“I want to change the world…one smile at a time.”

 

TommyFranklin-AustraliasGotTalent-2013

 

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TommyFranklin2-AustraliasGotTalent-2013

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 TommyFranklin3-AustraliasGotTalent-2013

 

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From DSC:
If you watch this ~8 min clip, I guarantee that you will smile — and, if it hits you like it hit me, you will even cry.  But you will be touched.  It’s music and life at the level of the soul.

 

I’d like to thank Joe and Kate Byerwalter for this excellent and fun find.
Rarely do I want to go out an immediately purchase a tune that I’ve just heard.
But that’s what happened when I heard the tune that Tommy Franklin danced to:
Shooting Stars from The Bag Raiders

 

 

 

 

IBM-WatsonAtWork-Sept2013

 

From DSC:
IBM Watson continues to expand into different disciplines/areas, which currently include:

  • Healthcare
  • Finance
  • Customer Service

But Watson is also entering the marketing and education/research realms.

I see a Watson-type-of-tool as being a key ingredient for future MOOCs and the best chance for MOOCs to morph into something very powerful indeed — offloading the majority of the workload to computers/software/intelligent tutoring/learning agents, while at the same time allowing students to connect with each other and/or to Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) as appropriate.

The price of education could hopefully come way down — depending upon the costs involved with licensing Watson or a similar set of technologies — as IBM could spread out their costs to multiple institutions/organizations.  This vision represents another important step towards the “Walmart of Education” that continues to develop before our eyes.

Taking this even one step further, I see this system being available to us on our mobile devices as well as in our living rooms — as the telephone, the television, and the computer continue to converge.  Blended learning on steroids.

What would make this really powerful would be to provide:

  • The ability to create narratives/stories around content
  • To feed streams of content into Watson for students to tap into
  • Methods of mining data and using that to tweak algorithms, etc. to improve the tools/learning opportunities

Such an architecture could be applied towards lifelong learning opportunities — addressing what we now know as K-12, higher education, and corporate training/development.

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

 

 

 

IBM and USTA captivate tennis fans with immersive second screen experience — from MarketWatch.com
Analytics, cloud, mobile and social computing technologies deliver US Open to fans’ fingertips

 

Excerpt:

The innovative digital US Open environment provides fans, players, broadcasters and media with access to a range of Big Data insights streaming from the courts, including stats, facts, videos, live scoring, and historical and real-time analysis of tennis data served to tablets, smartphones, PCs and other devices.

 

Also see:

USOpen-USTA-IBM-Aug2013

 

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USOpen2-USTA-IBM-Aug2013

 

From DSC:
Questions I wonder about:

  • How might this sort of thing help us in education? What if, instead of a tennis match, it was a debate on X vs. Y…?
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  • Could we use it in educational gaming apps?
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  • If so, what sorts of apps that lean on social learning could we create?
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  • How could professional development/conferences use this type of immersive second screen experience? What sorts of opportunities for participation would open up?
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  • Could we develop things like this that help us learn things IN REAL TIME from the streams of content flowing by? (Do learning agents employ this sort of thing?)

 

 

 

Somewhat-related items:

College students bring targeted media to doctors’ waiting rooms — from entrepreneur.com by Michelle Goodman

Excerpt:

Their idea was to sell doctors’ offices prepackaged video segments containing tips on diet, exercise and other lifestyle tweaks patients could make to improve their health. A TV screen in the reception area would broadcast this programming, modeled after segments on shows such as Today, while patients waited for appointments.

To test the idea, Agarwal, Shah and classmate Derek Moeller bought TVs and DVD players, culled content from the internet and distributed the equipment and “shows” to 50 doctors in five states.

MOOCing the Liberal Arts? Technology and Relationship in Liberal Arts Education
The Thirteenth Annual Conversation on the Liberal Arts
February 13 – 15, 2014
 

Shortfall in educated U.S. workers to worsen: study — — from reuters.com by Paige Gance

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON | Wed Jun 26, 2013 5:55pm EDT    (Reuters) – U.S. workers with advanced skills in areas such as math, science and healthcare are growing more scarce, with a shortfall of 20 million adequately educated workers expected by 2020, a study released on Wednesday found.

“The United States has been under-producing workers with postsecondary education since the 1980s,” researchers at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce said in the study. “Jobs will return, but not everyone will be ready for them.”

They predicted that 65 percent of the projected 165 million jobs in 2020 will require more than a high school diploma, up from 59 percent in 2010.

 

From DSC:
IF the status quo is maintained, the outlook for the U.S. is not good. 

That is, if the prices of obtaining a degree in higher ed keep going up and the middle class continues to be hollowed out, a smaller pool of people will even be able to afford getting a postsecondary education (regardless of whether it’s in healthcare, math, or science). 

How much longer do the status quo’ers think that the U.S. Federal Government will wait around, watching this situation develop?  How much longer before the Federal Government looks elsewhere for its workforce development (let alone the students out there who need to make a living)? 

There is not an infinite period of time for institutions of traditional higher education to respond.  MOOCs are a start, but they are but one option and they need to be improved.  Along those lines:

The organization who can collaborate with those perfecting IBM’s Watson, Apple’s Siri, or Google Now — and integrate those technologies into a low-cost solution for postsecondary education — will be a potent force in the future.

 

 

 

iDoctor: Could a smartphone be the future of medicine?

Description of video (which was done back in January 2013):

One of the world’s top physicians, Dr. Eric Topol, has a prescription that could improve your family’s health and make medical care cheaper. The cardiologist claims that the key is the smartphone. Topol has become the foremost expert in the exploding field of wireless medicine. Dr. Nancy Snyderman reports.

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iDoctor-Jan2013

 

Also see:

 

 

From DSC:
Check out this very cool news from my friend and Bible Study fellow — Mr. Patrick Mohney, President of SEA Biofuels, LLC

 

SEA-BiofuelDotCom-march2013

This is really amazing.

First of all, people in the developing world, even today, use either campfires or some other smokey cooking system.  This type of cooking is the norm for three billion people today, this leads to millions of deaths per year, as well as a leading contributor of greenhouse gases.  Also, I learned that in some parts of the world, women that normally collect the cooking fuel, are the subject of physical violence and rape as they collect fuel in a territory that another clan, family or tribe feel belongs to them.  I hear these things and think, “Seriously, we have to fix this!”

We could fix this, if we had a clean and environmentally friendly alternative fuel that they could afford.  Now we have just that.  We make fuel from excess agricultural waste like rice husks, coconut shells or almost any woody bio-material.

The stove-fuel combo is the most efficient in the world, but the reason that I am excited about it, is that it is less expensive to operate for the consumer than the alternative fuels.  As it turns out, people that use wood or charcoal to cook with, usually pay for it, and it is not cheap.  Our fuel is usually half to three quarters of the price of the status quo fuel at retail to the consumer.  This is why our stove and fuel is presently the only option that is scale-able and can help millions, or billions of people.

I know you are busy, but we can solve this for half of the worlds people, if you could just pass this on or make some noise.  Like us on FB.

Our mission statement is, “Be a Blessing to others and you will be Blessed”.

God Bless you and your family.

Patrick Mohney
President
SEA Biofuels, LLC

 


From DSC and Patrick:
Contribute something today — make the world a better place to live in.

 

The doctor will see you now…through the eyes of a robot — from techhive.com by Jacob Siegal @jacobsiegal

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‘Robodocs’? ‘Tricorders’? How telemedicine will shape the future of health — from gigaom.com by Ki Mae Heussner

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From DSC:
Reminds me of a card I saw at the store which said something along the lines of “we live in strange times indeed my friend…when we take insurance advice from a Gecko!” …or something along those lines…   🙂

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Welcome to the doctor's office of the future: It's a kiosk

 

Image: HealthSpot
Also see:

3d4medical.com

 

3d4medical-dot-com-apps-dec2012

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3d4medical-dot-com-images-animations-dec2012

 

The robot doctor will see you now — from tech.fortune.cnn.com by Jennifer Alsever, contributor
The RP-VITA robot promises to eliminate geographic boundaries and allow physician specialists to care for faraway patients.

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Also see:

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The coming revolution in health care — from inc.com by Adam Bluestein
To understand how the American health-care system is about to change, forget Washington. Look to the innovative companies hard at work on the future.

Excerpts/BIG IDEAS:

  • Medicine is a marketplace
    With new software, the doctor will see you now, not in three weeks.
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  • The consumer is king
    How to get good data into the hands of patients.
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  • The digital health record is here
    A cure for chronic paperwork.
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  • Health care is social
    Is the crowd smarter than your doctor? Just possibly.
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  • The house call makes a comeback
    A computer screen becomes an exam room.
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  • The algorithm is in
    Why smart software means better diagnoses.
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  • Your doctor is watching you
    How a simple text message can make you healthier.

 

Also see:

My thanks to Michell Zappa, Founder Envisioning Technology for this item:

 

The future of health technology -- a new visualization from Envisioning Technology

Excerpt:

Technology is the ultimate democratizing force in society. Over time, technology raises lowest common denominators by reducing costs and connecting people across the world. Medical technology is no exception to this trend: previously siloed repositories of information and expensive diagnostic methods are rapidly finding a global reach and enabling both patients and practitioners to make better use of information.

Our new visualization is an exercise in speculating about which individual technologies are likely to affect the scenario of health in the coming decades. Arranged in six broad areas, the forecast covers a multitude of research and developments that are likely to disrupt the future of healthcare.

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