Information re: virtual labs from the Online Learning Consortium


 7 Things You Should Know About Virtual Labs — from library.educause.edu

Excerpt:

Virtual labs are interactive, digital simulations of activities that typically take place in physical laboratory settings. Virtual labs simulate the tools, equipment, tests, and procedures used in chemistry, biochemistry, physics, biology, and other disciplines. Virtual labs allow students to participate in lab-based learning exercises without the costs and limitations of a physical lab. Virtual labs can be an important element in institutional efforts to expand access to lab-based courses to more and different groups of students, as well as efforts to establish contingency plans for natural disasters or other interruptions of campus activities.

 


Addendum on 8/27/20:

 

Preserving The Art Of Black Lives Matter Using AR — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick

Excerpt:

A city-wide digital art show celebrates the street art of BLM.

Designers at the architecture and design firm GGLO have created an augmented reality art show aimed at paying homage to the eclectic lineup of street paintings created as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. Not only does the project serve to preserve these impactful works of art, but to enhance them as well using modern immersive technology.

 

Using the TV as a key tool in our learning ecosystems

From DSC:

  • If one doesn’t have access to the Internet, a computer, or any such mobile technology as seen in the image above…could TV become the medium through which one could be educated during this next year of the Coronavirus situation? That is, until we can develop better and more equitable policies, plans, funding, systems, infrastructures, and connectivity for all students!
  • After that, could we see more televisions morph into smart/connected TVs?
  • Could PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and other major networks collaborate with the U.S. Department of Education to help us educate all students? 
  • Could the largest internet company of 2030 be an online school as Thomas Frey predicts?

A few years ago, I had hoped that Apple was going to go all-in with their tvOS platform.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – SEPTEMBER 9: Apple CEO Tim Cook introduces the New Apple TV during a Special Event; 9/9/15.

 

Though it’s still early in the game, that really hasn’t happened to the extent that I had hoped. That said, more recently, I was encouraged to see this article from back in July:

LOUISIANA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND LOUISIANA PUBLIC BROADCASTING TO TELEVISE HIGH-QUALITY MATH INSTRUCTION THIS SUMMER

 



 

Let’s ask the employees of PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and other networks if they would be willing to work with the U.S. Department of Education to help educate ALL students! Though educational TV is not new, I’m talking about taking things to a *whole* new level.

With that in mind, I created the following graphic:

Let's use television to minimize the learning gaps that will otherwise be experienced by many students this next year!

(One might ask why I used an old television in the above graphic. I was trying to get at the idea that one might not have a lot of resources to work with.)

 

With an eye towards the future…what questions should we be asking about learning experience design (#LXD)? [Christian]

From DSC:
Some of the following questions came to my mind recently:

  • In this age of the Coronavirus, how can we think differently about learning experience design (#LXD)?
  • How can *teams* of people come together to reimagine what learning could look like in the future? Who might be some new players at the table? More students? Artists? Actors? More animators? More technicians and people from A/V? Specialists in XR? Corporate trainers coming together with Instructional Designers from higher ed and from K-12? #learningecosystems #future
  • How can we better tighten up the alignment between K-12, higher ed / vocational programs, and the corporate world?
  • How can we make self-directed learning more prevalent (which would release an enormous amount of energy & creativity)? #heutagogy

Maybe those aren’t even the right questions…

If not, what do you think? What questions should we be asking about learning these days?

#LXD #learningecosystems #future #lifelonglearning #onlinelearning #highereducation #K12 #corporatelearning #heutagogy

 

The main thing we need to remember is that this space no longer serves as an accessory to face-to-face teaching. It is now our main contact point with learners, so it needs to play different roles: communication channel, learning path, interaction platform and community space. Teachers therefore need a certain degree of freedom to design this space in the best way that suits their teaching style and philosophy as well as their course content and learning objectives.

What became obvious in the past months is that when it comes to teaching and learning
 fully online, the learning experience design aspect, including look, feel and logic of the platform from the users’ perspective- be it teachers or students-, are at least as important as the content.

(source)

 

Facial Recognition Start-Up Mounts a First Amendment Defense — from nytimes.com by Kashmir Hill
Clearview AI has hired Floyd Abrams, a top lawyer, to help fight claims that selling its data to law enforcement agencies violates privacy laws.

Excerpts:

Litigation against the start-up “has the potential of leading to a major decision about the interrelationship between privacy claims and First Amendment defenses in the 21st century,” Mr. Abrams said in a phone interview. He said the underlying legal questions could one day reach the Supreme Court.

Clearview AI has scraped billions of photos from the internet, including from platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram, and sells access to the resulting database to law enforcement agencies. When an officer uploads a photo or a video image containing a person’s face, the app tries to match the likeness and provides other photos of that person that can be found online.

From DSC:
Many, if not all of us, are now required to be lifelong learners in order to stay marketable. I was struck by that when I read the following excerpt from the above article:

“I’m learning the language,” Mr. Abrams said. “I’ve never used the words ‘facial biometric algorithms’ until this phone call.”

 

Excerpt:

With moving day near, you’re inundated with decorative visions of your new digs. You’re so inspired, in fact, that your brain has a few too many tabs open. Ready to close some out?

Technology at your fingertips is ready to assist. Augmented reality allows you to overlay computer-generated graphics (such as that sofa you’ve been eyeing) onto real-life viewpoints.

These mobile apps will help you virtually outline your vision before you hit the ground aimlessly running-and most of them are free. Download away, then dare to dream.

 

This HoloLens 2 app is helping doctors learn how to ID coronavirus — from venturebeat.com by Jamie Feltham

Excerpt:

The app, meanwhile, takes users through four stages of COVID-19 illness, providing a safe means for doctors and nurses to recognize symptoms seen in a typical case.

Also see:

How a DNA Test Machine Mutated to Find Covid in 90 Minutes — from bloomberg.com by John Lauerman

Excerpt:

Now his lab-in-a-box will be used to see whether patients arriving at hospitals for surgery, cancer treatment and other procedures harbor Covid-19 — an unexpected detour in his contribution to the consumer genetics revolution.

 

Pandemic turns smartphones from luxury to must-have as India’s schools go online — from news.trust.org by Roli Srivastava
Smartphones help classes continue as schools remain closed, but the poorest families are struggling to keep up

Excerpts:

India is the world’s second-biggest smartphone market after China, and nearly half of the country’s almost one billion mobile users already have a phone with internet access.

With no clear sign of schools reopening soon, internet access has become a must for children to follow classes, prompting more low-income families to scrape together the money to buy a cheap or second-hand smartphone for the first time.

Customised lessons for first to 12th grade students will be aired on television and radio in a “one class-one channel” initiative planned by the federal human resource department.

 

How might tools like Microsoft’s new Whiteboard be used in online-based learning? In “learning pods?” [Christian]

The new Microsoft Whiteboard -- how might this be used for online-based learning? Learning pods?

The new Microsoft Whiteboard -- how might this be used for online-based learning? Learning pods?

Questions/reflections from DSC:

  • How might this be used for online-based learning?
  • For “learning pods” and homeschoolers out there? 
  • Will assistants such as the Webex Assistant for Meetings (WAM) be integrated into such tools (i.e., would such tools provide translation, transcripts, closed captioning, and more)?
  • How might this type of tool be used in telehealth? Telelegal? In online-based courtrooms? In presentations?

#onlinelearning #collaboration #education #secondscreen #edtedh #presentations #AI #telehealth #telelegal #emergingtechnologies

 
 

Zoom Launches Zoom for Home

Zoom Launches Zoom For Home — from which-50.com

Excerpts:

Zoom Video Communications has announced Zoom for Home, which it describes as a new category of software experiences and hardware devices to support remote work use cases. The focus is on improving employee experiences to connect remotely and be productive.

Features for the all-in-one 27-inch device include: three built-in wide-angle cameras for high-resolution video; an 8-microphone array for crystal-clear audio in meetings and phone calls; and, an ultra-responsive touch display for interactive screen sharing, whiteboarding, annotating, and ideation.

Also see:

From DSC:
Again, we see some further innovation in this space. The longer the Coronavirus impacts things, the further ahead the online-learning space will be catapulted. This type of device consolidates several devices into one, while making it intuitive and likely easy to annotate items on it.

Zoom Launches Zoom For Home
 

 

 

“Existing meeting interfaces had been designed with a singular goal, to simply enable virtual conversations. How could we build a meeting interface from the ground-up that intentionally facilitates engaging, productive, and inclusive conversations?”

 

What will tools like Macro.io bring to the online-based learning table?!

 

Microsoft Teams Rolls Out Virtual Rooms to Fight ‘Meeting Fatigue’ — from cheddar.com by Taylor Craig

Microsoft introduced Together Mode -- July 2020

 

A common background in meetings helps reduce extraneous cognitive load

 

A common background in meetings helps reduce extraneous cognitive load

 

From DSC:
Again, the longer the Coronavirus hangs around and we are learning and meeting like this, the more innovations like these will occur.

 


Addendums on 7/14/20:

Microsoft’s Together mode can help address executives’ concerns over remote work productivity — from businessinsider.com by Hirsh Chitkara

Excerpt:

Together mode offers an alternative to “grid view,” in which video call participants are displayed on-screen — instead, through AI segmentation, participants are placed in a single virtual environment such as an auditorium or coffee bar, creating the illusion that they are in the same space.

The future of work—the good, the challenging & the unknown — from microsofot.com by Jared Spataro

Excerpt:

Together mode is a new option in the Teams meeting experience that uses AI segmentation technology to digitally place participants in a shared background. The view makes it feel like you’re sitting in the same room, which reduces background distractions, makes it easier to pick up on non-verbal cues, and makes back and forth conversation feel more natural.

 

A new affordance of a 100%-online-based learning environment: A visual & audible “Table of Contents of the Key Points Made” [Christian]

What new affordances might a 100%-online-based learning environment offer us?

 

From DSC:
As I’ve been listening to some sermons on my iPhone, I end up taking visual snapshots of the times that they emphasize something. Here are some examples:

A snapshot of one of the key points made during a sermon

 

Another snapshot of one of the key points made during a sermon

 

Another snapshot of one of the key points made during a sermon

 

Which got me to thinking…while tools like Panopto* give us something along these lines, they don’t present to the student what the KEY POINTS were in any given class session.

So professors — in addition to teachers, trainers, pastors, presenters, etc. — should be able to quickly and easily instruct the software to create a visual table of contents of key points based upon which items the professor favorited or assigned a time signature to. I’m talking about a ONE keystroke or ONE click of the mouse type of thing to instruct the software to take a visual snapshot of that point in time (AI could even be used to grab the closest image without someone’s eyes shut). At the end of the class, there are then just a handful of key points that were made, with links to those time signatures.

At the end of a course, a student could easily review the KEY POINTS that were made throughout the last ___ weeks.

****

But this concept falls apart if there are too many things to remember. So when a professor presents the KEY POINTs to any given class, they must CURATE the content.  (And by the way, that’s exactly why pastors normally focus on only 3-4 key points…otherwise, it gets too hard to walk away with what the sermon was about.)

****

One could even build upon the table of contents. For example…for any given class within a law school’s offerings, the professor (or another team member at the instructions of the professor) could insert links to:

  • Relevant chapters or sections of a chapter in the textbook
  • Journal articles
  • Cases
  • Rules of law
  • Courts’ decisions
  • Other

****

And maybe even:

  • That’s the kind of “textbook” — or learning modules — that we’ll move towards creating in the first place.
    .
  • That’s the form of learning we’ll see more of when we present streams of up-to-date content to folks using a next-generation learning platform.
    .
  • Future webinars could piggyback off of this concept as well. Dive as deep as you want to into something…or just take away the main points (i.e., the Cliff notes/summaries) of a presentation.

At the end of the day, if your communication isn’t in a digital format, there is no playback available. What’s said is said…and gone.


* The functionality discussed here would take a day’s worth of work for a developer at Panopto (i.e., give a presenter a way to favorite existing TOC items and/or to assign a time signature to slots of time in a recording) — but it would save people and students sooooo much time. Such functionality would help us stay up-to-date — at least at a basic level of understanding — on a variety of topics.


 

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian