Following up on yesterday’s posting, History Channel bringing online courses to higher ed, I wanted to thank Mr. Rob Kingyens, President at Qubed Education, for alerting me to some related work that Qubed Education is doing. Below is an example of that work:

The University of Southern California, Condé Nast and WIRED launch Master of Integrated Design, Business and Technology — from qubededucation.com
New Learning Model Combines Network and Access of WIRED with Academic Strength and Vision of the USC Roski School of Art and Design

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

MARIN, Calif., October 1, 2014 – The University of Southern California, Condé Nast and WIRED today announced a partnership to create a new online Master’s degree in Integrated Design, Business and Technology. The partnership creates an unprecedented learning experience, combining the expertise of the editors, writers, and designers at WIRED with the academic rigor of USC, a leading research university known for its pioneering interdisciplinary programs. The aim of the 18-24 month degree is to educate creative thinkers and technologists to better equip them to transform the world of industry and enterprise. The first cohort is scheduled to begin in the 2015-2016 academic year.

“The pace of technology development requires higher education to continue to respond with programs that are flexible and adaptable, and that meet the needs of future cultural and business leaders,” said Dean Muhl.

“We’ve been thinking for years about what a university curriculum with WIRED would look like, and now we have a chance to build it with a terrific partner,” said Dadich. “Taking the best from USC and WIRED, we can teach discipline and disruption, business fundamentals, and the very latest innovation models from Silicon Valley. This is going to be thrilling.”

USC’s program development and build out will be powered by higher education partners Synergis Education and Qubed Education.

 

From Qubed’s website:

Qubed is the gateway for world-class, global brands to enter the education market with top tier universities.

 

From DSC:
I’ve long wondered if institutions of higher education will need to pool resources and/or form more partnerships and collaborations — either with other universities/colleges or with organizations outside of higher education. This reflection grows stronger for me when I:

  • Think that team-based content creation and delivery is pulling ahead of the pack
  • Hear about the financial situations of many institutions of higher education today (example1; example2)
  • See the momentum building up behind Competency Based Education (CBE)
  • Witness the growth of alternatives like Ideo Futures, Yieldr Academy, Lessons Go Where, ClassDo, Udemy, C-Suite TV.com and others
  • Hear about the potential advantages of learning analytics
  • See the pace of change accelerating — challenging higher education to keep up

For some institution(s) of higher education out there with deep pockets and a strong reputation, I could see them partnering up with an IBM (Watson), Google (Deepmind), Apple (Siri), Amazon (Echo), or Microsoft (Cortana) to create some next generation learning platforms. In fact, this is one of the areas I see occurring as lifelong learning/self-directed learning opportunities hit our living rooms. The underlying technologies these companies are working on could be powerful allies in the way people learn in the future — doing some heavy lifting to build the foundations in a variety of disciplines, and leaving the higher-order learning and the addressing of gaps to professors, teachers, trainers, and others.

 

 

 

Oculus Connect Videos and Presentations Online — from oculus.com

 

 

Excerpt:

All the keynotes, panels, and developer sessions from Connect are now available to watch online. The slides from each session are also available for download from the Connect site under the “Schedule” section.  Complete list of the keynotes, panels, and developer sessions from Connect:

Keynotes:

  • Brendan Iribe and Nate Mitchell — Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe and VP of Product Nate Mitchell officially open Connect with their Keynote discussing Oculus, the Gear VR, and the newest prototype: Crescent Bay.
  • Michael Abrash  — Oculus Chief Scientist Michael Abrash discusses perception in virtual reality, the future of VR, and what that means for developers.
  • John Carmack — Oculus CTO John Carmack discusses the Gear VR and shares development stories at Oculus Connect.

.

Keynote Panel:

.

Developer Sessions:

 

 

 

Related items:

 

 

Last week I attended the 20th Annual Online Learning Consortium International Conference.  While there, I was inspired by an excellent presentation entitled, A Disruptive Innovation: MSU’s Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse – Are You Ready to Survive a New Way of Learning?   The four team members from Michigan State University included:

  • Glenn R. Stutzky | Course Instructor
  • Keesa V. Muhammad | Instructional Designer
  • Christopher Irvin | Instructional Designer
  • Hailey Mooney | Course Librarian

Check out the intro clip on the website about the course:

 

MSUZombie-Oct2014

 

From the description for the presentation:

This session highlights MSU’s award winning, groundbreaking online course that fuses social theory, filmmaking, social media, and viral marketing while students survive an apocalyptic event. http://zombie.msu.edu/

MSU created and used powerful digital storytelling and multimedia to overlay real, experiential, immersive learning. Important content was relayed, but in a way that drew upon your emotions, your ability to solve problems and navigate in a world where you didn’t have all of the information, your ability to work with others, and more.

“This innovative course integrates current research and science on catastrophes and human behavior together with the idea of a zombie apocalypse. In doing so, we actively engage with students as they think about the nature, scope, and impact of catastrophic events on individuals, families, societies, civilizations, and the Earth itself.”

“Our innovative approach to teaching and learning features: students as active participants, the instructor becomes the facilitator, storytelling replaces lectures, zombies become the catalyst of teaching, a “zombrarian” (librarian) drives research, and the students emerge as digital storytellers as a way of assessing their own learning.”

Others outside MUS have found out about the course and have requested access to it. As a result of this, they’ve opened it up to non-credit seeking participants and now various people from police forces, Centers for Disease Control, and others are able to take the course. To make this learning experience even more accessible, the cost has been greatly reduced: from $1600+ to just $500. (So this talented team is not only offering powerful pedagogies, but also significant monetary contributions to the university as well.)

For me, the key thing here is that this course represents what I believe is the direction that’s starting to really pull ahead of the pack and, if done well, will likely crush most of the other directions/approaches.  And that is the use of teams to create, deliver, teach, and assess content – i.e., team-based learning approaches.

So many of the sessions involved professional development for professors and teachers – and much of this is appropriate. However, in the majority of cases, individual efforts aren’t enough anymore.  Few people can bring to the table what a talented, experienced group of specialists are able to bring.  Individual efforts aren’t able to compete with team-based content creation and delivery anymore — and this is especially true online, whereby multiple disciplines are immediately invoked once content hits the digital realm.

In this case, the team was composed of:

  • The professor
  • Two Instructional Designers
  • and a librarian

The team:

  • Developed websites
  • Designed their own logo
  • Marketed the course w/ a zombie walking around campus w/ brochures and a walking billboard
  • Used a Twitter stream
  • Used a tool called Pensu for their students’ individual journals
  • Made extensive use of YouTube and digital storytelling
  • Coined a new acronym called MOLIE – multimedia online learning immersive experience
  • Used game-like features, such as the development of a code that was found which revealed key information (which was optional, but was very helpful to those who figured it out).  The team made it so that the course ended differently for each group, depending upon what the teams’ decisions were through the weeks
  • Used some 3D apps to make movies more realistic and to create new environments
  • Continually presented new clues for students to investigate.  Each team had a Team Leader that posted their team’s decisions on YouTube.

They encouraged us to:
THINK BIG!  Get as creative as you can, and only pull back if the “suits” make you!  Step outside the box!  Take risks!  “If an idea has life, water it. Others will check it out and get involved.”

In their case, the idea originated with an innovative, risk-taking professor willing to experiment – and who started the presentation with the following soliloquy:

Syllabi are EVIL

Syllabi are EVIL and they must die!
Listen to me closely and I’ll tell you why.
Just want students to know what is known?
See what’s been seen?
Go – where we’ve been going?
Then the Syllabus is your friend,
cuz you know exactly where you’ll end.
But if you want to go somewhere new,
see colors beyond Red, Green, and Blue.
Then take out your Syllabus and tear-it-in-half,
now uncertainty has become your path.
Be not afraid because you’ll find,
the most amazing things from Creative Minds,
who have been set free to FLY,
once untethered from the Syllabi.

Glenn Stutzky
Premiered at the 2014
Online Learning Consortium International Conference
October 29, 2014

 

 

They started with something that wasn’t polished, but it’s been an iterative approach over the semesters…and they continue to build on it.

I congratulated the team there — and do so again here. Excellent, wonderful work!

 


By the way, what would a creative movie-like trailer look like for your course?


 

 

Millennials move TV content beyond the TV set — from statista.com by Felix Richter

Excerpt:

 

Infographic: Millennials Move TV Content Beyond the TV Set | Statista

You will find more statistics at Statista

From DSC:
Why post this here?

Because as expectations around where people are going to get their entertainment-related content change, so will new doors open for where they will get their educationally-related content.

.

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

 

Google leads $542 million funding of mysterious augmented reality firm Magic Leap — from theverge.com by Jacob Kastrenakes and Ben Popper

Excerpt:

Google is leading a huge $542 million round of funding for the secretive startup Magic Leap, which is said to be working on augmented reality glasses that can create digital objects that appear to exist in the world around you. Though little is known about what Magic Leap is working on, Google is placing a big bet on it: in addition to the funding, Android and Chrome leader Sundar Pichai will join Magic Leap’s board, as will Google’s corporate development vice-president Don Harrison. The funding is also coming directly from Google itself — not from an investment arm like Google Ventures — all suggesting this is a strategic move to align the two companies and eventually partner when the tech is more mature down the road.

.

Magic Leap also says that it may “positively transform the process of education.”

.

Also see:

magic-leap-oct2014

 

World-of-Comenius-Oct2014

 

‘World of Comenius’ demonstrates powerful educational interaction w/ Leap Motion & Oculus Rift and Tomas “Frooxius” Mariancik

Excerpt:

We recently covered a (at that point unnamed) VR project by developer Tomáš “Frooxius” Marian?ík, the mind behind the stunning ‘Sightline’ VR series of demos. The project fused Leap Motion skeletal hand tracking with Oculus Rift DK2 positional tracking to produce an impressively intuitive VR interface. Now, a new video of the interface  shows impressive progress. We catch up with Tomáš to find out some more about this mysterious VR project.

Enter the ‘World of Comenius’
The virtual reality resurgence that is currently underway, necessarily and predictably concentrates on bringing people new ways to consume and experience media and games. This is where virtual reality has the best chance of breaking through as a viable technology, one that will appeal to consumers worldwide. But virtual reality’s greatest impact, at least in terms of historical worth to society, could and probably will come in the form of non-entertainment based fields.

 

 

Also see:

 

InternetOfEverything-BI-Oct2014

 

Some excerpted slides:

 

wearehere-bi-oct2014

 

wearehere2-bi-oct2014

 

wearehere3-bi-oct2014

 

wearehere4-bi-oct2014

 

 


From DSC:
Educators/eduprenuers should be watching what happens in the living room…or better yet, let’s create some second-screen-based learning applications that ride the Smart/Connected TV wave.

 

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

 

 

Check out this video! Incredible! — from Front Pictures; a great example of pushing the envelop and refusing to accept that something can’t be done

 

MMRenaissance-Aug2014

 

 

Multimedia Renaissance by Front Pictures — blog.frontpictures.com

 

Front_Pictures_Art_Mall_realtime_preziv_002

 

Reflections on “C-Suite TV debuts, offers advice for the boardroom” [Dreier]

C-Suite TV debuts, offers advice for the boardroom — from streamingmedia.com by Troy Dreier
Business leaders now have an on-demand video network to call their own, thanks to one Bloomberg host’s online venture.

Excerpt:

Bringing some business acumen to the world of online video, C-Suite TV is launching today. Created by Bloomberg TV host and author Jeffrey Hayzlett, the on-demand video network offers interviews with and shows about business execs. It promises inside information on business trends and the discussions taking place in the biggest boardrooms.

 

MYOB-July2014

 

The Future of TV is here for the C-Suite — from hayzlett.com by Jeffrey Hayzlett

Excerpt:

Rather than wait for networks or try and gain traction through the thousands of cat videos, we went out and built our own network.

 

 

See also:

  • Mind your own business
    From the About page:
    C-Suite TV is a web-based digital on-demand business channel featuring interviews and shows with business executives, thought leaders, authors and celebrities providing news and information for business leaders. C-Suite TV is your go-to resource to find out the inside track on trends and discussions taking place in businesses today. This online channel will be home to such shows as C-Suite with Jeffrey Hayzlett, MYOB – Mind Your Own Business and Bestseller TV with more shows to come.

 

 

From DSC:
The above items took me back to the concept of Learning from the Living [Class] Room.

Many of the following bullet points are already happening — but what I’m trying to influence/suggest is to bring all of them together in a powerful, global, 24 x 7 x 365, learning ecosystem:

  • When our “TVs” become more interactive…
  • When our mobile devices act as second screens and when second screen-based apps are numerous…
  • When discussion boards, forums, social media, assignments, assessments, and videoconferencing capabilities are embedded into our Smart/Connected TVs and are also available via our mobile devices…
  • When education is available 24 x 7 x 365…
  • When even the C-Suite taps into such platforms…
  • When education and entertainment are co-mingled…
  • When team-based educational content creation and delivery are mainstream…
  • When self-selecting Communities of Practice thrive online…
  • When Learning Hubs combine the best of both worlds (online and face-to-face)…
  • When Artificial Intelligence, powerful cognitive computing capabilities (i.e., IBM’s Watson), and robust reporting mechanisms are integrated into the backends…
  • When lifelong learners have their own cloud-based profiles…
  • When learners can use their “TVs” to tap into interactive, multimedia-based streams of content of their choice…
  • When recommendation engines are offered not just at Netflix but also at educationally-oriented sites…
  • When online tutoring and intelligent tutoring really take off…

…then I’d say we’ll have a powerful, engaging, responsive, global education platform.

 

 

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

 

 

 

How do you plan the campus of the future? Try not to. — from chronicle.com by Avi Wolfman-Arent

 

Excerpts:

“My goal as the dean is to create an environment where everything can be repurposed,” Mr. Huttenlocher says.

He and his team are in the tenuous middle stages of planning and building exactly that: the chameleon campus, a space where interchangeability permeates everything. As Cathy Dove, Cornell Tech’s founding vice president, puts it, “We want to embody the principle of iteration.”

“How do you do something that’s technologically advanced that isn’t immediately technologically dated?”

To ask it another way, how do you create a new institution in an age where everything—office design, intelligent infrastructure, cloud computing, classroom technology—presents some opportunity to break with the past? What do you build? What do you wire? What kind of interactions do you encourage? Some institutions might create committees to try to anticipate specific changes. Cornell Tech is determined to do the opposite. Those responsible for building the campus of the future won’t pretend to know what the future holds. They only hope they’re building something malleable enough to handle it.

 
 

App Ed Review

 

APPEdReview-April2014

 

From the About Us page (emphasis DSC):

App Ed Review is a free searchable database of educational app reviews designed to support classroom teachers finding and using apps effectively in their teaching practice. In its database, each app review includes:

  • A brief, original description of the app;
  • A classification of the app based on its purpose;
  • Three or more ideas for how the app could be used in the classroom;
  • A comprehensive app evaluation;
  • The app’s target audience;
  • Subject areas where the app can be used; and,
  • The cost of the app.

 

 

Also see the Global Education Database:

 

GlobalEducationDatabase-Feb2014

 

From the About Us page:

It’s our belief that digital technologies will utterly change the way education is delivered and consumed over the next decade. We also reckon that this large-scale disruption doesn’t come with an instruction manual. And we’d like GEDB to be part of the answer to that.

It’s the pulling together of a number of different ways in which all those involved in education (teachers, parents, administrators, students) can make some sense of the huge changes going on around them. So there’s consumer reviews of technologies, a forum for advice, an aggregation of the most important EdTech news and online courses for users to equip themselves with digital skills. Backed by a growing community on social media (here, here and here for starters).

It’s a fast-track to digital literacy in the education industry.

GEDB has been pulled together by California residents Jeff Dunn, co-founder of Edudemic, and Katie Dunn, the other Edudemic co-founder, and, across the Atlantic in London, Jimmy Leach, a former habitue of digital government and media circles.

 

 

Addendum:

Favorite educational iPad apps that are also on Android — from the Learning in Hand blog by Tony Vincent

 

InteractiveWall-April2014

 

With thanks to Marie Sanguinetti (@mariesanguinett)
for her posting this on a recent edition of her
Paper.li-based Always Learning resource

 

2.jpg

 

Excerpt:

Santa Monica-based architecture firm Belzberg Architects Group was tasked with renovating one of Occidental College’s buildings, and the finished project features a two-story “digital Post-it wall” to host students’ presentations and projects. The redesign focused on how students think, learn and interact with technology on such a vast scale.

 

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

 
 
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