2011 Market Trends: Brain Candy — from sparxoo.com by Ethan Lyon

Innovative companies are leveraging augmented reality to teach astronomy, combining food with learning, developing adaptive algorithms that understand individual learning preferences and expanding upon Mrs. Frizzle’s Magic Schoolbus. New education initiatives are helping children, high-schoolers, college students and graduates learn in ways that are most conducive their individual learning patterns. It’s about injecting creativity into education, whether manifested in technology or more traditional, person-to-person environments.

Millions of TV’s (as completely converged/Internet-connected devices) = millions of learners?!?

From DSC:

The other day, I created/posted the top graphic below. Take the concepts below — hook them up to engines that use cloud-based learner profiles — and you have some serious potential for powerful, global, ubiquitous learning! A touch-sensitive panel might be interesting here as well.

Come to think of it, add social networking, videoconferencing, and web-based collaboration tools — the power to learn would be quite impressive.  Multimedia to the nth degree.

Then add to that online marketplaces for teaching and learning — where you can be both a teacher and a learner at the same time — hmmm…

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From DSC:
Then today, I saw Cisco’s piece on their Videoscape product line! Check it out!

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How will technologies like AirPlay affect education? I suggest 24x7x365 access on any device may be one way. By Daniel S. Christian at Learning Ecosystems blog-- 1-17-11.

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Addendum on 1-20-11:
The future of the TV is online
— from telegraph.co.uk
Your television’s going to get connected, says Matt Warman


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Also see:
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The 19,100-student Grand Rapids school district in Michigan launched blended-learning classes this past fall. The district has started with high school social studies and math classes.

“There was some initial resistance from the public—concerned parents with the perception that kids are just going to be stuck in computer labs—but that’s absolutely contrary to what [this] is,” said John Helmholdt, the director of communications for the district. “When you say blended, people don’t understand what that means. It took months of really trying to educate and raise awareness of really what it was we were trying to do.”

Moving to a blended model actually made teacher-student ratios better, according to Mr. Helmholdt, by layering on support-staff members to circulate when the students were completing work online.

In Grand Rapids, the blended classes go through a three-day rotation of face-to-face and online instruction. During the first day, students receive a traditional lecture-based class in a regular classroom where a new concept is introduced. On the second day, the class starts by going over the concept again and then beginning to use some of the online software and support tools that reinforce the concept. On the third day, the students work solely with digital resources. [Rest of article here.]

From DSC:
I am very glad that the Grand Rapids school system is moving in this direction!  It is a huge step in the right direction and I congratulate the district’s leadership for their vision and patience while this plane gets off the runway. This endeavor will help the students begin to build digital/information literacy. It will open their minds up to numerous creative possibilities — as well as career opportunities and goals. They are beginning to have
the world as their school“.

Math that moves -- the use of the iPad in K-12 -- from the New York Times

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From DSC:
I post this here — with higher ed included in the tags/categories — because if the trend within K-12 continues (i.e. that of using such technologies as the iPad, digital textbooks, mobile learning devices, etc.), students’ expectations WILL be impacted. When they hit our doorsteps, they will come with their heightened sets of expectations. The question is, will we in higher ed be ready for them?

mindfulness in the digital age.

…we are in the midst of one of the most profound cognitive shifts in our intellectual history, moving from a “deep attention” to a “hyper attention” society (emphasis DSC), to quote Duke University professor Katherine Hayles. She defines “deep attention” as the cognitive preference for input from only a single information stream, to be engaged for an extended period. “Hyper attention,” by contrast, is marked by a hunger for a high level of stimulation and a desire to shift rapidly among different information streams.

From DSC:
In the near future, we may long for the days of being able to dive deeply into an item — giving it our full attention (and then again, we may not!). But to me, this type of deep focus will take practice and a concerted effort to maintain this ability; because with the information overload coming at us, to give our attention to something is asking a lot. Often times, you have but a split second to get someone’s attention. I wonder…how many people never made it to this point in this posting for example…? Probably quite a few.

If attention can be visualized as a gate...is it getting harder to get through the gate?



Gobles (Michigan, USA) third-graders get smartphones — from WoodTV8.com by Tony Tagliavi;  my thanks to Mr. L. Andrew Thorburn for this resource
Phone function disabled; used as handheld computer

GOBLES, Mich. (WOOD) – More than 60 Gobles Elementary School third-graders are spending at least part of their classroom time with their own smartphones.

“It’s amazing,” 8-year-old Halli Davidson said Tuesday before showing a reporter a diagram she drew to help understand multiplication. “You feel like you’re in your own little personal world in here.”

The phone function actually has been disabled, principal Terry Breen told 24 Hour News 8. The students are using the smartphones as handheld computers, complete with filtered wireless Internet, dubbed “mobile learning devices.”

Tuesday was the second day for the $44,000 Gobles pilot program, 75% of which Breen said was paid for with grant funds.

But these new devices, according to teacher Chris Quist, are “exciting and fun and engaging. And even in two days, I’ve noticed the amount of on-task time and the quiet time.”

Students could use the devices to watch videos to tie in with their Michigan history lessons, Breen said. And Quist said the simple fact that the phones can show photos and other presentations in color — unlike most classroom handouts — is significant.

West Michigan school systems including Allendale, Caledonia and Coopersville — along with Grand River Prep, and Holland Christian Schools — offer one-to-one laptops for at least some grades.

Hopkins Public Schools rolled it out this year with small Internet laptops called netbooks for middle and high school students.

If it is expanded, the principal said administrators will determine which device is best — from smartphones to tablet computers such as iPads or laptops — for the needs of students at each grade level.

2011 NMC Symposium on New Media and Learning
March 29, 2011 – March 31, 2011
Online hosted by NMC

The 2011 NMC Symposium on New Media and Learning, the seventeenth in the NMC’s Series of Virtual Symposia, will explore the impact of new media on teaching, learning, research, and creative inquiry, especially in higher education.

The 2011 NMC Symposium on New Media and Learning, the seventeenth in the NMC’s Series of Virtual Symposia, will explore the impact of new media on teaching, learning, research, and creative expression, especially in higher education. New media, for this event, is interpreted broadly as anything from creative uses of digital media and new forms of communication to alternative publishing methods and media-rich tools. The Symposium seeks to explore new media in the context of a current social phenomenon and not simply as a means of content delivery.

Proposals are encouraged on any of the following themes, but this list is not exhaustive and selections will not be limited to these categories:

  • digital gaming in education
  • digital storytelling practices
  • new forms of multimedia production and delivery
  • social media, social networking and global connections
  • new media and mobile devices
  • data visualization
  • media-rich communication tools
  • new literacies
  • any technology or practice that shows promise for engaging students and supporting teaching and learning using new media

UMC packs 3-D visuals into cutting-edge research lab — from grandforksherald.com by Ryan Johnson

$145,000 virtual immersion lab creates realistic 3-D simulations
Think virtual reality, only more realistic. Add to that cutting edge-technology and the ability to interact with and walk around 3-D holograms and you get the newest addition to the University of Minnesota-Crookston, complete with special effects impressive enough to put the 2009 blockbuster film “Avatar” to shame

— Dr. Adel Ali from grandforksherald.com

I have long wanted…er… better make that dreamed of having our own kids enjoy the same energy that I experience when I create something on a computer. Computers can be used as tools for exercising and developing our creativity.

So when our son, A.J., put a song together on Garageband (see link below), I was thrilled! He played the song for me and, to me, it sounded great.

But something inside him wanted to have this music published somewhere — for others to hear it as well. So I told him I would post it on my blog and that — via the Internet — people all of the world could hear this song. Boy was he ever excited! His eyes lit up and I could see the gears turning in his head, wanting to go back and create another song.   🙂

“I could be famous he said!” And I told him, “Yes, AJ, you could be famous.” (That’s not the point, but it’s still motivating to him.)

Even though both he and I have stage fright when it comes to sharing our musical interests and (not even half-baked) abilities, he was still excited to think that this song might be heard by others.

I’m posting it for him, but I’m also posting it to put an “Amen!” to the many folks who have already written that publishing students’ work for others to see/hear is an incredibly motivating event.


So without further adieu, here is the song AJ created on a Mac laptop while on the road, simply entitled, “Car Trip.”


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Nice work AJ!  🙂

A National Primer on K-12 Online Learning — iNACOL

  • What does an online course look like?
  • How do students interact with their teacher?
  • What qualifications and training are required of teachers?
  • Does online learning really work?
  • What state or school district policies are needed to implement online learning?

The National Primer on K-12 Online Learning provides a comprehensive overview of online learning by examining the basics about online teaching and learning, evaluating academic success, professional development, technology and other topics.

Living Actor Presenter

— my thanks to Benoît Morel, CEO Cantoche, for this resource

Living Actor™ Presenter is “a 100% online tool that generates video animations from an audio or text file that is used to automatically animate a high quality 3D avatar over any background that you select. You can then download the resulting video file, embed it in any presentation or training content, and even share it over the Internet.”

Cantoche is an international company based in France (Paris) and in the United-States (Albuquerque). It is very well known for its unique expertise in “3D embodied agents” as well as for its technological innovations in the field of humanized interfaces.

The 2011 NMC Summer Conference includes four themes:

Threads in these themes include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Emerging uses of mobile devices and applications in any context
  • Highly innovative, successful applications of learning analytics or visual data analysis
  • Uses of augmented reality, geolocation, and gesture-based computing
  • Discipline-specific applications for emerging technologies
  • Challenges and trends in educational technology
  • Projects that employ the Horizon Report or Navigator in any capacity

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  • Challenge-based learning
  • Game-based learning
  • Digital storytelling as a learning strategy
  • Immersive learning environments
  • Open content resources and strategies
  • New media research and scholarship
  • Challenges and trends in new media and learning

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  • Fostering/Supporting/budgeting for innovation
  • Supporting new media scholarship
  • Collaboration as a strategy
  • Learning space design, in all senses of the words
  • Use, creation, and management of open content
  • Experiment and experience; gallery as lab, lab as gallery
  • Challenges and trends related to managing an educational enterprise

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  • Designing for mobile devices in any context
  • Social networking — designing, monitoring, maximizing social tools
  • Experience design
  • Creating augmented reality
  • Creating the next generation of electronic books
  • Optimizing digital workflows
  • Strategies for staying current with new media tools
© 2025 | Daniel Christian