50 Twitter accounts lawyers should follow — from postali.com

Excerpt:

Running a successful law practice is about much more than being an excellent attorney. A law firm is a business, and those who stay informed on trends in legal marketing, business development and technology are primed to run their practice more efficiently.

Law firms are a competitive business. In order to stay successful, you need to stay informed. The industry trends can often move at lightning speed, and you want to be ahead of them.

Twitter is a great place for busy attorneys to stay informed. Many thought leaders in the legal industry are eager and willing to share their knowledge in digestible, 280-character tweets that lawyers on-the-go can follow.

We’ve rounded up some of the best Twitter accounts for lawyers (in no particular order.) To save you even more time, we’ve also added all of these account to a Twitter List that you can follow with one click. (You can use some of the time you’ll save to follow Postali on Twitter as well.)

Click here to view the Twitter List of Legal Influencers.

 

 

From DSC:
I find Twitter to be an excellent source of learning, and it is one of the key parts of my own learning ecosystem. I’m not the only one. Check out these areas of Jane Hart’s annual top tools for learning.

Twitter is in the top 10 lists for learning tools no matter whether you are looking at education, workplace learning, and/or for personal and professional learning

 

 

 


Also see/relevant:

  • Prudenti: Law schools facing new demands for innovative education— from libn.com
    Excerpt:
    Law schools have always taught the law and the practice thereof, but in the 21st century that is not nearly enough to provide students with the tools to succeed. Clients, particularly business clients, are not only looking for an “attorney” in the customary sense, but a strategic partner equipped to deal with everything from project management to metrics to process enhancement. Those demands present law schools with both an opportunity for and expectation of innovation in legal education.

 

 

 
 

Where teachers can find free audiobooks for their students — from thetechedvocate.org by Matthew Lynch

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Audiobooks are fantastic ways to bring stories to life in your classroom and keep students engaged. Reading Rockets explains, “Audiobooks have traditionally been used in schools by teachers of second-language learners, learning-disabled students, and struggling readers or nonreaders. In many cases, audiobooks have proven successful in providing a way for these students to access literature and enjoy books.” However, educators have found that audiobooks benefit all students!

Unfortunately, audiobooks are pricey, so you should not expect your students to have them at home. You should also not plan on spending large amounts of money to build your audiobook collection for your classroom. For instance, the widely popular Audible site for downloadable audiobooks is a subscription-based service, but it only allows you to choose one book per month. Instead, take advantage of the wealth of free audiobooks available for teachers and students.

 

 
 

What is a learning ecosystem? And how does it support corporate strategy? — from ej4.com by Ryan Eudy

Excerpt:

learning ecosystem is a system of people, content, technology, culture, and strategy, existing both within and outside of an organization, all of which has an impact on both the formal and informal learning that goes on in that organization.

The word “ecosystem” is worth paying attention to here. It’s not just there to make the term sound fancy or scientific. A learning ecosystem is the L&D equivalent of an ecosystem out in the wild. Just as a living ecosystem has many interacting species, environments, and the complex relationships among them, a learning ecosystem has many people and pieces of content, in different roles and learning contexts, and complex relationships.

Just like a living ecosystem, a learning ecosystem can be healthy or sick, nurtured or threatened, self-sustaining or endangered. Achieving your development goals, then, requires an organization to be aware of its own ecosystem, including its parts and the internal and external forces that shape them.

 

From DSC:
Yes, to me, the concept/idea of a learning ecosystem IS important. Very important. So much so, I named this blog after it.

Each of us as individuals have a learning ecosystem, whether we officially recognize it or not. So do the organizations that we work for. And, like an ecosystem out in nature, a learning ecosystem is constantly morphing, constantly changing.

We each have people in our lives that help us learn and grow, and the people that were in our learning ecosystems 10 years ago may or may not still be in our current learning ecosystems. Many of us use technologies and tools to help us learn and grow. Then there are the spaces where we learn — both physical and virtual spaces. Then there are the processes and procedures we follow, formally and/or informally. Any content that helps us learn and grow is a part of that ecosystem. Where we get that content can change, but obtaining up-to-date content is a part of our learning ecosystems. I really appreciate streams of content in this regard — and tapping into blogs/websites, especially via RSS feeds and Feedly (an RSS aggregator that took off when Google Reader left the scene).

The article brings up a good point when it states that a learning ecosystem can be “healthy or sick, nurtured or threatened, self-sustaining or endangered.” That’s why I urge folks to be intentional about maintaining and, better yet, consistently enhancing their learning ecosystems. In this day and age where lifelong learning is now a requirement to remain in the workforce, each of us needs to be intentional in this regard.

 

 

Report: Accessibility in Digital Learning Increasingly Complex — from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser

Excerpt:

The Online Learning Consortium (OLC)has introduced a series of original reports to keep people in education up-to-date on the latest developments in the field of digital learning. The first report covers accessibility and addresses both K-12 and higher education. The series is being produced by OLC’s Research Center for Digital Learning & Leadership.

The initial report addresses four broad areas tied to accessibility:

  • The national laws governing disability and access and how they apply to online courses;
  • What legal cases exist to guide online course design and delivery in various educational settings;
  • The issues that emerge regarding online course access that might be unique to higher ed or to K-12, and which ones might be shared; and
  • What support online course designers need to generate accessible courses for learners across the education life span (from K-12 to higher education).

 

 

Canvas catches, & maybe passes, Blackboard — from by Lindsay McKenzie
Blackboard dominated the U.S. learning management system market for 20 years, but new data show its cloud-based competitor edging past it.

Excerpt:

Canvas has unseated Blackboard Learn as the leading LMS at U.S. colleges and universities, according to new data from MindWires Consulting.

In a blog post on [7/8/18], Michael Feldstein, partner at MindWires Consulting and co-publisher of the e-Literate blog, wrote that Canvas now has 1,218 installations at U.S. institutions, compared with Blackboard’s 1,216. Although the two-figure difference may seem insignificant — and Blackboard and some of its allies say the data don’t accurately reflect the two companies’ relative reach — most analysts agree that Canvas’s ascent, largely at Blackboard’s expense, is noteworthy.

“This is a stunning development for a company that seemed to have established an unbreakable market dominance a decade ago,” wrote Feldstein.

At its peak in 2006, Blackboard controlled approximately 70 percent of the U.S. and Canadian market, with its nearest competitors “far, far behind,” said Feldstein. But slowly Canvas, and others such as Moodle and D2L’s Brightspace, have closed the gap.

 

 

The market share for Learning Management Systems

 

 

 



Also, you might want to know about the upcoming FREE opportunity to learn more about Instructure (the maker of Canvas), where Canvas is heading, and some other keynotes re: K-12 and higher education.

Next week, Instructure is hosting a conference that’s focusing on Canvas, and it’s called InstructureCarn. You can register — for free — to watch the live stream of all 5 keynotes at InstructureCarn, and Instructure will send you an email reminder to tune into the following keynote speakers and sessions:

  • Tuesday, July 24 @ 5pm MST Josh Coates, CEO, Instructure
  • Wednesday, July 25 @ 9am MST Adora Svitak, Author, Speaker, Advocate
  • Wednesday, July 25 @ 1:30pm MST Jared Stein, VP of Higher Ed Strategy, Instructure
  • Thursday, July 26 @ 9am MST Michael Bonner, 2nd Grade Teacher, Visionary Leader
  • Thursday, JULY 26 @ 1:30PM MST Mitch Benson, SVP of Product, Instructure

Click here to attend virtually!
The times listed above are in Mountain Standard Time (MST)– so you may need to convert those times to your time zone.

 



 

 

Teaching with Technology in 2018 — from thejournal.com by David Nagel
In our third-annual ed tech survey, teachers reveal an overwhelmingly positive attitude toward tech in the classroom and its impact on teaching, learning and professional development.

Excerpt:

Teachers are growing fonder of technology every year. Even the dreaded mobile phone is gaining acceptance as a classroom tool, at least among those who participated in THE Journal’s third-annual Teaching with Technology Survey.

Teacher Attitudes Toward Tech
While teachers in each of the preceding survey were, for the most part, pumped up about tech for learning, this year’s results reveal an evolving positivism not just about tech, but about the direction tech is heading.

Exactly three-quarters of teachers in the survey indicated tech has had an extremely positive (38.37 percent) or mostly positive (36.63 percent) impact on education. The remaining 25 percent said tech has had both positive and negative effects on education. Zero respondents said tech had a negative or extremely negative impact.

Responses about tech’s impact on student learning were similar, with 84 percent saying it’s had a positive impact, 6 percent saying it’s had a negative impact and 10 percent being neutral.

 

 

 

The title of this article being linked to is: Augmented and virtual reality mean business: Everything you need to know

 

Augmented and virtual reality mean business: Everything you need to know — from zdnet by Greg Nichols
An executive guide to the technology and market drivers behind the hype in AR, VR, and MR.

Excerpt:

Overhyped by some, drastically underestimated by others, few emerging technologies have generated the digital ink like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR).  Still lumbering through the novelty phase and roller coaster-like hype cycles, the technologies are only just beginning to show signs of real world usefulness with a new generation of hardware and software applications aimed at the enterprise and at end users like you. On the line is what could grow to be a $108 billion AR/VR industry as soon as 2021. Here’s what you need to know.

 

The reason is that VR environments by nature demand a user’s full attention, which make the technology poorly suited to real-life social interaction outside a digital world. AR, on the other hand, has the potential to act as an on-call co-pilot to everyday life, seamlessly integrating into daily real-world interactions. This will become increasingly true with the development of the AR Cloud.

The AR Cloud
Described by some as the world’s digital twin, the AR Cloud is essentially a digital copy of the real world that can be accessed by any user at any time.

For example, it won’t be long before whatever device I have on me at a given time (a smartphone or wearable, for example) will be equipped to tell me all I need to know about a building just by training a camera at it (GPS is operating as a poor-man’s AR Cloud at the moment).

What the internet is for textual information, the AR Cloud will be for the visible world. Whether it will be open source or controlled by a company like Google is a hotly contested issue.

 

Augmented reality will have a bigger impact on the market and our daily lives than virtual reality — and by a long shot. That’s the consensus of just about every informed commentator on the subject.

 

 

 

Mixed reality will transform learning (and Magic Leap joins act one) — from edsurge.com by Maya Georgieva

Excerpt:

Despite all the hype in recent years about the potential for virtual reality in education, an emerging technology known as mixed reality has far greater promise in and beyond the classroom.

Unlike experiences in virtual reality, mixed reality interacts with the real world that surrounds us. Digital objects become part of the real world. They’re not just digital overlays, but interact with us and the surrounding environment.

If all that sounds like science fiction, a much-hyped device promises some of those features later this year. The device is by a company called Magic Leap, and it uses a pair of goggles to project what the company calls a “lightfield” in front of the user’s face to make it look like digital elements are part of the real world. The expectation is that Magic Leap will bring digital objects in a much more vivid, dynamic and fluid way compared to other mixed-reality devices such as Microsoft’s Hololens.

 

The title of the article being linked to here is Mixed reality will transform learning (and Magic Leap joins act one)

 

Now think about all the other things you wished you had learned this way and imagine a dynamic digital display that transforms your environment and even your living room or classroom into an immersive learning lab. It is learning within a highly dynamic and visual context infused with spatial audio cues reacting to your gaze, gestures, gait, voice and even your heartbeat, all referenced with your geo-location in the world. Unlike what happens with VR, where our brain is tricked into believing the world and the objects in it are real, MR recognizes and builds a map of your actual environment.

 

 

 

Also see:

virtualiteach.com
Exploring The Potential for the Vive Focus in Education

 

virtualiteach.com

 

 

 

Digital Twins Doing Real World Work — from stambol.com

Excerpt:

On the big screen it’s become commonplace to see a 3D rendering or holographic projection of an industrial floor plan or a mechanical schematic. Casual viewers might take for granted that the technology is science fiction and many years away from reality. But today we’re going to outline where these sophisticated virtual replicas – Digital Twins – are found in the real world, here and now. Essentially, we’re talking about a responsive simulated duplicate of a physical object or system. When we first wrote about Digital Twin technology, we mainly covered industrial applications and urban infrastructure like transit and sewers. However, the full scope of their presence is much broader, so now we’re going to break it up into categories.

 

The title of the article being linked to here is Digital twins doing real world work

 

Digital twin — from Wikipedia

Digital twin refers to a digital replica of physical assets (physical twin), processes and systems that can be used for various purposes.[1] The digital representation provides both the elements and the dynamics of how an Internet of Things device operates and lives throughout its life cycle.[2]

Digital twins integrate artificial intelligence, machine learning and software analytics with data to create living digital simulation models that update and change as their physical counterparts change. A digital twin continuously learns and updates itself from multiple sources to represent its near real-time status, working condition or position. This learning system, learns from itself, using sensor data that conveys various aspects of its operating condition; from human experts, such as engineers with deep and relevant industry domain knowledge; from other similar machines; from other similar fleets of machines; and from the larger systems and environment in which it may be a part of. A digital twin also integrates historical data from past machine usage to factor into its digital model.

In various industrial sectors, twins are being used to optimize the operation and maintenance of physical assets, systems and manufacturing processes.[3] They are a formative technology for the Industrial Internet of Things, where physical objects can live and interact with other machines and people virtually.[4]

 

 

Disney to debut its first VR short next month — from techcrunch.com by Sarah Wells

Excerpt:

Walt Disney Animation Studio is set to debut its first VR short film, Cycles, this August in Vancouver, the Association for Computing Machinery announced today. The plan is for it to be a headliner at the ACM’s computer graphics conference (SIGGRAPH), joining other forms of VR, AR and MR entertainment in the conference’s designated Immersive Pavilion.

This film is a first for both Disney and its director, Jeff Gipson, who joined the animation team in 2013 to work as a lighting artist on films like Frozen, Zootopia and Moana. The objective of this film, Gipson said in the statement released by ACM, is to inspire a deep emotional connection with the story.

“We hope more and more people begin to see the emotional weight of VR films, and with Cycles in particular, we hope they will feel the emotions we aimed to convey with our story,” said Gipson.

 

 

 

 

 

U.S. L&D Report – Benchmark Your Workplace Learning  — from findcourses.com, via Alexander Caplan

Topics covered include:

  • L&D Benchmarking Survey: 2018
  • Virtual Reality: A New Reality for L&D
  • How to Promote a Learning Culture in Your Organization
  • How to Calculate Meaningful ROI for Workplace Learning

 

types of training offered to entry level, mid- and senior- level employees

 

 

types of technologies the learning and development group will use in 2018

 

Key takeaways from the U.S. L&D Report

 

 

Also see:

 

 

 

Guiding faculty into immersive environments — from campustechnology.com by David Raths
What’s the best way to get faculty to engage with emerging technologies and incorporate new learning spaces into their teaching? Five institutions share their experiences.

Guiding faculty into immersive environments -- by David Raths

Excerpt:

One of the biggest hurdles for universities has been the high cost of VR-enabled computers and headsets, and some executives say prices must continue to drop before we’ll see more widespread usage. But John Bowditch, director of the Game Research and Immersive Design Lab at Ohio University’s Scripps College of Communication, is already seeing promising developments on that front as he prepares to open a new 20-seat VR classroom. “Probably the best thing about VR in 2018 is that it is a lot more affordable now and that democratizes it,” he said. “We purchased a VR helmet 13 years ago, and it was $12,000 just for the headset. The machine that ran it cost about $20,000. That would be a nonstarter beyond purchasing just one or two. Today, you can get a VR-enabled laptop and headset for under $2,000. That makes it much easier to think about integrating it into classes.”

 

 

Colleges and universities face several hurdles in getting faculty to incorporate virtual reality or immersive experiences in their courses. For one, instructional designers, instructional technologists and directors of teaching and learning centers may not have access to these tools yet, and the budgets aren’t always there to get the labs off the ground, noted Daniel Christian, instructional services director at Western Michigan University‘s Cooley Law School. “Many faculty members’ job plates are already jam-packed — allowing little time to even look at emerging technologies,” he said. “Even if they wanted to experiment with such technologies and potential learning experiences, they don’t have the time to do so. Tight budgets are impacting this situation even further.”

 

 

 

 

How blockbuster MOOCs could shape the future of teaching — from edsurge.com by Jeff Young

Excerpt:

There isn’t a New York Times bestseller list for online courses, but perhaps there should be. After all, so-called MOOCs, or massive open online courses, were meant to open education to as many learners as possible, and in many ways they are more like books (digital ones, packed with videos and interactive quizzes) than courses.

The colleges and companies offering MOOCs can be pretty guarded these days about releasing specific numbers on how many people enroll or pay for a “verified certificate” or microcredential showing they took the course. But both Coursera and EdX, two of the largest providers, do release lists of their most popular courses. And those lists offer a telling snapshot of how MOOCs are evolving and what their impact is on the instructors and institutions offering them.

Here are the top 10 most popular courses for each provider:

 

Coursera Top 10 Most Popular Courses (over past 12 months)

 

edX Top 10 Most Popular Courses (all time)

 

 

So what are these blockbuster MOOCs, then? Experiential textbooks? Gateways to more rigorous college courses? A new kind of entertainment program?

Maybe the answer is: all of the above.

 

 

 

Reimagining the Higher Education Ecosystem — from edu2030.agorize.com
How might we empower people to design their own learning journeys so they can lead purposeful and economically stable lives?

Excerpts:

The problem
Technology is rapidly transforming the way we live, learn, and work. Entirely new jobs are emerging as others are lost to automation. People are living longer, yet switching jobs more often. These dramatic shifts call for a reimagining of the way we prepare for work and life—specifically, how we learn new skills and adapt to a changing economic landscape.

The changes ahead are likely to hurt most those who can least afford to manage them: low-income and first generation learners already ill-served by our existing postsecondary education system. Our current system stifles economic mobility and widens income and achievement gaps; we must act now to ensure that we have an educational ecosystem flexible and fair enough to help all people live purposeful and economically stable lives. And if we are to design solutions proportionate to this problem, new technologies must be called on to scale approaches that reach the millions of vulnerable people across the country.

 

The challenge
How might we empower people to design their own learning journeys so they can lead purposeful and economically stable lives?

The Challenge—Reimagining the Higher Education Ecosystem—seeks bold ideas for how our postsecondary education system could be reimagined to foster equity and encourage learner agency and resilience. We seek specific pilots to move us toward a future in which all learners can achieve economic stability and lead purposeful lives. This Challenge invites participants to articulate a vision and then design pilot projects for a future ecosystem that has the following characteristics:

Expands access: The educational system must ensure that all people—including low-income learners who are disproportionately underserved by the current higher education system—can leverage education to live meaningful and economically stable lives.

Draws on a broad postsecondary ecosystem: While college and universities play a vital role in educating students, there is a much larger ecosystem in which students learn. This ecosystem includes non-traditional “classes” or alternative learning providers, such as MOOCs, bootcamps, and online courses as well as on-the-job training and informal learning. Our future learning system must value the learning that happens in many different environments and enable seamless transitions between learning, work, and life.

 

From DSC:
This is where I could see a vision similar to Learning from the Living [Class] Room come into play. It would provide a highly affordable, accessible platform, that would offer more choice, and more control to learners of all ages. It would be available 24×7 and would be a platform that supports lifelong learning. It would combine a variety of AI-enabled functionalities with human expertise, teaching, training, motivation, and creativity.

It could be that what comes out of this challenge will lay the groundwork for a future, massive new learning platform.

 

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

 

Also see:

 

From DSC:
I found the following graphic out at a posting entitled, Continuous Learning & Development; more than just continuous training (from modernworkplacelearning.com/magazine). I thought it was an excellent example of a learning ecosystem!

 

 

 

 

6 Reasons Blended Learning Works — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Excerpts:

6 reasons why blended learning is so effective in higher education:

  1. Improved instructional design
  2. Increased guidance & triggers
  3. Easier access to learning activities
  4. Individualized learning opportunities
  5. Increased engagement through social interaction
  6. Time on task

 


From DSC:
Notice the use of teams of specialists in the improved instructional design section:

  1. Improved instructional design. Blended courses (like online courses) may be more intentionally designed than face-to-face counterparts, if only because institutional initiatives for blended courses often involve instructional designers or educational technologists who support the faculty in a scheduled redesign process.

 


 

 

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian