The connected TVs are here… interactive programming & native apps will follow— from venturebeat.com by Habib Kairouz

 

The connected TVs are here… interactive programming & native apps will follow
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Excerpt:

Innovative devices have always fueled new application ecosystems. The software industry was enabled by the WinTel PC platform; and hundreds of thousands of websites were built once the PCs became “connected.” In the last few years, we have witnessed the same trend in mobile; more than 700,000 apps have been created for Web-enabled phones. We’ll soon see connected TVs fueling a similar ecosystem of interactive programming and native apps. With nearly a quarter of all U.S. households currently using connected TVs (according to eMarketer), we have reached the tipping point of mass adoption.

As opposed to the disastrous impact the Internet had on the print industry, I see the innovation of the connected TV market as a tremendous, yet accretive, evolution as opposed to a threat. Here’s why:

My reflections on “MOOCs of Hazard” – a well-thought out, balanced article by Andrew Delbanco


From DSC: Below are my reflections on MOOCs of Hazard — from newrepublic.com by Andrew Delbanco — who asks:  Will online education dampen the college experience? Yes. Will it be worth it? Well…


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While I’m not sure that I agree with the idea that online education will dampen the college experience — and while I could point to some amazing capabilities that online education brings to the table in terms of true global exchanges — I’ll instead focus my comments on the following items:

 

1) Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are recent experiments — ones that will continue to change/morph into something else.
They are half-baked at best, but they should not be taken lightly. Christensen, Horn, Johnson are spot on with their theories of disruption here, especially as they relate to innovations occurring within the virtual/digital realm.  For example, the technologies behind IBM’s Watson could be mixed into the list of ingredients that will be used to develop MOOCs in the future.  It would be a very powerful, effective MOOC indeed if you could get the following parties/functionalities to the table:

  • IBM — to provide Watson like auto-curation/filtering capabilities, artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, as well as data mining/learning analytics expertise, joined by
  • Several highly-creative firms from the film/media/novel/storytelling industry, who would be further joined by
  • Experts from Human Computer Interaction (HCI)/user interface/user experience design teams, who would be further joined by
  • Programmers and interaction specialists from educational gaming endeavors (and from those who can design simulations), joined by
  • Instructional designers, joined by
  • The appropriate Subject Matter Experts who can be reached by the students as necessary, joined by
  • Those skilled in research and library services, joined by
  • Legal experts to assist with copyright issues, joined by
  • Other specialists in mobile learning,  3D, web development, database administration, animation, graphic design, musicians, etc.

It won’t be long before this type of powerful team gets pulled together — from some organizations(s) with deep pockets — and the content is interacted with and presented to us within our living rooms via connected/Smart TVs and via second screen devices/applications.

2) The benefits of MOOCs
  • For colleges/universities:
    • MOOCs offer some serious marketing horsepower (rather than sound pedagogical tools, at this point in time at least)
    • They are forcing higher ed to become much more innovative
    • They provide great opportunities to build one’s personalized learning networks, as they bring forth those colleagues who are interested in topic A, B, or C
    • They move us closer to team-based content creation and delivery
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  • For students:
    • They offer a much less expensive option to go exploring disciplines for themselves…to see if they enjoy (and/or are gifted in) topic A, B or C
    • They provide great opportunities to build one’s personalized learning networks, as they bring forth those colleagues who are interested in topic A, B, or C
    • They provide a chance to see what it’s like to learn about something in a digital/virtual manner

3)  The drawbacks of MOOCs:
  • MOOCs are not nearly the same thing as what has come to be known as “online learning” — at least in the higher ed industry. MOOCs do not yet offer what more “traditional” (can I say that?) online learning provides: Far more support and pedagogical/instructional design, instructor presence and dialog, student academic support services, advising, more student-to-student and student-to-faculty interaction, etc.
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  • MOOCs are like drinking from a firehose — there are too many blogs/RSS feeds, twitter feeds, websites, and other resources to review.

4) It would be wise for all of us to be involved with such experiments and have at least a subset of one’s college or university become much more nimble/responsive.

 

Also see:

Dual screen: The evolution of the second screen — from blog.brightcove.com by Albert Lai

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Educational Gamification
In a previous post, we asked readers to suggest their ideas for dual screen applications. One of the more intriguing responses was the suggestion to create companion educational games to accompany associated video content.

In a dual screen experience, as video content is displayed on the television, the application can engage the viewer with relevant and education activities, from content reinforcement to spelling to trivia to memory “games.” One can imagine an interactive amalgamation of Dora the Explorer, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, and Schoolhouse Rock!

 

 

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

 

 

Addendum on 4/8/13:

SXSWi Report: Liquid journalism and dynamic storytelling emerge in 2013 — from waggeneredstrom.com by Eddie Rehfeldt

Excerpt:

Breaking News: the search for a better narrative format for the internet is now available. Ben Decker once said “the internet is not just another TV pipe” and this was made apparent at SXSWi in Austin last week.  “Liquid Journalism” or interactive storytelling hit the Lone Star state with a vengeance.

 

 

 

Items re: multi-screen media — eventually this trend/convergence enables “Learning from the Living [Class] Room”

PayWizard launches first dedicated payment and subscriber management solution for TV and media industry — from PayWizard

Excerpt:

London, 21 February 2013 – PayWizard, specialists in payment and subscription management, has launched the TV and media industry’s first dedicated, end to end payment and subscription solution. The integrated solution brings together a strong heritage in the Pay-TV market with a deep understanding of the challenges TV operators and media companies face in monetising the multiplatform world.

Using its award-winning modular Payment and Subscription platform, PayWizard combines payment processing, intelligent subscriber management technology and real-time customer service operations to tailor-make solutions that enhance the consumer experience across all screens.

With 16.8 billion video-enabled devices set to be in the global marketplace by 2015, content owners are facing the challenge of enhancing existing services while creating compelling experiences that embrace new routes to market. PayWizard’s comprehensive set of products and services has enabled clients, such as the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster, ITV, to address these commercial challenges by enabling new monetisation strategies to drive revenue and profitability.

 

Also see:

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ConnectedTVSummit-London-2013

 

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Nagra-Kudelskidotcom-March2013

 

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civolution-march2013

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Also see:

 

From DSC:
See the categories listed above for the items/topics/disciplines/trends that are relevant here.

 

Addendum:

Check this out!

Massive Open Online Course offered by UMass Boston to feature the first adaptive MOOC technology
Enables students to be taught according to individual learning strategies

Excerpt from email:

(Boston, MA) – February 27, 2013 – If you’ve ever been in a course and struggled because you just aren’t “getting it,” the reason might be less your ability than the way in which the material is being presented.

New technology is now allowing online course environments to analyze how individual students learn, customizing instruction to individualized learning strategies. The College of Advancing and Professional Studies (CAPS) at the University of Massachusetts Boston has teamed up with USDLA 21st Century Sponsor, Synaptic Global Learning (SGL), to use the new learning management system, Adaptive Mobile Online Learning (AMOL), to deliver the first adaptive Massive Online Open Course (a-MOOC) ever offered. The course launches March 25.

PhilipsSmartTV-March2013

8 apps to turn your iPad into a digital whiteboard — teachthought.com

Also related:

 

5 ways to add interactive elements to your videos — from freetech4teachers.com by Richard Byrne

 

Tagged with:  

From DSC:
Some very frustrated reflections after reading:

Excerpt:

Right now, boys are falling out of the kindergarten through 12th grade educational pipeline in ways that we can hardly imagine.

 

This situation continues to remind me of the oil spill in the Gulf (2010), where valuable resources spilled into the water untapped — later causing some serious issues:
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From DSC:
What are we doing?!!! We’ve watched the dropout rates grow — it doesn’t seem we’ve changed our strategies nearly enough! But the point that gets lost in this is that we will all pay for these broken strategies — and for generations to come!  It’s time to seriously move towards identifying and implementing some new goals.

What should the new goals look like? Here’s my take on at least a portion of a new vision for K-12 — and collegiate — education:

  • Help students identify their God-given gifts and then help them build up their own learning ecosystems to support the development of those gifts. Hook them up with resources that will develop students’ abilities and passions.
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  • Part of their learning ecosystems could be to help them enter into — and build up — communities of practice around subjects that they enjoy learning about. Those communities could be local, national, or international. (Also consider the creation of personalized learning agents, as these become more prevalent/powerful.)
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  • Do everything we can to make learning enjoyable and foster a love of learning — as we need lifelong learners these days.
    (It doesn’t help society much if students are dropping out of K-12 or if people struggle to make it through graduation — only to then harbor ill feelings towards learning/education in general for years to come.  Let’s greatly reduce the presence/usage of standardized tests — they’re killing us!  They don’t seem to be producing long-term positive results. I congratulate the recent group of teachers who refused to give their students such tests; and I greatly admire them for getting rid of a losing strategy.)

    .
  • Give students more choice, more control over what their learning looks like; let them take their own paths as much as possible (provide different ways to meet the same learning objective is one approach…but perhaps we need to think beyond/bigger than that. The concern/fear arises…but how will we manage this? That’s where a good share of our thinking should be focused; generating creative answers to that question.)
    .
  • Foster curiosity and wonder
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  • Provide cross-disciplinary assignments/opportunities
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  • Let students work on/try to resolve real issues in their communities
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  • Build up students’ appreciation of faith, hope, love, empathy, and a desire to make the world a better place. Provide ways that they can contribute.
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  • Let students experiment more — encourage failure.
    .

 

FrogOS video walkthrough – The future of learning technology — from frogtrade

Excerpt:

Well here it is, two years in the making, 1000’s of man hours and finally we can proudly show you the new software we have been showcasing at Bett 2013.

FrogOS

What better way to whet your appetites than to give you a simple video walkthrough that shows you just how easy it is to create a site in FrogOS.

 

FrogOS-Feb2013

 

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Frog-Feb2013

 

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Frog2-Feb2013

 

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Frog3-Feb2013

From DSC:
As a team of us have been charged with putting together a new collaborative workspace/conference room, I’ve been thinking about some ideas for a new type of interface as well as some new types of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) to be used in group collaboration/web-based collaboration.  I was thinking it would be good to not only display files from various devices but also to be able to share files/URLs/other resources with each other.  (Some type of storage device that processes files — and scans them for viruses would be needed in addition to a large display or an interactive multitouch surface/wall.)

People within the same room could contribute files/items to a variety of “areas” — and so could others who joined in via the Internet.  Here’s what I had wanted to be able to do and I had pictured in my mind:

 

New-types-of-collaboration--DChristian-2-1-13

 

ADDITIONAL NOTES:
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  • People could select which files/URLs/resources that they wanted to contribute
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  • People could select which files/URLs/resources that they wanted to download to their own devices (during and after the meeting)
    .
  • Could be powerful in the next generation of our Smart Classrooms as well as in corporate training/learning spaces
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  • Could be powerful in the what I’m envisioning in “Learning from the Living [Class] Room”
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  • Could be powerful in conference room situations
    .

 

 It’s very similar to what Tidebreak has created/envisioned in their product lines.
Check out their innovative work/products/concepts!

 


Transforming learning spaces: 3 big ideas — from Tidebreak


 

 

Also see:

 

Tidebreak-Jan2013

 

 

The object formerly known as the textbook– from The Chronicle by Jeff Young

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Don't Call Them Textbooks 1

Holly Gressley for The Chronicle

 

Excerpt:

Textbook publishers argue that their newest digital products shouldn’t even be called “textbooks.” They’re really software programs built to deliver a mix of text, videos, and homework assignments. But delivering them is just the beginning. No old-school textbook was able to be customized for each student in the classroom. The books never graded the homework. And while they contain sample exam questions, they couldn’t administer the test themselves.

One publisher calls its products “personalized learning experiences,” another “courseware,” and one insists on using its own brand name, “MindTap.” For now, this new product could be called “the object formerly known as the textbook.”

 

From DSC:
Imagine how this sort of thing might fit into the “chalkboard of the future” — as applications and content flow onto the “board” from open source repositories and/or from the publishers’ cloud-based repositories of content…

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Daniel Christian: The Chalkboard of the Future

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or in learning from the living room…

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

 

Also see:

From DSC:

In real estate, one hear’s the mantra:
Location. Location. Location.

In higher education, I have it that we’ll be hearing this for a while:
Experimentation. Experimentation. Experimentation.

Consider the following reflections on Steve’ Kolowich’s solid article, The new intelligence (from InsideHigherEd.com)

Excerpt:

And for the largest public university in the country, it is hardly fiction. Arizona State University has become ground zero for data-driven teaching in higher education. The university has rolled out an ambitious effort to turn its classrooms into laboratories for technology-abetted “adaptive learning” — a method that purports to give instructors real-time intelligence on how well each of their students is getting each concept.
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From DSC:
Besides being used in blended learning environments…some predictions:

  • These technologies will become integrated into what MOOCs eventually morph into and provide a significant piece of the assessment/guidance puzzle
  • Such tools will be a part of one’s future learning ecosystem
  • Such tools will be part of interactive, massively open online educationally-related games
  • Such tools will be integrated into personalized learning agents — spiders/recommendation engines that scan the web for relevant items that one needs to complete one’s cognitive gaps in a subject/topic
  • They will be accessible from your living room as well as from your mobile devices
  • They will integrate into web-based learner profiles

It’s the sort of thing I was trying to get at with this graphic from 3 years ago:
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Like a mechanic...

 

Please don’t misunderstand me, the human mind is far beyond the complexity of an engine. But I still think that there will be more tools & technologies developed that will help the teachers/professors in their efforts to guide students into the knowledge of a discipline.

I beseech the corporate world to get involved more here — and not with the end goal of earning profits — but rather, with the aim of making the world a better place and giving a huge gift to the generations yet born. 

I urge the corporate world to reach into their deep pockets (1.X trillion in cash at this point in time) and team up with our youth/teachers/professors/instructional designers/programmers/etc. to develop sophisticated, educationally-related, engaging games that are relevant to the world that our youth will be growing up in; and/or create interactive simulations that provide more choice/more control to the learners. 

I urge more of the corporate world to join Knewton and Pearson and allocate some significant resources to help develop the next gen learning tools.  I’ll bet that we’ll be amazed at what can be produced! Your daughters, sons, granddaughters, and grandsons will really appreciate the work that you did for them!!!

 

 

From DSC:
In this series of periodic postings re: experimentation (see here and here), this week’s Consumers Electronics Show prompts me to think about different types of experiments, prompting such questions as:
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  • When will we see more educationally-related second screen apps?
    .
  • How might this type of setup dovetail with MOOCs provided by institutions of higher education? With MOOCs offered by the corporate world?
    .
  • What sorts of technologies will weave their way into what could be offered here?
    (The following possibilities come to my mind: Artificial Intelligence (AI), learning agents, recommendation engines, course or topic playlists, web-based learner profiles, data mining/analytics, videoconferencing, educational gaming, virtual tutoring, BYOD, and/or cloud-based computing. Other…?)
    .
  • Will Internet-enabled marketplaces and exchanges — between learners and teachers — become commonplace?
    .
  • Will technologies involved with endeavors like IBM’s Watson or with Knewton be deployed in this kind of convergent environment? If so, what sorts of doors/job opportunities/new skillsets would that open up or require?
    .

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

 

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Some relevant items on this include:

Flingo reveals Samba, a first of its kind dual interactive TV and second screen platform — from pandodaily.com byasdf

Excerpt:

This week at CES in Las Vegas (the Consumer Electronics Show), San Francisco-based Flingo will release the latest version of its platform, dubbed Samba, aimed at changing this. Samba will make four-year-old Flingo one of the first to offer a combined Interactive TV and Second Screen experience.

“We saw a surge of Smart TV and tablet adoption in 2012, but realized that a seamless TV experience across all screens was missing,” says Flingo co-founder and CEO Ashwin Navin, formerly of BitTorrent. “Samba will blur the lines between linear television and the Web.”

Flingo is unique in that it uses video, not audio to identify what content is being viewed…

Samba offers viewers the ability to actively engage with programming in real-time through their primary screen. This can take the form of polls, social conversations, recommendations, or consumption of related media. In the case of Second Screens, aka internet-connected laptops, tablets, and smartphones used simultaneously while watching TV, the company can offer an even wider array of complementary content and engagement, such as aggregated social feeds relating to live programming or an ability to watch past episodes of a live show. This can all be delivered across multiple screens, in concert.

 

Also see:

Smart TV Alliance adds Panasonic and IBM to its fold, lays bare new SDK features -- Sean Buckley

 

Also see:

 

samsung smart tv ces 2013

 

Kevin Smith/Business Insider

 

More tangentially, but still relevant:

  • McGraw-Hill to debut adaptive e-book for students — from blogs.wsj.com by Shalini Ramachandran
    Excerpt:

    The SmartBook…works like this: All readers essentially see the same textbook as they read for the first five minutes. But as a reader answers review questions placed throughout the chapter, different passages become highlighted to point the reader to where he or she should focus attention.

 

© 2025 | Daniel Christian