculum that hasn’t drastically changed in more than 100 years, because there simply hasn’t been another way,” says Mark Griswold, the faculty director for HoloLens at CWRU. “The mixed-reality of the HoloLens has the potential to revolutionize this education by bringing 3D content into the real world.”
“Imagine a physics class where you’re able to show how friction works. Imagine being able to experience gravity on Mars — by moving around virtually,” he says. “VR can make science, technology and art come alive.”
VR will soon become an open canvas for educators to create learning experiences. Eventually, fitting VR into the curriculum will be limited only by an instructor’s imagination and budget, says Christopher Sessums, the program director of research and evaluation at Johns Hopkins School of Education.
Burleson and and co-author Armanda Lewis imagine such technology in a year 2041 Holodeck, which Burleson’s NYU-X Lab is currently developing in prototype form, in collaboration with colleagues at NYU Courant, Tandon, Steinhardt, and Tisch.
“The “Holodeck” will support a broad range of transdisciplinary collaborations, integrated education, research, and innovation by providing a networked software/hardware infrastructure that can synthesize visual, audio, physical, social, and societal components,” said Burleson.
It’s intended as a model for the future of cyberlearning experience, integrating visual, audio, and physical (haptics, objects, real-time fabrication) components, with shared computation, integrated distributed data, immersive visualization, and social interaction to make possible large-scale synthesis of learning, research, and innovation.
…British television presenter Diane-Louise Jordan will guide students on a tour through Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, including his childhood home and school; and the bard’s view of London, including the famous Globe Theatre where his plays were performed. (Shakespeare actually died April 23, which this year falls on a Saturday.)
Also see:
You can register to see the recording on that page as well.
Film Students To Compete in Virtual Reality Production Contest — from campustechnology.com by Michael Hart One of the first ever competitions involving virtual reality production will challenge college film students to create their own 360-degree films.
HBO and Discovery Communications announced today that they are partnering with 3D-graphics startup OTOY — both companies taking equity stakes. The partnership marks an effort by the two networks to evolve entertainment experiences beyond two dimensional television. Virtual reality, augmented reality, and even holograms were all highlighted as areas OTOY would help its traditional media partners explore.
TV knows it must push toward virtual and augmented reality
Apple was granted a patent today for a type of live interactive augmented reality (AR) video to be used in future iOS devices, indicating the company may soon enter the AR/VR game. The patent does not appear to be directly related to an AR/VR headset, but is certainly a step in that direction.
The patent describes Apple’s planned augmented reality technology as layered, live AR video that users can interact with via touchscreen. In the live video, objects can be identified and an information layer can be generated for them.
“In some implementations,” the patent text notes, “the information layer can include annotations made by a user through the touch sensitive surface.”
Virtual & Augmented Reality: Blooloop’s Guide to VR and AR — from blooloop.com Visitor attractions are racing to embrace Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies. But what are the potential opportunities and possible pitfalls of VR and AR?
A New Morning — by Magic Leap; posted on 4/19/16
Welcome to a new way to start your day. Shot directly through Magic Leap technology on April 8, 2016 without use of special effects or compositing.
Hyper Vision — from wired.com by Peter Yang
The world’s hottest startup isn’t located in Silicon Valley—it’s in suburban Florida. KEVIN KELLY explores what Magic Leap’s mind-bending technology tells us about the future of virtual reality.
EON Reality, an Irvine-based virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) company, has just launched a free app that aims to help teachers and students learn with interactive, “gamified” lessons.
EON Experience AVR, an AR- and VR-based learning library, features 3D learning environments and objects with functions such as exploded views, grab, drag, drop, rotate and snap, as well as the ability to view annotations and other attached media. A play mode consists of guided challenges and knowledge paths with continuous assessment (tests and quizzes). Users can learn by doing with identify, locate, build, disassemble and dissect capabilities.
Two days of Facebook’s F8 Conference have come and gone, so here’s a look back at all the things you may have missed from the event. To learn more about each topic, click the links below for full stories.
In a wide-ranging keynote April 12, CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out the company’s 10-year plan to “Give everyone the power to share anything with anyone.” To do so, Facebook plans to move far beyond its original role as a social network. The firm aims to launch new virtual reality projects, beam Internet across the world using drones and unleash complex artificial-intelligence bots that can fulfill our every digital need.
Before all that can happen, Facebook has to deal with the here and now of improving its current products. On that front, the company made several announcements that will reshape the way people and brands use Facebook and its constellation of apps this year.
Here’s a breakdown of Facebook’s biggest F8 announcements.
When Facebook bought Oculus VR in 2014 for $2 billion, many observers wondered what the world’s largest social networking company wanted with a virtual reality company whose then-unreleased system was pretty much all about single-user experiences. Today at F8, Facebook’s annual developers conference in San Francisco, the company showed off some of the most fleshed-out examples of how it sees VR as a rich social tool. During his F8 keynote address, CTO Mike Schroepfer talked at length about what Facebook explicitly calls “social VR.”
One of the key knocks on virtual reality, the gamer-heavy industry Facebook is betting big on, is that wearing a headset intended to block out the real world in favor of a virtual one isn’t a very social activity. Facebook, an inherently social company, thinks it can change that.
At its F8 developer conference on Wednesday Facebook demoed what it calls “social VR,” which is exactly what it sounds like: Connecting two or more real people in a virtual world.
During the second day keynote of Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference, Oculus showed off an entirely new way to get social in VR.
On stage, Facebook’s CTO Mike Schroepfer showed how 360-degree photos can instantly be shared with a friend in VR, with 360 photos appearing as handheld spheres. You can virtually grab the floating sphere and smash it against your face, you will then be instantly teleported into the content of the spherical photo.
[On 4/12/16], Facebook opened up Instant Articles to all publishers. If you don’t know, Instant Articles are Facebook’s new way to natively load articles within the app using an adapted RSS feed. These native articles, which have a lightning bolt in the top right corner, load in half a second?—?10x faster than if user was to click out to a website. From what I’ve seen so far, they really do load instantaneously and have a great layout and user experience. And if you’re paying attention, you’ll understand that this is their third push for native media consumption: first photos, then videos, and now written content.
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However, as of [4/13/16], Instant Articles become available to anybody with a Facebook page and a blog. This is a key opportunity for small blogs and publications to get ahead of the game and really understand how best to use the new product.
… Has Facebook been able to achieve what AOL could have a generation ago? By that I mean: Has Facebook become a layer on top of the Internet itself?
Combining Augmented Reality into 3D Printing makes it “Animated Physical Models.” Combining new technology to grab the attention people will change the whole business meeting world.
Highlights:
Use of 3D models vs. static drawings on paper
Use of augmented reality to show things that aren’t really there…yet
Technology will not solve the problems that healthcare faces globally today. And the human touch alone is not enough any more, therefore a new balance is needed between using disruptive innovations but still keeping the human interaction between patients and caregivers. Here are 10 technologies and trends that could enable this.
Leap Motion: Orion (video) Reach into the future with Orion, Leap Motion’s new hand tracking software that’s built from the ground up for virtual reality.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nearpod Inc., a startup that makes education software used in 10,000 schools across the U.S., is launching virtual-reality lessons on [2/11/16]. Here’s their pitch: instead of requiring schools to invest heavily in headsets and other hardware, Nearpod’s approach relies on students using their own devices or district-supplied electronics.
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Students already use tablets and netbooks in the classroom, to share text, record and watch videos, and conduct research. Virtual reality – the technology that lets people experience immersive, 360-degree images – would take technology in the classroom to the next level. Google parent Alphabet Inc.experimented with virtual reality in the classroom last September, a temporary project using its cardboard viewer.
Virtual-reality proponents argue students engage more with a lesson when it is interactive, such as virtual “field trips” to far places.
When today’s kids grow up, they will no doubt mock our penchant for pocket screens. VR and AR could be the new normal.
In this week’s Trending we’re looking at the wave of new schemes bringing virtual reality and augmented reality into the classroom as a tool for students. Oculus and Jaunt just started working with universities to offer classes on VR filmmaking. Google has been extremely vocal about bringing VR into the classroom, while Microsofts HoloLens has shown off augmented reality demos for college anatomy classes.
The educational benefits of both VR and AR are immense. VR allows students to explore other worlds or relive moments in history through virtual field trips, whereas AR can provide instructions with overlays, maps and more.
Here’s the ideas tearing up tech classrooms as well as who needs to go back to the chalkboard.
Got a presentation coming up? Between keeping your thoughts straight, sticking to the time limit and braving an audience, public speaking gigs can be daunting.
A new Android app for Google Cardboard aims to help you get over your fears by putting you in front of a virtual audience.
Public Speaking for Cardboard lets you choose between two locations — a small conference room and a large auditorium — with animated audience members and ambient noise to simulate the experience of speaking on stage.
Augmented Reality (AR) technologies are making some huge leaps into the educational landscape transforming the way teaching and learning are taking place. Educators and teachers are increasingly adopting AR technologies in their classrooms. As extensions of the physical world, AR technologies amplify its dimensions and bring life to its static constituents. There are a variety of ways you can use AR in your class. For instance, you can use them to take your students into virtual field trips, visit world museums, animate and enrich textbook content and many more.
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Today we are sharing with you some interesting AR apps specifically curated for science teachers. These apps can make science learning more fun, engaging and challenging. Enjoy!
The use of augmented reality (AR) technology in education is on the raise. Some speculate that the year 2016 will be an AR year par excellence. The basic premise behind augmented reality is the extension of the physical world to include components of the virtual world. The potential of augmented reality in teaching and learning is huge. Our AR section here in EdTech and mLearning features a number of key resources to help you better understand how to include AR technologies in your class. We are also adding this handy collection of what we think are some of the best iPad AR apps to use with your students. Check them out below and as always share with us your feedback. Enjoy!
Virtual reality is getting a lot better at simulating the real world. Just how good is it going to get, and how fast? And what’s the best way to deploy the technology for consumers and businesses alike? The Wall Street Journal’s Geoffrey A. Fowler spoke to Jeremy Bailenson, co-founder of Strivr Labs and director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University. Here are edited excerpts of their discussion.
As a white male, I would be transformed into a woman of color. I would then experience prejudice firsthand, meaning another avatar would walk in the room and would say horrible things to me about my race and about my gender. For about 12 years now, we’ve been running study after study showing that feeling discrimination firsthand while walking a mile in someone else’s shoes is a better way to change attitudes and behavior.
The New Media Consortium (NMC) and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) are jointly releasing the NMC Horizon Report > 2016 Higher Education Edition at the 2016 ELI Annual Meeting. This 13th edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, an ongoing research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education.
The report identifies six key trends, six significant challenges, and six important developments in educational technology across three adoption horizons spanning over the next one to five years, giving campus leaders, educational technologists, and faculty a valuable guide for strategic technology planning. The report provides higher education leaders with in-depth insight into how trends and challenges are accelerating and impeding the adoption of educational technology, along with their implications for policy, leadership, and practice.
Augmented reality transforms biopharma — from genengnews.com by Gail Dutto Shed the rose-colored glasses, says AFS, and put on smart glasses to achieve real-time oversight
Excerpt:
AFS’s technology combines smart glasses with biopharma-specific software to let people essentially see through others’ eyes. The software also overlays tags on equipment and lets wearers access data in their glasses, leaving their hands free for other tasks.
These capabilities improve outcomes from remote troubleshooting and training, enhance situational awareness among maintenance personnel and operators, and increase efficiency for researchers and other technical employees.
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“The best technicians can only be in so many places. Now a novice with smart glasses can collaborate with engineers or seasoned technicians for better service.”
Enabling an engineer to see in real time — on a phone or tablet — what an operator is seeing brings immediate technical expertise to the problem without having to call an engineer onsite in the middle of the night or engage in the ambiguity of phone or text messages. And, if the engineer circles a panel or button on a tablet or smart phone, the operator sees that in the glasses, minimizing the chance of mistakes and reducing the need for emergency site visits, Pignata asserts.
Among the use cases Merel listed for AR going forward is “a-commerce,” a new term that he called a “cousin of e-commerce and m-commerce” and which Digi-Capital forecasts to account for a significant share of all AR revenues.Presumably, a-commerce would mean that an AR device like smart glasses would project information like promotions in nearby retail stores or detailed product content along with the ability to make purchases directly from an AR app.
Completely realistic holograms, that will be generated when you pass a sensor, are coming to the high street.
Some will be used to advertise, others will have the ability to interact with you, and show you information. In shops, when you find a shirt you like, the technology is now here to bring up a virtual clothes rail showing you that same shirt in a variety of colours, and even tell you which ones are in stock, all using the same jaw-dropping imaging we have previously only experienced wearing 3D glasses at the cinema.
Holograms, augmented reality – which superimposes technology over the real world – and virtual reality (VR), its totally immersive counterpart, are tipped to be the hot trends in retail next year. Pioneers of the technology are set to find increasingly entertaining, useful and commercially viable ways of using it to tempt people into bricks-and-mortar stores, and fight back against the rise of online shopping.
WaveOptics’ technology could bring physical objects, such as books, to life in new ways
Completely realistic holograms, that will be generated when you pass a sensor, are coming to the high street.
From DSC: What might our learning spaces offer us in the not-too-distant future when:
Sensors are built into most of our wearable devices?
Our BYOD-based devices serve as beacons that use machine-to-machine communications?
When artificial intelligence (AI) gets integrated into our learning spaces?
When the Internet of Things (IoT) trend continues to pick up steam?
Below are a few thoughts/ideas on what might be possible.
A faculty member walks into a learning space, the sensors/beacons communicate with each other, and the sections of lights are turned down to certain levels while the main display is turned on and goes to a certain site (the latter part occurred because the beacons had already authenticated the professor and had logged him or her into the appropriate systems in the background). Personalized settings per faculty member.
A student walks over to Makerspace #1 and receives a hologram that relays some 30,000-foot level instructions on what the initial problem to be solved is about. This has been done using the student’s web-based learner profile — whereby the sensors/beacons communicate who the student is as well as some basic information about what that particular student is interested in. The problem presented takes these things into consideration. (Think IBM Watson, with the focus being able to be directed towards each student.) The student’s interest is piqued, the problem gets their attention, and the stage is set for longer lasting learning. Personalized experiences per student that tap into their passions and their curiosities.
The ramifications of the Internet of Things (IoT) will likely involve the classroom at some point. At least I hope they do. Granted, the security concerns are there, but the IoT wave likely won’t be stopped by security-related concerns. Vendors will find ways to address them, hackers will counter-punch, and the security-related wars will simply move/expand to new ground. But the wave won’t be stopped.
So when we talk about “classrooms of the future,” let’s think bigger than we have been thinking.
The IoT has major implications for our everyday lives at home, as well as in medicine, retail, offices, factories, worksites, cities, or any structure or facility where people meet and interact.
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The first application for meetings is the facility where you meet: doors, carpet, lighting, can all be connected to the Internet through sensors. You can begin to track where people are going, but it’s much more granular.
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Potentially you can walk into a meeting space, it knows it’s you, it knows what you like, so your experience can be customized and personalized.
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Right now beacons are fairly dumb, but Google and Apple are working on frameworks, building operating systems, that allow beacons to talk to each other.
Addendum on 1/14/16:
Huddle Space Products & Trends for 2016— from avnetwork.com by Cindy Davis Excerpt:
“The concept is that you should be able to walk into these rooms, and instead of being left with a black display, maybe a cable on the table, or maybe nothing, and not know what’s going on; what if when you walked into the room, the display was on, and it showed you what meeting room it was, who had the meeting room scheduled, and is it free, can just walk in and I use it, or maybe I am in the wrong room? Let’s put the relevant information up there, and let’s also put up the information on how to connect. Although there’s an HDMI cable at the table, here’s the wireless information to connect.
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