Very clever designs! Some serious creativity here!
From DSC:
NOTE: I’ve never been to this site before, but I saw the clever QWERTY image on Pinterest, which lead me to this page. What if more of our learning spaces — and/or perhaps our playgrounds — featured this level of creativity, color, innovative design, passion, beauty, and energy?
Some examples:
The Future of Design, Part II — from 99u.adobe.com by Madeleine Morley; with thanks to Keesa V. Johnson for posting this on Twitter
For the second straight year, we asked 10 creatives to predict what is coming up in the world of design and how they will prepare for it. This year’s installment includes designing for voice-controlled tech, holograms, and the rise of the hybrid designer.
Design is always changing, and wider changes are often spearheaded by design itself. Now with tech and the creative industry increasingly aligning, we’re on the precipice of a truly momentous period in the history of design, something unprecedented that is difficult to predict and prepare for.
Excerpts:
With quickly evolving tools, tumultuous shifts in the economy, the relentless growth of the gig and freelance lifestyle, and global networks, the working landscape for young designers is a tremendously uncertain one. There’s no model to follow: The known and well-trodden career path of previous generations is overgrown.
…
It’s an uncertain time for design, but in its difficulty and complexity, it is an inspiring and crucial one: Those with the skills will help decide the way that innovations in tech not only look but function, too, and influence our daily lives.
Although we can’t predict the future, we can speak to those with experience who think about what’s in store. We asked each participant to give us their advice: What does their future of design look like? What will it do to the very idea of design. And how can we prepare for it?
Design will be for ears and not eyes.
We’re always getting our heads around designing for the latest technology, methodology, application, media, or format. It’s a fascinating time to be a designer. There will always be space for experts, for those who specialize in the things they are really, really good at, but for others there is the need to diversify.
We won’t tell stories; we’ll live them.
The 4th Next Generation Learning Spaces event is right around the corner!
Take a look at the latest agenda.
Here is just a fraction of what you can expect:
From DSC:
I am honored to be serving on the Advisory Council for this conference with a great group of people. Missing — at least from my perspective — from the image below is Kristen Tadrous, Senior Program Director with the Corporate Learning Network. Kristen has done a great job these last few years planning and running this conference.
NOTE:
The above graphic reflects a change for me. I am still an Adjunct Faculty Member
at Calvin College, but I am no longer a Senior Instructional Designer there.
This national conference will be held in Los Angeles, CA on February 26-28, 2018. It is designed to help institutions of higher education develop highly-innovative cultures — something that’s needed in many institutions of traditional higher education right now.
I have attended the first 3 conferences and I moderated a panel at last year’s conference out in San Diego. I just want to say that this is a great conference and I encourage you to bring a group of people to it from your organization! I say a group of people because a group of 5 of us (from a variety of departments) went one year and the result of attending the NGLS Conference was a brand new Sandbox Classroom — an active-learning based, highly-collaborative learning space where faculty members can experiment with new pedagogies as well as with new technologies. The conference helped us discuss things as a diverse group, think out loud, come up with some innovative ideas, and then build the momentum to move forward with some of those key ideas.
If you haven’t already attended this conference, I highly recommend that you check it out.
Workplace learning trends 2018 — from elearninglearning.com
Excerpt:
The beginning of a year is a great time to take stock of the year gone by and plan for the year ahead. In this blog post, we will have a quick glimpse of what we believe would be some of the key trends in workplace learning this year.
Also see:
Learning Experience Design Trends For 2018 — from elearninglearning.com. & theelearningcoach.com by
8 Ways Things are Changing for Practitioners
As Pedagogy Changes, Learning Spaces Are Transforming Too — from thejournal.com by Dennis Pierce
The American architect Louis Sullivan coined the phrase “form follows function,” and this is true of classrooms as well.
Excerpt:
In Johnson’s classroom at H.D. Isenberg Elementary School in Salisbury, NC, students can choose from a variety of seating options. There are tables for students to collaborate in groups of four, as well as bar-style seating on taller stools and even a few couches where they can sit comfortably while they work or read independently. The school provided the tables, and Johnson supplied the rest of the furniture himself.
To teach his students about citizenship, Johnson operates his classroom like a community. “I call it the Johnsonville Learning Community,” he said.
His fourth- and fifth-grade students can earn currency by coming to class each day and successfully completing assignments, and they also hold various classroom jobs. “The students who keep the classroom clean are part of our janitorial service,” he explained. “The student who brings things to the office is our delivery service.” Students use part of their currency to pay “rent” each month, and that entitles them to sit where they want.
Johnson’s school system is a 1-to-1 district, and every student is given an iPad to take home. Much of his instruction is project-based, with students working in small groups on tasks using curriculum from sources such as Defined STEM. In one recent project, his students used 3D modeling software on their iPads to create a multi-touch book about the human body systems.
Johnson’s classroom is an example of how changes in both the design of the learning space and the teaching that takes place there have combined to making learning much more engaging and effective for students.
A growing body of research suggests that the design of a learning space can have a significant effect on student success. For instance, a study by researchers at the University of Salford in England found that classroom design can have a 25 percent impact, either positive or negative, on student achievement over the course of an academic year — with factors such as color, complexity, flexibility, lighting and student choice having the most influence.
From DSC:
I saw the word CHOICE (or some variant of it) mentioned several times in this article. That’s a helpful step in developing the kind of mindset that our students will need in the future. Making choices, thinking on their feet, being able to adapt and pivot, NOT looking to be spoon fed by anyone — because that’s likely not going to happen once they graduate.
When redesigning learning spaces, let the type of learning experiences you want to foster be your guide, Jakes advised. “Focus on experiences, not things,” he said. “This is not about furniture; it’s about the learning. What experiences do I want to create for students? Then, what design would support that?”
David Jakes
Excerpt:
The Top 200 Tools for Learning 2017 (11th Annual Survey) has been compiled by Jane Hart of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies from the votes of 2,174 learning professionals worldwide, together with 3 sub-lists
Excerpt from the Analysis page (emphasis DSC):
Here is a brief analysis of what’s on the list and what it tells us about the current state of personal learning, workplace learning and education.
Some facts
Some observations on what the Top Tools list tells us personal and professional learning
As in previous years, individuals continue to using a wide variety of:
All of which shows that many individuals have become highly independent, continuous modern professional learners – making their own decisions about what they need to learn and how to do it.
Ikea’s New App Flaunts What You’ll Love Most About AR — from wired.com by Arielle Pardes
Excerpt:
Tap through the app’s catalogue of over 2,000 products—nearly the company’s full collection of umlauted sofas, armchairs, coffee tables, and storage units—then hold up your phone and use the camera to place the digital furniture anywhere in a room. Want to see how the Strandmon winged chair looks by the window? Done. Can you really squeeze in that 7-foot-long area rug? Open the app, point your camera at the floor, and watch it appear at scale. You can even place a futon where it would go in the guest room, then see what it looks like when it unfolds into a bed.
Ikea built the app with Apple’s ARKit, a developer toolkit created to usher in the augmented reality revolution on iOS devices. The app is free and available now, as long as your iPhone is updated to iOS 11.
.
Every ARKit app you can install right now — from imore.com b
Excerpt:
One of the biggest features to come to iOS 11 is ARKit, enabling developers to open up your world to a whole new kind of gaming and discovery system. Instead of being limited to the screen, you can play on surfaces big and small and you can play with others. The only thing limiting you right now is not knowing which ARKit apps are out there right now, so you can dive in and see which apps are your new favorite.
Searching Apple’s massive App Store can take a long time, so we’ve compiled a big friendly list for you to pick out the real winners!
Everything You Need to Know About Augmented Reality Now That It’s Invading Your Phone — from fieldguide.gizmodo.com by David Nield
Excerpt:
The majority of these apps are still at the demo stage for now, but it’s not difficult to see the potential. Games can take place in the real world, whether that’s on your living room floor or around your neighborhood, while you’ll be able to imagine anything from a new sofa to a new house extension through your phone’s camera.
Further down the line you’ll be able to point your phone at anything and get information overlaid about what you’re seeing with a whole new level of accuracy—the distance to the pin on a golf course, the current stats for players out on a baseball field, or precise directions to the store you need in the mall you’ve just got lost in. You can measure distances, land a rocket in your backyard, and so much more.
Of course AR (or “mixed reality”) headsets are going to provide a much more immersive experience and are a more natural fit than having to hold your phone or tablet in front of you to see anything in AR land. Until those headsets hit the mainstream though, ARKit and ARCore are about to introduce millions of people to the potential of augmented reality. Instead of looking down at your phone you’re going to be holding it up to access all the information of the internet with a swipe.
Amazon working on Alexa-powered smart glasses, says report — from theverge.com by Sam Byford
And a home security camera
Excerpt:
Amazon’s first wearable device will be a pair of smart glasses with the Alexa voice assistant built in, according to a report in the Financial Times. The device will reportedly look like a regular pair of glasses and use bone-conduction technology so that the user can hear Alexa without the need for earphones or conventional speakers. It won’t, however, likely have a screen or camera, although Google Glass founder Babak Parviz has apparently been working on the project following his hiring by Amazon in 2014.
What does Google want with HTC’s smartphone business? — from theguardian.com by Samuel Gibbs
Google is acquiring a $1bn chunk of HTC’s smartphone arm, including 2,000 employees and access to intellectual property, as it bets big on hardware
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Google has announced it’s acquiring a $1.1bn chunk of HTC’s smartphone business, and with it providing the once leading Taiwanese phone brand a much needed lifeline. But what does Google want with part of a smartphone business?
Google isn’t buying the whole of HTC, just a relatively large part of the Taipei-based company’s smartphone business and not its Vive virtual reality headset business. Google gains half of HTC’s research and development team – about 2,000 people – and a non-exclusive license for HTC’s intellectual property, allowing it to take advantage of some of HTC’s advances in smartphone technology.
HTC gets a cash injection, which will help it survive in some very competitive markets, and Google gets to continue its “big bet on hardware” according to Rick Osterloh, the company’s senior vice president for hardware.
It’s “a business decision to have access to one of the best R&D teams”, said Neil Shah, research director at Counterpoint Technology Market Research. But it’s also “a sort of emotional decision to save its close partners”.
The Washington Post enhances in-app augmented reality experience — from washingtonpost.com
Excerpt:
The Washington Post today announced the launch of its first embedded augmented reality story. The Post built an industry-first embed code that lets users trigger an augmented reality experience with 3D visuals and audio narration.
“We were excited to be the first news publisher to support augmented reality in a news application, but for our second iteration in our iconic building series we needed to make augmented reality even simpler,” said Jeremy Gilbert, director of strategic initiatives at The Post. “We’ve been working to reduce the friction to make augmented reality as easily accessible as a photo gallery or a video—those are played inline and augmented reality should be too.”
After Successful Pilot Testing Ford Is Expanding Its HoloLens Program — from uploadvr.com by Jamie Feltham
Excerpt:
You can get a sense for what this expansion means in the video below. Ford has already been using HoloLens to help design new cars; bringing 3D models into the real world using the augmented reality headset. Now, however, the company is introducing new processes, like overlaying new features onto existing car models and creating guided tours of cars using voice recording. The company also says it’s developing new apps for better collaboration in AR.
“Personalized learning seeks to accelerate student learning by tailoring the instructional environment — what, when, how, and where students learn — to address the individual needs, skills, and interests of each student. Students can take ownership of their own learning, while also developing deep, personal connections with each other, their teachers, and other adults.”
WE’VE ALWAYS HAD FOUR STRONG BELIEFS:
We do not believe that there is yet definitive proof that personalized learning works better than other models. Ultimately, we hope that personalized learning will improve life outcomes for students, with clear evidence to support its efficacy. In the interim, we look to traditional academic measures (e.g. state assessments or assessments like NWEA MAP), to provide early signs of the efficacy of personalized learning.
Despite the lack of conclusive proof, there are two important data sets that we find compelling. First, RAND conducted a study of 11,000 students and 62 personalized learning schools nationally and found that “students made significant gains in mathematics and reading overall, and in elementary and middle schools [1].” More recently, RAND published the third of its studies of personalized learning. It again found statistically significant gains in math, however, the effect size had decreased notably [2].
K-12 and higher education are considered separate systems. What if they converged? — from edsurge.com by Jeff Young
Excerpt:
Education in America is a tale of two systems. There’s K-12 education policy and practice, but a separate set of rules—and a separate culture—for higher education. A new book argues that it doesn’t have to be that way.
In “The Convergence of K-12 and Higher Education: Policies and Programs in a Changing Era,” two education professors point out potential benefits of taking a more holistic view to American education (in a volume that collects essays from other academics). They acknowledge that there are potential pitfalls, noting that even well-intentioned systems can have negative consequences. But they argue that “now more than ever, K-12 and higher education need to converge on a shared mission and partner to advance the individual interests of American students and the collective interests of the nation.”
EdSurge recently talked with one of the book’s co-editors, Christopher Loss, associate professor of public policy and higher education at Vanderbilt University. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Which is to say that we have tended not to think of the sector as most people actually experience it—which is one continuous ladder, one that often is missing rungs, and is sometimes difficult to climb, depending on a whole host of different factors. So, I think that the research agenda proposed by Pat and I and our collaborators is one that actually gets much closer to the experience that most people actually are having with the educational sector.
From DSC:
This is a great 50,000-foot level question and one that reminds me of a graphic I created a couple of years ago that speaks of the continuum that we need to more holistically address — especially as the topic of lifelong learning is increasingly critical to members of our workforce today.
Because in actuality, the lines between high school and college continue to blur. Many students are taking AP courses and/or are dually-enrolled at colleges/universities already. Some high school graduates already have enough credits to make serious headway in obtaining a college degree.
The other thing that I see over and over again is that K-12 is out innovating higher education and is better at communicating with other educators than most of higher education is. As an example, go look at some of the K-12 bloggers and educators out there on Twitter. They have tens of thousands of followers — and many of those followers being other K-12 educators. They are sharing content, best practices, questions, issues/solutions, new pedagogies, new technologies, live communication/training sessions, etc. with each other. Some examples include:
The vast majority of the top bloggers within higher ed — and those who regularly are out on social media within higher education — are not even close to those kinds of numbers.
What that tells me is that while many educators within K-12 are out on social media sharing knowledge with each other via these relatively new means, the vast majority of administrators/faculty members/staff working within higher education are not doing that. That is, they are not regularly contributing streams of content to Twitter.
But that said, there are few people who are trying to “cross over the lines” of the two systems and converse with folks from both higher ed and K-12. We need more of these folks who are attempting to pulse-check the other systems out there in order to create a more holistic, effective continuum.
I wonder about the corporate world here as well. Are folks from the training departments and from the learning & development groups pulse-checking the ways that today’s students are being educated within higher education? Within K-12? Do they have a good sense of what the changing expectations of their new employees look like (in terms of how they prefer to learn)?
We can do better. That’s why I appreciated the question raised within Jeff’s article.
Is is time to back up a major step and practice design thinking on the entire continuum of lifelong learning?
Daniel Christian
A Starter Kit for Instructional Designers — from edsurge.com by Amy Ahearn
Excerpts:
A 2016 report funded by the Gates Foundation found that in the U.S. alone, there are 13,000 instructional designers. Yet, when I graduated from college in 2008, I didn’t know this field existed. Surely a lot has changed!
Instructional design is experiencing a renaissance. As online course platforms proliferate, institutions of all shapes and sizes realize that they’ll need to translate content into digital forms. Designing online learning experiences is essential to training employees, mobilizing customers, serving students, building marketing channels, and sustaining business models.
The field has deep roots in distance education, human computer interaction, and visual design. But I’ve come to believe that contemporary instructional design sits at the intersection of three core disciplines: learning science, human-centered design, and digital marketing. It requires a deep respect for the pedagogical practices that teachers have honed for decades, balanced with fluency in today’s digital tools.
…
Below are some of the lessons and resources that I wish I knew of when I first went on the job market—a combination of the academic texts you read in school along with practical tools that have been essential to practicing instructional design in the real world. This is not a complete or evergreen list, but hopefully it’s a helpful start.
So You Want to Be an Instructional Designer? — from edsurge.com by Marguerite McNeal
Excerpt:
Good listener. People person. Lifelong learner. Sound like you? No, we’re not trying to arrange a first date. These are some common traits of people with successful careers in a booming job market: instructional design.
Colleges, K-12 schools and companies increasingly turn to instructional designers to help them improve the quality of teaching in in-person, online or blended-learning environments.
Impressive surrealist photo editing by Hüseyin Sahin — from designer-daily.com
Also see:
Spectacular sculptures made of glass and concrete by Ben Young — from designer-daily.com
What’s New for Video and Audio (April 2017) | Adobe Creative Cloud
Adobe Creative Cloud Propels Video Forward at NAB 2017 — from news.adobe.com
Latest Release Features New Capabilities in AI, VR, Motion Graphics, Live Animation and Audio
Excerpt:
SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Ahead of the National Association of Broadcasting (NAB) conference, Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced a major update for video in Adobe Creative Cloud to help filmmakers and video producers collaborate and streamline video workflows. The Creative Cloud release, available today, delivers new features for graphics and titling, animation, polishing audio and sharing assets; support for the latest video formats, such as HDR, VR and 4K; new integrations with Adobe Stock; and advanced artificial intelligence capabilities powered by Adobe Sensei. Announced at Adobe Summit 2017, Adobe Experience Cloud also allows brands to deliver connected video experiences across any screen at massive scale, while analyzing performance and monetizing ads.
Technology advancements and exploding consumer demand for impactful and personalized content require video producers to create, deliver and monetize their video assets faster than ever before. From the largest studio to next generation YouTubers, a scalable, end-to-end solution is required to create, collaborate and streamline video workflows with robust analytics and advertising tools to optimize content and drive more value.
Adobe Makes Big Leaps in Video, Just in Time for NAB — from blogs.adobe.com
Excerpt:
Next week, thousands of broadcasters, video producers and digital content lovers will gather for the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual conference. Just in time for the event, Adobe is unveiling big updates to our video tools for graphics and titling, animation, and sharing assets; support for the latest formats including HDR, VR and 4K; lots of improvements to video workflows; and more power from Adobe Sensei, our artificial intelligence technology. It’s all part of a major Adobe CC product update available today.
“The newest Creative Cloud video release integrates the advanced science of Adobe Sensei to make common tasks faster and easier. All video producers – whether they’re part of the major media companies or up and coming YouTubers – can now bring their creative vision to life without having to be motion graphics or audio experts,” says Steven Warner, vice president of digital media at Adobe.
These are the latest features in After Effects CC 2017, available now — from provideocoalition.com by Mark Christiansen
Get up to date and up to speed with these additions & changes
[For a detailed overview, check back during NAB when the course After Effects CC 2017: New Features from LinkedIn Learning (otherwise known as Lynda.com) will be updated with everything that’s brand new as of today. This course will feature the examples depicted here in step-by-step detail.]
Adobe updates Premiere Pro CC for April 2017 — from provideocoalition.com by Scott Simmons
And instead of waiting months for the new CC versions they should be available soon, as in probably today
After Effects NAB 2017 Update — from provideocoalition.com by Chris and Trish Meyer
How to play nice(r) with Premiere Pro editors, as well as other updates
Also see:
