engagement / engaging students - Learning Ecosystems

Apple’s $3,499 Vision Pro AR headset is finally here — from techcrunch.com by Brian Heater

Image Credits: Apple

Excerpts:

“With Vision Pro, you’re no longer limited by a display,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said, introducing the new headset at WWDC 2023. Unlike earlier mixed reality reports, the system is far more focused on augmented reality than virtual. The company refresh to this new paradigm is “spatial computing.”

Reflections from Scott Belsky re: the Vision Pro — from implications.com

Apple WWDC 2023: Everything announced from the Apple Vision Pro to iOS 17, MacBook Air and more — from techcrunch.com by Christine Hall

Apple unveils new tech — from therundown.ai (The Rundown)

Here were the biggest things announced:

A 15” Macbook Air, now the thinnest 15’ laptop available
The new Mac Pro workstation, presumably a billion dollars
M2 Ultra, Apple’s new super chip
NameDrop, an AirDrop-integrated data-sharing feature allowing users to share contact info just by bringing their phones together
Journal, an ML-powered personalized journalling app
Standby, turning your iPhone into a nightstand alarm clock
A new, AI-powered update to autocorrect (finally)
Apple Vision Pro

Apple announces AR/VR headset called Vision Pro — from joinsuperhuman.ai by Zain Kahn

Excerpt:

“This is the first Apple product you look through and not at.” – Tim Cook

And with those famous words, Apple announced a new era of consumer tech.

Apple’s new headset will operate on VisionOS – its new operating system – and will work with existing iOS and iPad apps. The new OS is created specifically for spatial computing — the blend of digital content into real space.

Vision Pro is controlled through hand gestures, eye movements and your voice (parts of it assisted by AI). You can use apps, change their size, capture photos and videos and more.

From DSC:
Time will tell what happens with this new operating system and with this type of platform. I’m impressed with the engineering — as Apple wants me to be — but I doubt that this will become mainstream for quite some time yet. Also, I wonder what Steve Jobs would think of this…? Would he say that people would be willing to wear this headset (for long? at all?)? What about Jony Ive?

I’m sure the offered experiences will be excellent. But I won’t be buying one, as it’s waaaaaaaaay too expensive.

Changed by Our Journey: Engaging Students through Simulive Learning — from er.educause.edu by Lisa Lenze and Megan Costello
In this article, an instructor explains how she took an alternative approach to teaching—simulive learning—and discusses the benefits that have extended to her in-person classrooms.

Excerpts:

Mustering courage, Costello devised a novel way to (1) share the course at times other than when it was regularly scheduled and (2) fully engage with her students in the chat channel during the scheduled class meeting time. Her solution, which she calls simulive learning, required her to record her lectures and watch them with her students. (Courageous, indeed!)

Below, Costello and I discuss what simulive learning looks like, how it works, and how Costello has taken her version of remote synchronous teaching forward into current semesters.

Megan Costello: I took a different approach to remote synchronous online learning at the start of the pandemic. Instead of using traditional videoconferencing software to hold class, I prerecorded, edited, and uploaded videos of my lectures to a streaming website. This website allowed me to specify a time and date to broadcast my lectures to my students. Because the lectures were already prepared, I could watch and participate in the chat with my students as we encountered the materials together during the scheduled class time. I drove conversations in chat, asked questions, and got students engaged as we covered materials for the day. The students had my full attention.

NVIDIA ACE for Games Sparks Life Into Virtual Characters With Generative AI

On 05/31/2023, in Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, content development, aggregation, repositories, creativity, Daniel S. Christian, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, future, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, multimedia, NVIDIA, by Daniel Christian

NVIDIA ACE for Games is a new foundry for intelligent in-game characters powered by generative AI. Developers of middleware, tools, and games can use NVIDIA ACE for Games to build and deploy customized speech, conversation, and animation AI models in their software and games.

From DSC:
I can’t wait to see this type of thing integrated into educational games/simulations/training.

Below comments/notes are from DSC (with thanks to Roberto Ferraro for this resource):
according to Dan Pink, intrinsic motivation is very powerful — much more powerful for many types of “messy/unclear” cognitive work (vs. clear, more mechanical types of work). What’s involved here according to Pink? Autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Dan Pink makes his case in the video below. My question is:

If this is true, how might this be applied to education/training/lifelong learning?

From DSC (cont’d):

As Dan mentions, we each know this to be true. For example, for each of our kids, my wife and I introduced them to a variety of things — music, sports, art, etc. We kept waiting for them to discover which thing(s) that THEY wanted to pursue. Perhaps we’ll find out that this was the wrong thing to do. but according to Pink, it’s aligned with the type of energy and productivity that gets released when we pursue something that we want to pursue. Plus creativity flows in this type of setting.

Again, my thanks to Roberto Ferraro for resurfacing this item as his “One ‘must read’ for this week” item of his newsletter.

Learners need: More voice. More choice. More control. -- this image was created by Daniel Christian

Red Sox Turn Fenway Park into “Learning Lab” for Boston 6th Graders — from by Ira Stoll
“The key to unlock opportunity is education and hard work,” students are told at launch event

Students from the 6th grade at Nathan Hale School complete a “bingo challenge” as part of the Red Sox Hall of Fame stop on their guided tour of the Fenway Park Learning Lab.

Excerpt:

The six-stop tour has students learning history, geography, math, and science. Student visitors get baseball caps, t-shirts, and a backpack full of other souvenir items like baseball cards, binoculars, a calculator, and a pen. The most important piece of equipment may be a 40-page, seriously substantive workbook, developed with the Boston Public Schools, that students work their way through along the hourlong guided tour.

From DSC:
Very interesting.

Being a new teacher is hard. Having a good mentor can help — from npr.org by Cory Turner

Excerpt:

[Besides this article’s focus on mentorship]

In March, I reported a pair of stories from Jackson, Miss., where the school district is paying for unlicensed classroom aides to go back to school and get their master’s degrees.

In April, I told the story of a remarkable idea: A new high school in San Antonio dedicated entirely to training high-schoolers in the art and science of good teaching.

From DSC:
I would add a few more items:

Significantly reduce the impact of legislators on K-12. If they do vote on something that would impact schools, each legislator that votes on such legislation must first spend at least ___ week(s) observing in some of the schools that would be impacted before even starting to draft legislation and/or debate on the topic(s).
Instead, turn over more control and power to the students, teachers, K12 administrators, parents, and school boards.
Provide more choice, more control as each student can handle it.
Stop the one-size fits all system. Instead use AI-based systems to provide more personalized learning.
Develop more hybrid programs — but this time I’m talking mixing what we’ve known as public education with homeschooling and smaller learning pods. Let’s expand what’s included when we discuss “learning spaces.”
Strive for a love of learning — vs. competition and developing gameplayers
Support makerspaces, entrepreneurship, and experiments
Speaking of experiments, I would recommend developing more bold experiments outside of the current systems.

Along the lines of potential solutions/visions, see:

Why ‘System Transformation’ Is Likely A Pipe Dream — from michaelbhorn.substack.com by Michael Horn
But I’m for System Replacement

Excerpt:

Foremost among them is this: Despite all the fancy models and white papers around what are all the levers to pull in order to transform a system, system transformation almost never happens by changing the fundamental tenets of the system itself. Instead, it comes from replacing the system with a brand-new system.

To start to understand why, consider the complicated system in which public schools find themselves. As Thomas Arnett explained, they are one part of a vast value network of federal, state, and local regulators, voters and taxpayers, parents and students, teachers, administrators, unions, curriculum providers, school vendors, public infrastructure, higher education institutions, and more.

New ideas, programs, or entities that don’t fit into these processes, priorities, and cost structures are simply not plug-compatible into that value network. They consequently get rejected, tossed to the fringe, or altered to meet the needs of the existing actors in the value network.

I’m a Student. You Have No Idea How Much We’re Using ChatGPT. — from chronicle.com by

Excerpt:

There’s a remarkable disconnect between how professors and administrators think students use generative AI on written work and how we actually use it. Many assume that if an essay is written with the help of ChatGPT, there will be some sort of evidence — it will have a distinctive “voice,” it won’t make very complex arguments, or it will be written in a way that AI-detection programs will pick up on. Those are dangerous misconceptions. In reality, it’s very easy to use AI to do the lion’s share of the thinking while still submitting work that looks like your own.

The common fear among teachers is that AI is actually writing our essays for us, but that isn’t what happens. You can hand ChatGPT a prompt and ask it for a finished product, but you’ll probably get an essay with a very general claim, middle-school-level sentence structure, and half as many words as you wanted. The more effective, and increasingly popular, strategy is to have the AI walk you through the writing process step by step.

.

From DSC:
The idea of personalized storytelling is highly intriguing to me. If you write a story for someone with their name and character in it, they will likely be even more engaged with the story/content. Our daughter recently did this with a substitute teacher, who she really wanted to thank before she left (for another assignment at another school). I thought it was very creative of her.

How Your Students are Using AI — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman

Excerpts:

Here’s are the five biggest lessons we’ve learned:

1. Many students are already embracing AI in their day to day study
2. Students need AI education, and fast.
3. Students have a preference for free or low-cost alternatives to often expensive, paid-for services
4. Students find value in personalised, dialogue-based learning experiences
5. Ed Tech companies will need to evolve in order to survive.
  .

Curricular Resources about AI for Teaching (CRAFT) — from craft.stanford.edu
A project from the Stanford Graduate School of Education

Excerpt:

We’re building resources to teach AI literacies for high school and college instructors and assembling them into a full curriculum that will be deployed in a course with the National Educational Equity Lab offered in Fall 2023.
.

AI video is getting insanely powerful.

Soon, you’ll be able to create a Hollywood-grade movie from your pocket.

Here’s the most breathtaking AI-generated videos I’ve seen:

— The AI Solopreneur (@aisolopreneur) May 11, 2023

ChatGPT has changed the world.

It does lack in some areas, but my favorite use case is leveraging it to teach me things twice as fast.

Here are the 10 best prompts to learn anything faster:

— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) May 11, 2023

Why I’m Excited About ChatGPT — from insidehighered.com by Jennie Young
Here are 10 ways ChatGPT will be a boon to first-year writing instruction, Jennie Young writes.

Excerpt:

But from my perspective as a first-year writing program director, I’m excited about how this emerging technology will help students from all kinds of educational backgrounds learn and focus on higher-order thinking skills faster. Here are 10 reasons I’m excited about ChatGPT.

? stfu and take my money

This is the most impressive campaign I’ve seen from a mega brand so far using AI & StableDiffusion.

Would love a breakdown of how this was all done.

pic.twitter.com/H5ryW3owi4

— Linus (???) (@LinusEkenstam) May 12, 2023

edX Debuts Two AI-Powered Learning Assistants Built on ChatGPT — from press.edx.org; with thanks to Matthew Tower for this resource
edX plugin launches in ChatGPT plugin store to give users access to content and course discovery
edX Xpert delivers AI-powered learning and customer support within the edX platform

Excerpt:

LANHAM, Md. – May 12, 2023 – edX, a leading global online learning platform from 2U, Inc. (Nasdaq: TWOU), today announced the debut of two AI-powered innovations: the new edX plugin for ChatGPT and edX Xpert, an AI-powered learning assistant on the edX platform. Both tools leverage the technology of AI research and deployment company OpenAI to deliver real-time academic support and course discovery to help learners achieve their goals.

Inviting Learners into Work That Matters — from gettingsmart.com by Tom Vander Ark

Key Points

We’ve found pockets of excellence in three dozen high school visits this spring.
Where we’ve spotted evidence of deeper learning (i.e., engagement, critical thinking, excellent public products) it’s been work that matters to the learner and their community– it’s relevant, purposeful, and consequential work.

How to Continue Learning after College Graduation [ivypanda.com]

On 05/11/2023, in career development, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, learning, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, reinvent, skills, staying relevant, surviving, by Daniel Christian

How to Continue Learning after College Graduation — from ivypanda.com; with thanks to Yvonne McQuarrie for this resource.

First, a brief note from DSC:
I publish this piece because I’m a firm believer that all of us are now into lifelong learning. Each of us needs to be intentional on enhancing our personal learning ecosystems.

Excerpt:

College graduation often becomes a turning point in students’ lives. Fear, confusion, and self-doubt often affect you at this time. They are likely to impact your interest and motivation for further study. To overcome this, you will have to adopt a lifelong learning mindset.

Our team wants to help you preserve your natural curiosity and interest in studies long after your college years are over. Below you will find reasons why lifelong learning matters and how it can help you live a fulfilling life.

Poetry writing about Flint murals allows for ‘creative freedom’ in this high school classroom [Goetz]

On 04/28/2023, in animation, art, creativity, education, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, history, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, Learning Experience Design, Michigan, society, sociology, student-related, teachers, writing, youth, by Daniel Christian

Poetry writing about Flint murals allows for ‘creative freedom’ in this high school classroom — from mlive.com by Dylan Goetz (behind paywall)

Excerpt:

It’s a new tradition in the curriculum of the senior-level English class, where teacher Carrie Mattern asks her students to seek out a mural in Flint and write poetry about it.

This year, there was a focus on writing around cultural grief and the process of healing.

It’s become a favorite assignment for the students who’ve worked on the project, who say it allows them to use “creative freedom” in a way that other classes don’t.
.

Also see:

5 Playful Strategies That Reduce Language Learning Anxiety — from edutopia.org by Paige Tutt
We visited a classroom in Denmark to see how a playful learning philosophy can put students at ease and make language learning joyful and engaging.

Excerpt:

Instead of trying to convince students that their fears aren’t warranted, Belouahi makes a point of creating a positive, mistake-friendly classroom where students feel comfortable experimenting. One of the ways she does this is by incorporating playful learning strategies. “It doesn’t have to be perfect from the beginning,” Belouahi says. “The goal is for them to use their English language as much as possible and as best as they can. Not perfectly.”

Here are five playful learning strategies from Belouahi’s classroom designed to make the act of learning a new language less daunting, and more joyful, social, and engaging.

Also from edutopia.org, see:

An Innovative Way for High School Students to Take Control of Their Own Learning — by Shelby Scoffield
Giving students a chance to build a project based on a rubric they created can increase engagement and investment.

Learners need: More voice. More choice. More control. -- this image was created by Daniel Christian

3 Simple Yet Powerful Ways to Build Relationships With Your Students — by Jori Krulder
Use these interactive strategies to build strong relationships with middle and high school students without sacrificing teaching time.
Activating Learning by Milling to Music
When students pretend they’re at a fancy party making small talk, a simple brainstorm for writing ideas becomes more lively, more cooperative—and more effective.

Our World Shaken, Not Stirred: Synthetic entertainment, hybrid social experiences, syncing ourselves with apps, and more. [Belsky]

On 04/12/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, communications, communities of practice, content development, aggregation, repositories, copyright/ownership/NFTs, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, creativity, digital audio, digital storytelling, digital video, disruption, drama/theater, education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, entrepreneurship, experimentation, future, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, legislatures / government / legal, liberal arts, media/film, multimedia, new business models, online media, platforms, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, skills, story, storytelling, teaching & learning, tools, training / L&D, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, webinars, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Before we get to Scott Belsky’s article, here’s an interesting/related item from Tobi Lutke:

I just clued in how insane text2vid will get soon. As crazy as this sounds, we will be able to generate movies from just minor prompts and the path there is pretty clear.

— tobi lutke (@tobi) March 29, 2023

Our World Shaken, Not Stirred: Synthetic entertainment, hybrid social experiences, syncing ourselves with apps, and more. — from implications.com by Scott Belsky
Things will get weird. And exciting.

Excerpts:

Recent advances in technology will ~~stir~~ shake the pot of culture and our day-to-day experiences. Examples? A new era of synthetic entertainment will emerge, online social dynamics will become “hybrid experiences” where AI personas are equal players, and we will sync ourselves with applications as opposed to using applications.

A new era of synthetic entertainment will emerge as the world’s video archives – as well as actors’ bodies and voices – will be used to train models. Expect sequels made without actor participation, a new era of ai-outfitted creative economy participants, a deluge of imaginative media that would have been cost prohibitive, and copyright wars and legislation.

Unauthorized sequels, spin-offs, some amazing stuff, and a legal dumpster fire: Now lets shift beyond Hollywood to the fast-growing long tail of prosumer-made entertainment. This is where entirely new genres of entertainment will emerge including the unauthorized sequels and spinoffs that I expect we will start seeing.

Also relevant/see:

Digital storytelling with generative AI: notes on the appearance of #AICinema — from bryanalexander.org by Bryan Alexander

Excerpt:

This is how I viewed a fascinating article about the so-called #AICinema movement. Benj Edwards describes this nascent current and interviews one of its practitioners, Julie Wieland. It’s a great example of people creating small stories using tech – in this case, generative AI, specifically the image creator Midjourney.

Bryan links to:

Artists astound with AI-generated film stills from a parallel universe — from arstechnica.com by Benj Edwards
A Q&A with “synthographer” Julie Wieland on the #aicinema movement.

From DSC:
How will text-to-video impact the Learning and Development world? Teaching and learning? Those people communicating within communities of practice? Those creating presentations and/or offering webinars?

Hmmm…should be interesting!

The Secret to Great Learning Design? Focus on Problems, not Solutions — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
What a recent resurgence of research into problem-based learning has taught us about the value & impact of problem-based approaches

Excerpts:

Problem-based learning is an instructional approach that engages students in active, collaborative, and self-directed learning by exploring complex, real-world problems (rather than sitting and listening to a stage on the stage).

In a Problem-based learning scenario, students work in small groups and, under the guidance of a facilitator or instructor, identify, research, and analyse a problem before proposing and evaluating potential solutions and reaching a resolution.
…
Here are five of the most interesting research projects published on problem-based learning in the last few months:

Teaching: What You Can Learn From Students About ChatGPT — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Like a lot of you, I have been wondering how students are reacting to the rapid launch of generative AI tools. And I wanted to point you to creative ways in which professors and teaching experts have helped involve them in research and policymaking.

At Kalamazoo College, Autumn Hostetter, a psychology professor, and six of her students surveyed faculty members and students to determine whether they could detect an AI-written essay, and what they thought of the ethics of using various AI tools in writing. You can read their research paper here.
…
Next, participants were asked about a range of scenarios, such as using Grammarly, using AI to make an outline for a paper, using AI to write a section of a paper, looking up a concept on Google and copying it directly into a paper, and using AI to write an entire paper. As expected, commonly used tools like Grammarly were considered the most ethical, while writing a paper entirely with AI was considered the least. But researchers found variation in how people approached the in-between scenarios. Perhaps most interesting: Students and faculty members shared very similar views with each scenario.

Also relevant/see:

This Was Written By a Human: A Real Educator’s Thoughts on Teaching in the Age of ChatGPT — from er.educause.edu educause.org by Jered Borup
The well-founded concerns surrounding ChatGPT shouldn’t distract us from considering how it might be useful.

ChatGPT: Student insights are necessary to help universities plan for the future — from theconversation.com by Alpha Abebe and Fenella Amarasinghe

Excerpt:

In the race to get ahead of new technologies, are we forgetting about the perspectives of the most important stakeholders within our post-secondary institutions: the students?

Leaving students out of early discussions and decision-making processes is almost always a recipe for ill-fitting, ineffective and/or damaging approaches. The mantra “nothing for us without us” comes to mind here.

Learning Ecosystems

Apple’s $3,499 Vision Pro AR headset is finally here [Heater]

Image Credits: Apple

NVIDIA ACE for Games Sparks Life Into Virtual Characters With Generative AI

How to Continue Learning after College Graduation [ivypanda.com]

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