engineering

Gartner reveals top predictions for IT organizations & users for 2016 and beyond — from gartner.com

Excerpts:

By 2018, 20 percent of business content will be authored by machines.
By 2018, six billion connected things will be requesting support.
By 2020, autonomous software agents outside of human control will participate in five percent of all economic transactions.
By 2018, more than 3 million workers globally will be supervised by a “robo-boss.”
By year-end 2018, 20 percent of smart buildings will have suffered from digital vandalism.
By 2018, 45 percent of the fastest-growing companies will have fewer employees than instances of smart machines.
By year-end 2018, customer digital assistant will recognize individuals by face and voice across channels and partners.
By 2018, two million employees will be required to wear health and fitness tracking devices as a condition of employment.
By 2020, smart agents will facilitate 40 percent of mobile interactions, and the postapp era will begin to dominate.
Through 2020, 95 percent of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault.

From DSC:
Some of these are pretty bold predictions. Is this the future we want? Do you want to be supervised by a “robo-boss?” Perhaps, perhaps not. Likely, given the pace of technological change, we will need to be flexible and be able to change/adapt in order to remain marketable. Lifelong learning has become a must have ingredient in our lives — for all of us in the workforce. Learning how to learn will pay off, big time.

I’m working on another posting that talks about the ethics, morals, and potential policies that need to be considered now before we get too much further down some of these pathways.

The pace has changed significantly and quickly

Tools We Like: Spotlight on IDEO’s EE Lab [Breselor; IDEO]

On 11/03/2015, in design, engineering, experimentation, maker movement, by Daniel Christian

Tools We Like: Spotlight on IDEO’s EE Lab — from labs.ideo.com by Sara Breselor
Prototyping essentials from breadboards to toaster ovens

Excerpt:

Mark Harrison has been building stuff at IDEO for more than 15 years (see Mark’s post on his all-time favorite workarounds). He’s one of the most knowledgeable tinkerers around, and he’s just finished putting together an electrical engineering lab at IDEO Palo Alto, stocked with every useful tool and device he could get his hands on. He wants to encourage more people to start building, and the lab is open to anyone with an idea. “I don’t want people to think that it’s specialized. You don’t have to be an engineer to come use the lab,” he says. “We’ve stocked it so that anybody can come in here, pick up an arduino and start prototyping.”

Here’s a quick tour of the tools Mark considers essential…

The 50 Most Popular MOOCs of All Time — from onlinecoursereport.com, via Jordan Hall

Excerpt:

MOOCs – or Massive Open Online Courses – are picking up momentum in popularity – at least in terms of initial enrollment.

Unlike regular college/ university courses, MOOCs can attract many thousands of enrollees around the world. They can come in the form of active course sessions with participant interaction, or as archived content for self-paced study. MOOCs can be free, or there can be a charge – either on a subscription basis or a one-time charge. Free MOOCs sometimes have a paid “verified certificate” option. There are now thousands of MOOCs available worldwide from several hundred colleges, universities and other institutions of higher learning. For your convenience, we’ve compiled a list of 50 of the most popular MOOCs, based on enrollment figures for all sessions of a course. The ranking is based on filtering enrollment data for 185 free MOOCs on various elearning platforms.

The “maker” movement has swept across schools in California & beyond. Can it fundamentally change K-12 education? [Ashton]

On 10/15/2015, in creativity, education, engagement / engaging students, engineering, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, maker movement, student-related, by Daniel Christian

Putting Away the Books to Learn — from medium.com by Jackie Ashton; with thanks to Angela Maiers for this resource
The “maker” movement has swept across schools in California and beyond. Can it fundamentally change K-12 education?

Excerpt:

The room, which more closely resembles a fabrication studio than middle school classroom, boasts tools like a drill press, torch, welder, laser cutter, forge, and 3D-printer. Books with titles like Fabrication: Essays on Making Things & Making Meaning and The Geometry of Sheet Metal Work rest on a shelf. Safety goggles and a collection of posters around the room remind students to “respect” the tools and keep in mind “what they can do to you if not used with thought and care.”

East Bay School for Boys (EBSB) is one of many schools across the country?—?and in the Bay Area in particular?—?that sees great value in offering its students DIY (do-it-yourself) learning experiences, as opposed to traditional learning via rote memorization or teacher-led lesson plans. It’s part of the “maker” movement?—?that is, the trend of encouraging people to build new devices from scratch?—?which has exploded in recent years, from elementary school classrooms to Silicon Valley board rooms.

In the education world, public, private, and charter schools alike are empowering kids to roll up their sleeves and jump on the experiential bandwagon. Teachers encourage students to tinker with materials like e-textiles, conductive thread, 3D printed objects, and Makey Makey, a simple invention kit that anyone can use.

Also see:

The work of Laura Fleming — including her book, Worlds of Making: Best Practices for Establishing a Makerspace for Your School

as well as some slides from a recent presentation by Laura:

Maker Month: A series about the merits and challenges of project-based learning — also from medium.com
Five Key Principles to Makerspace Success — by Trevor Shaw, Director of Technology, Dwight-Englewood School
An Ecosystem of Making for Student Engineers — from makerbot.com
A Librarian’s Guide to Makerspaces: 16 Resources — from oedb.org

From DSC:
The following app looks to be something that the “makers” of the programming world might be interested in. Also, it could be great for those learners interested in engineering, robotics, and/or machine-to-machine communications; using this app could help start them down a very promising path/future.

From their website:

Programming re-imagined for the connected world.
Learn to program Arduino, drones, robots, connected toys, and smart home devices, all wirelessly. Tickle is easy to learn, fun to use, and 1000x more powerful!

Easy to learn, yet incredibly powerful!
Start learning programming the same way as Computer Science courses at Harvard and UC Berkeley. Tickle is used by makers and designers around the world to create custom robots and interactive projects, including Stanford University computer scientists.

Spark your imagination.
Create stunning games and interactive stories using our library of animated characters and sounds. With the ability to program devices to interact with other devices and virtual characters, the possibilities are limitless.

1000X the super (programming) power.
If you’ve tried Scratch, Hopscotch, Tynker, Blockly, Scratch Jr, Kodable, Pyonkee, mBlock, or Code.org, now you can go beyond the screen and program your own connected future.

That ‘useless’ liberal arts degree has become tech’s hottest ticket — from forbes.com by George Anders; with a shout out to Krista Spahr for bringing this item to my attention

Except:

What kind of boss hires a thwarted actress for a business-to-business software startup? Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s 42-year-old cofounder and CEO, whose estimated double-digit stake in the company could be worth $300 million or more. He’s the proud holder of an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Canada’s University of Victoria and a master’s degree from Cambridge in philosophy and the history of science.

“Studying philosophy taught me two things,” says Butterfield, sitting in his office in San Francisco’s South of Market district, a neighborhood almost entirely dedicated to the cult of coding. “I learned how to write really clearly. I learned how to follow an argument all the way down, which is invaluable in running meetings. And when I studied the history of science, I learned about the ways that everyone believes something is true–like the old notion of some kind of ether in the air propagating gravitational forces–until they realized that it wasn’t true.”
…
And he’s far from alone. Throughout the major U.S. tech hubs, whether Silicon Valley or Seattle, Boston or Austin, Tex., software companies are discovering that liberal arts thinking makes them stronger. Engineers may still command the biggest salaries, but at disruptive juggernauts such as Facebook and Uber, the war for talent has moved to nontechnical jobs, particularly sales and marketing. The more that audacious coders dream of changing the world, the more they need to fill their companies with social alchemists who can connect with customers–and make progress seem pleasant.

Addendum on 8/7/15:

STEM Study Starts With Liberal Arts — from forbes.com by Chris Teare
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Much has been made, especially by the Return on Investment crowd, of the value of undergraduate study in the so-called STEM fields: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Lost in the conversation is the way the true liberal arts underpin such study, often because the liberal arts are inaccurately equated solely with the humanities. From the start, the liberal arts included math and science, something I learned firsthand at St. John’s College.

This topic is especially on my mind since reading the excellent article George Anders has written for Forbes: “That ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech’s Hottest Ticket” In this context, understanding the actual origin and purposes of the liberal arts is all the more valuable.

From DSC:
Many times we don’t want to hear news that could be troubling in terms of our futures. But we need to deal with these trends now or face the destabilization that Harold Jarche mentions in his posting below.

The topics found in the following items should be discussed in courses involving economics, business, political science, psychology, futurism, engineering, religion*, robotics, marketing, the law/legal affairs and others throughout the world. These trends are massive and have enormous ramifications for our societies in the not-too-distant future.

* When I mention religion classes here, I’m thinking of questions such as :

What does God have in mind for the place of work in our lives?
Is it good for us? If so, why or why not?
How might these trends impact one’s vocation/calling?
…and I’m sure that professors who teach faith/
religion-related courses can think of other questions to pursue

turmoil and transition — from jarche.com by Harold Jarche

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

One of the greatest issues that will face Canada, and many developed countries in the next decade will be wealth distribution. While it does not currently appear to be a major problem, the disparity between rich and poor will increase. The main reason will be the emergence of a post-job economy. The ‘job’ was the way we redistributed wealth, making capitalists pay for the means of production and in return creating a middle class that could pay for mass produced goods. That period is almost over. From self-driving vehicles to algorithms replacing knowledge workers, employment is not keeping up with production. Value in the network era is accruing to the owners of the platforms, with companies such as Instagram reaching $1 billion valuations with only 13 employees.
…
The emerging economy of platform capitalism includes companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple. These giants combined do not employ as many people as General Motors did. But the money accrued by them is enormous and remains in a few hands. The rest of the labour market has to find ways to cobble together a living income. Hence we see many people willing to drive for a company like Uber in order to increase cash-flow. But drivers for Uber have no career track. The platform owners get richer, but the drivers are limited by finite time. They can only drive so many hours per day, and without benefits. At the same time, those self-driving cars are poised to replace all Uber drivers in the near future. Standardized work, like driving a vehicle, has little future in a world of nano-bio-cogno-techno progress.

Value in the network era is accruing to the owners of the platforms, with companies such as Instagram reaching $1 billion valuations with only 13 employees.

For the past century, the job was the way we redistributed wealth and protected workers from the negative aspects of early capitalism. As the knowledge economy disappears, we need to re-think our concepts of work, income, employment, and most importantly education. If we do not find ways to help citizens lead productive lives, our society will face increasing destabilization.

Also see:

Will artificial intelligence and robots take your marketing job? — from by markedu.com by
Technology will overtake jobs to an extent and at a rate we have not seen before. Artificial intelligence is threatening jobs even in service and knowledge intensive sectors. This begs the question: are robots threatening to take your marketing job?

Excerpt:

What exactly is a human job?
The benefits of artificial intelligence are obvious. Massive productivity gains while a new layer of personalized services from your computer – whether that is a burger robot or Dr. Watson. But artificial intelligence has a bias. Many jobs will be lost.

A few years ago a study from the University of Oxford got quite a bit of attention. The study said that 47 percent of the US labor market could be replaced by intelligent computers within the next 20 years.

The losers are a wide range of job categories within the administration, service, sales, transportation and manufacturing.

…

Before long we should – or must – redefine what exactly a human job is and the usefulness of it. How we as humans can best complement the extraordinary capabilities of artificial intelligence.

This development is expected to grow fast. There are different predictions about the timing, but by 2030 there will be very few tasks that only a human can solve.

“The brave new world of virtual-reality filmmaking” [Nield] & other items re: VR

On 06/26/2015, in A/V -- audio/visual, business, chemistry, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, engineering, higher education, K-12 related, media/film, science, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, by Daniel Christian

The brave new world of virtual-reality filmmaking — from readwrite.com by David Nield
How VR will revolutionize cinema for creators and consumers.

Excerpt:

While gamers wait patiently for their virtual-reality headsets to go on sale, there’s another industry ripe for the VR picking: movies. That means, as VR technology matures, filmmakers have to work out a new approach to their craft. But if they get it right, audiences are in for a far more immersive and interactive ride.

Companies like Samsung, Google and Oculus have been evangelizing VR cinema experiences, hoping to bring the sorts of videos that make their virtual-reality platforms a real destination for movie watchers. But to make their campaigns work, they need filmmakers and video producers who know what they’re doing.

Innovative use of Virtual Reality in Chemistry Classrooms — from alchemylearning.com

Excerpt:

“My students were able to apply their understanding of the technology to learning activities (labs, research projects, etc.) that could be made possible using virtual reality. For students to draw those connections on their own gives me hope that engineers, teachers, and students will be able to collaborate and create great opportunities for learning inside of a virtual world.” – Matt Cobb

Adopting Virtual Reality for Education — from alchemylearning.com

Excerpt:

“As an educator with 20+ years’ experience integrating technology into curriculum, it is exciting for me to see a technology that so quickly captures the attention of the students, motivates them to make the effort to learn the procedures, and then opens them up to the relevant content.“ – Larry Fallon, Instructional Technology Coordinator, Arlington County Public Schools
…
But ultimately, will VR become a proven medium to help students learn faster, be more motivated, and expand the boundaries of what is possible? Let’s take a moment to survey the state of the field right now and see what the future of virtual reality in education could look like.

Virtual reality technology expands to a blitz of uses, including football — from kansascity.com by Kasia Kovacs

Excerpt:

Reilly’s football software is among a tidal wave of VR programs being developed for introduction to consumers in the next year. The military already uses VR in some training exercises, but the technology has potential uses in other areas, such as entertainment and home improvement. Architects, for instance, can create life-size virtual models of buildings rather than relying on traditional physical models.
…
Raymond Wong, a product analyst for Mashable, said: “I’m not sure if people want to put these goggles on at home. It’s a very isolating experience.” Indeed, total immersion in a world that occupies most of the users’ senses could lend itself to previously unseen consequences.
…
Wong sees more potential for VR in commercial industries such as marketing or engineering.

Research has already pointed to VR’s advantages in the medical field, Rizzo said. Once interactive intelligent agents — virtual characters — are advanced enough to respond like people, surgeons in training may be able to practice procedures with these characters. VR simulations could also be used as a way to distract patients from painful procedures, possibly becoming an alternative to pain medicine.

Education may also benefit from advances in virtual reality.

If a student struggles with conceptualizing the atomic structure, for instance, he could plop on the headset and be immersed within a virtual atom.

Like being there: Walking through an ancient Roman town — from popular-archaeology.com

Excerpt:

The development of new technologies and techniques, combined with the increasingly interdisciplinary approach of archaeological investigation, are producing results that, for the archaeologist of 20 years ago, might have been the stuff of science fiction. Who would have known then that scientists would resurrect in startling detail an entire ancient Roman town after only fractional excavation? And who would have known that thousands of people from nearly every corner of the world would be able to ‘walk’ through that town without ever physically setting foot within?

This, however, is exactly what has happened for an obscure archaeological site located in Portugal—a relatively small ancient Roman town whose few visible remains have attracted comparatively few visitors—at least as compared to the iconic Roman city of Pompeii in the south of Italy.

Oculus Rift DK2 demo round-up for futurists — from futureconscience.com

Excerpt:

NeoS: The Universe
This is a fantastic demo that takes you from the smallest level of scale (surrounded by protons and neutrons) through to the largest (galaxies and the observable universe). As you progress through the scales you are in first overlooked by a penny that seems the size of a building, before seeing it get smaller in front of you and other objects such as basketballs and a T-Rex come into view.

Mona Lisa Room
This is one of those ‘transport you to a location’ demos that a lot of people are starting to get involved with. It seems like such an obvious use of VR technology, and you can really see how the cultural heritage and museum sector is going to jump on this once the technology is commercially available. Essentially what you have here is a solo tour of a very famous art gallery room in the Louvre museum in Paris, complete with atmospheric and well-produced audio guides for a number of different paintings. Most importantly, it’s a VIP viewing – you are escaping the hundreds of tourists crammed into the small space for a personal experience taken at your leisure. Unfortunately, this particular demo really exposes the need for a higher resolution screen than the DK2 has at hand. The Mona Lisa is a small painting, and so none of the detail comes out which is particularly jarring given that the audio tour is talking specifically about how perfect the painting is. Even the massive wall-size Biblical painting nearby comes across as too pixelated to really engage with. It’s a concept that is going to take off in the very near future, but not until we get nice high-res screens!

“MakerBot launches hands-on learning guide for 3D printing in the classroom” & other 3D printing-related items

On 06/23/2015, in 3D, design, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, engineering, experimentation, higher education, K-12 related, maker movement, student-related, teachers, by Daniel Christian

MakerBot launches hands-on learning guide for 3D printing in the classroom — from teachthought.com
New MakerBot handbook helps educators and students get started with lesson plans and hands-on 3D design projects

Excerpt:

BROOKLYN, N.Y., –Thousands of educators throughout the U.S. are embracing 3D printing as a new way to teach 21^st century skills and prepare students for the jobs of the future. Taking the first steps to introduce students to 3D printing, however, can be challenging. MakerBot, a global leader in the desktop 3D printing industry, conducted in-depth research this spring to better understand how to help educators incorporate 3D printing in classrooms. The research shows that acquiring 3D design skills is a major hurdle for educators and there is no single resource to address this need.

To fill that gap, MakerBot today published a handbook designed to provide educators with a wide variety of ideas, activities and projects to get started with 3D printing. Titled MakerBot in the Classroom: An Introduction to 3D Printing and Design, the handbook includes an introduction to 3D printing and a range of hands-on 3D design lesson plans. MakerBot in the Classroom is available as a free digital download for registered MakerBot customers and a sample project chapter is available free to anyone who registers on MakerBot.com. Additionally, MakerBot launched a new MakerBot Education Resource Center with further ideas and resources to support the integration of 3D printing in the classroom, such as real-world MakerBot stories, videos, challenges for teachers and students, and more.

These 3-D printers are going to autonomously build a bridge in Amsterdam — from forbes.com by Amit Chowdhry

Image Credit: MX3D

It’s not just hype – 3D printing is the bridge to the future — from theconversation.com

‘Here I am, the most intelligent robot in the galaxy, welding a bridge.’ Heijmans

Also see:

New high quality portable Afinibot Creality 3D Printer launches for just $299 — from 3dprint.com by Whitney Hipolite
.
MakerBot and ThinkFun’s Maker Studio Construction Sets Sponsor “Kids Make It Challenge” — from 3dprint.com by Michelle Matisons

———–

For summer vacation: Some resources to help spark students’ interests and perhaps identify some new passions! [Dyoco]

On 06/17/2015, in architecture, engineering, geography / geology, global / globalization, ideas, K-12 related, love of learning, maker movement, mathematics, participation, passions, project-based learning, science, STEAM-related, student-related, teachers, youth, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
With a special thanks and a shout out to Jasmine Dyoco at educatorlabs.org for the following information:

Summer vacation is upon us and students will be spending it in a variety of ways – from tinkering around the house and going swimming through brushing up on math and thinking about college. Whatever they do, we hope to inspire them to get excited about something new, and make use of their unstructured time to find a new passion.

We’ve gathered resources on different topics to help spark students’ interests in something new — from STEM through human stories — that we think will be useful and fun!

Dynamics of Space Flight – NASA
The Science Behind Airplanes
ScienceNews for Students
Math Calculators (organized by Subject, Topic & Difficulty)
archKIDecture
Fix-It Literacy Guide
Become an Engineer
Heart Attack Quiz
World Culture
The Science and History of Hygiene
The Encyclopedia of Earth – Geography

Shocker: 40% of workers now have ‘contingent’ jobs, says U.S. Government — from forbes.com by Elaine Pofeldt

Excerpt:

Tucked away in the pages of a new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office is a startling statistic: 40.4% of the U.S. workforce is now made up of contingent workers—that is, people who don’t have what we traditionally consider secure jobs.

There is currently a lot of debate about how contingent workers should be defined. To arrive at the 40.4 %, which the workforce reached in 2010, the report counts the following types of workers as having the alternative work arrangements considered contingent. (The government did some rounding to arrive at its final number, so the numbers below add up to 40.2%).

Agency temps: (1.3%)
On-call workers (people called to work when needed): (3.5%)
Contract company workers (3.0%)
Independent contractors who provide a product or service and find their own customers (12.9%)
Self-employed workers such as shop and restaurant owners, etc. (3.3%)
Standard part-time workers (16.2%).

In contrast, in 2005, 30.6% of workers were contingent. The biggest growth has been among people with part time jobs. They made up just 11.9% of the labor force in 2005. That means there was a 36% increase in just five years.

In the future, employees won’t exist — from techcrunch.com by Tad Milbourn

Excerpt:

Contract work is becoming the new normal. Consider Uber: The ride-sharing startup has 160,000 contractors, but just 2,000 employees. That’s an astonishing ratio of 80 to 1. And when it comes to a focus on contract labor, Uber isn’t alone. Handy, Eaze and Luxe are just a few of the latest entrants into the “1099 Economy.”

Though they get the most attention, it’s not just on-demand companies that employ significant contract workforces. Microsoft has nearly two-thirds as many contractors as full-time employees. Even the simplest business structures, sole proprietorships, have increased their use of contract workers nearly two-fold since 2003.

The unsung heroes of the on-demand economy — from medium.com by Alex Chriss
We need to rethink the notion of entrepreneurship in the on-demand economy and build the tools and infrastructure to support the growing self-employed workforce.

Excerpt:

Enabled by the ubiquitous connectivity and power of smartphones, entrepreneurs are opening shops on Etsy, working as virtual assistants through oDesk, tackling neighborhood jobs on TaskRabbit, or driving on demand with Uber.

This new economy isn’t limited to low-paying gigs either. There are highly skilled professionals with advanced degrees from top 10 schools opting to work for themselves instead of a big firm. Consider the MBAs earning $100-$150 an hour through online consulting firm HourlyNerd or the lawyers making more than that on UpCounsel.

The Handy housecleaner and the UpCounsel attorney share a common characteristic: They’re a business of one.
…
This new wave of entrepreneurs — the self-employed workforce — is accelerating a broad trend we’ve been watching closely for nearly 10 years and started documenting in the year 2007 B.U. –before Uber.

They are part of the massive growth in the number of independent professionals. Full-time jobs with their corporate grab bag of benefits are becoming scarcer by the day. In the near future, working full time for a single company that offers little flexibility or work-life balance will become as outdated as the notion of staying with one company for your entire working life.

New survey: 40% of unemployed have “given up” — from prweb.com
Express Employment Professionals released the results [on May 20th, 2015] of its second annual in-depth poll, “The State of the Unemployed,” revealing that 40 percent of unemployed Americans agree to some extent that they have completely given up looking for work.

Excerpt:

Express Employment Professionals released the results [on May 20th, 2015] of its second annual in-depth poll, “The State of the Unemployed,” revealing that 40 percent of unemployed Americans agree to some extent that they have completely given up looking for work.

That figure, though high, represents a slight improvement from 2014, when 47 percent said they had given up.

The survey of 1,553 jobless Americans age 18 and older was conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of Express Employment Professionals between April 7 and 29, 2015, and offers a rare look at the background and attitudes of the unemployed, their approach to the job hunt, who they blame for their current situation, and how they are holding up through tough times.

New self-learning systems will reduce reliance on humans during ramp-up — from wtvox.com by Aidan Russell

Excerpt:

Robots are cracking eggs and making ice cream sundaes. These aren’t just party tricks. The way robots learn to do complex tasks is changing and that has profound implications for the future of manufacturing.

The egg-cracking robot comes courtesy of researchers at the University of Maryland and NICTA, an information and computer technology research centre in Australia. Their robotic system learns processes by watching YouTube videos.
…
It’s not difficult to see how systems like this might be utilised to improve automated manufacturing or bring new automation systems to areas of production that haven’t seen much automation yet. An investment in a single robotic system capable of learning a variety of tasks without specialised programming would be attractive to small manufacturers that do short production runs, for example.

A bot that can learn from watching other people could also fine tune its own actions through trial and error, essentially learning from its mistakes. That’s what researchers at Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) in Finland had in mind when they developed a self-adjusting welding system.

Will humans go the way of horses? — from foreignaffairs.com by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
Labor in the Second Machine Age

Our mental advantages might be even greater than our physical ones. While we’re clearly now inferior to computers at arithmetic and are getting outpaced in some types of pattern recognition—as evidenced by the triumph of Watson, an artificial-intelligence system created by IBM, over human Jeopardy! champions in 2011—we still have vastly better common sense. We’re also able to formulate goals and then work out how to achieve them. And although there are impressive examples of digital creativity and innovation, including machine-generated music and scientific hypotheses, humans are still better at coming up with useful new ideas in most domains.

It is extraordinarily difficult to get a clear picture of how broadly and quickly technology will encroach on human territory (and a review of past predictions should deter anyone from trying), but it seems unlikely that hardware, software, robots, and artificial intelligence will be able to take over from human labor within the next decade. It is even less likely that people will stop having economic wants that are explicitly interpersonal or social; these will remain, and they will continue to provide demand for human workers.

From DSC:
Stop right there! Hold on! Those of us working in education or training need to be asking ourselves:

What do these MASSIVE trends mean for the way that we are educating, training, and preparing our learners and employees!?!?

This is not our grandfathers’/grandmothers’ economy and way of life! From here on out, people must be able to adapt, to pivot, to change — and they must be able to learn…continually and quickly. They need to be able to know where to go to find information and be able to sort through the content to find out what’s true and relevant. They need to know under what circumstances they learn best.

Finally, becoming familiar with futurism — looking down the pike to see what’s developing, building scenarios, etc. — is now wise counsel for a growing number of people.

Everything you need to know from today’s Apple WWDC Keynote — from techcrunch.com by Greg Kumparak

Excerpts:

The Next Version Of OS X — Apple announced OS X 10.11, or “OS X El Capitan”.
iOS 9
Siri is getting smarter
Split Screen iPad Apps: Perhaps the biggest feature of all, and something that has been rumored for ages: the iPad is getting split screen apps. You’ll now be able to run two apps at once, side by side. (Split screen iPad apps are limited to the latest/most powerful iPad hardware: the iPad Air 2)
Picture in picture video
CarPlay goes wireless
Swift 2: Apple also announce Swift 2, the second iteration of their new programming language.
watchOS 2
Apple Music: As long rumored, Apple is launching a Spotify/Rdio competitor. It’s $9.99 per month, or $14.99 on a family plan (with support for up to 6 accounts)

The Apple Watch just got a lot more useful — from fastcompany.com by John Paul Titlow
Apple’s WatchOS 2 is here and it will let developers build native, much more capable apps.

Excerpt:

If you had your doubts about the Apple Watch, Cupertino just made it much more interesting. At the Worldwide Developers Conference this morning, Apple announced WatchOS 2, a new version of the watch’s operating system that lets developers build native apps for the device.

Watch OS 2 will also ship with a number of new features, like the ability to set photo watch faces, reply to email, take FaceTime audio calls, use Apple Pay’s new virtual loyalty cards, and get mass transit directions.

Apple introduces “News”: An old idea with big potential — from fastcompany.com by John Paul Titlow
WWDC 2015 Update: Apple just unveiled News, a Flipboard-Style news aggregation app that will ship with iOS 9.

Excerpt:

Apple is now a Flipboard competitor. When iOS 9 ships in the fall, it will include a new app called News, a newspaper, magazine, and blog aggregator that will feel very familiar to anyone who’s ever used Flipboard, Pulse, or one of the many other apps of this nature. The new app was unveiled by Apple’s vice president of Product Marketing, Susan Prescott, this afternoon at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

Apple Maps in iOS 9 adds public transit, local business search — from cio.com by Marco Tabini

Kevin shows some of the great things developers can do with the new version of WatchKit.

“More evidence that active learning trumps lecturing” [Weimer] plus other resources re: active learning

On 06/03/2015, in A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, engineering, higher education, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, mathematics, pedagogy, science, smart classrooms, STEAM-related, teaching & learning, technology (general), TVs, by Daniel Christian

Excerpt from More evidence that active learning trumps lecturing — from facultyfocus.com by Maryellen Weimer

The June-July issue of The Teaching Professor newsletter highlights a study you don’t want to miss. It’s a meta-analysis of 225 studies that compare STEM classes taught using various active learning approaches with classes taught via lecture. “The results indicate that average examination scores improved by about 6% in active learning sessions, and that students in classes with traditional lecturing were 1.5 times more likely to fail than were students in classes with active learning.” (p. 8410) Carl Wieman, a Nobel-winning physicist who now does research on teaching and learning, describes the work as a “massive effort” that provides “a much more extensive quantitative analysis of the research on active learning in college and university STEM courses than previously existed.” (p. 8319) And what does he make of these results? “The implications of these meta-analysis results for instruction are profound, assuming they are indicative of what could be obtained if active learning methods replaced the lecture instruction that dominates U.S. postsecondary STEM instruction.” (pp. 8319-8320) That’s a long way from the guarded language usually found in commentaries on scientific results.

Also see:

3 key trends in campus AV technology — from campustechnology.com by Dennis Pierce
With active learning environments on the rise, new AV systems support classroom collaboration.
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Why blogging is key to the future of higher ed — from campustechnology.com by Michael Hart
A massive experiment at Virginia Commonwealth University involving 7,000 blogs could lead to a new view on how college students learn.
Excerpt:
Using these blogs and other forms of social media, students could communicate with one another and with their teachers, and do much of their coursework online. At the same time, faculty members began to participate in intensive face-to-face Online Learning Experience training sessions, followed by an additional online component that could introduce them to a broad range of connected learning ideas and tools.

Learning Ecosystems

Tools We Like: Spotlight on IDEO’s EE Lab [Breselor; IDEO]

That ‘useless’ liberal arts degree has become tech’s hottest ticket [Anders; Forbes]

Some of the announcements from Apple today

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