NVIDIA Virtual Meetings AI Tech — from theawesomer.com
With the increased need for video calls these days, those with low-bandwidth connections may experience poor video quality. This tech being developed at NVIDIA dramatically reduces bandwidth needs by sending a fixed image, then using an AI-controlled avatar to track and replicate their facial movements in real-time.
Quick survey: What is the one tech (product, platform, etc.) that has been essential to you in working from home?
— Bob Ambrogi (@bobambrogi) September 23, 2020
Care over IP — from Inavate EMEA October 2020
Care over IP The Covid-19 outbreak has put working from home centre stage, but what happens when you work in a hospital? Paul Milligan speaks to those proving remote/virtual alternatives for patient care.
From DSC:
I continue to wonder how telelegal will be impacted by what’s happening with telehealth/telemedicine/virtual health…my guess is that telelegal will also grow quite a bit in the future.
Addendum on 9/25/20, below is an excerpt from a press release sent to me by Ashley Steiger at AristaMD:
University of Colorado School of Medicine and AristaMD Partner to Expand eConsults to Community Providers
SAN DIEGO – Sept. 22, 2020 – AristaMD, an innovative telehealth platform that delivers primary care providers (PCPs) timely and documented specialist insight through eConsults, has partnered with the University of Colorado School of Medicine (CU) to expand eConsults to a network of community providers. The partnership begins with Salud Family Health Center, which has 13 clinic locations and serves communities in northeast and southeast Colorado.
“AristaMD is pleased to be working with our first partner that is a part of the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Project CORE: Coordinating Optimal Referral Experiences. We can support health systems, including those already using eConsults within their own electronic health records (EHR), to more broadly expand to clinics on any system,” said Brooke LeVasseur, CEO of AristaMD. “The AristaMD platform works with all EHRs, seamlessly integrates into physician workflows, and will allow us to scale to community providers throughout the state of Colorado as the partnership grows.”
Also see:
Zoom, but for X: How startups are building for our new video normal — from protocol.com by Biz Carson
Meet the startups building the next take on video.
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Trying to liven up the monotony of Zoom meetings, Phil Libin hung up a green towel behind his desk and started projecting images onto it, like Dr. Anthony Fauci hovering over his shoulder, just to make his team laugh. At first, it was a bit of a performance and a way to break up the monotony as Zoom fatigue set in a few months into the pandemic at the end of May. But then Libin, the former CEO of Evernote and founder of startup studio All Turtles, realized the “Weekend Update” style could be more than just a gimmick.
A bit of coding and a fantastic demo later, Libin closed a seed round of $4.5 million to launch his new company, Mmhmm. His big belief is that we’re moving to a hybrid world where things don’t fit neatly into boxes like in-person or online or live or recorded. Instead, it’s all going to be a mix.
Also see:
Today’s awkward Zoom classes could bring a new era of higher education — from edsurge.com by Debra Spar
Excerpt:
Indeed, the forced march to Zoom has also forced colleges and universities to wrestle at last with the incipient promise of educational technologies; with the power that was evident, if not yet realized, in the early MOOCs. Much of that power has to do with scale–the ability to take a single course, even a single lecture, and share it across a vast universe of learners. But some also comes from the strange intimacy of the small screen, and from the possibilities of collapsing both time and space.
Office hours, for instance, migrate easily. Bringing in guest speakers works remarkably well, allowing faculty to introduce a wide range of voices into their classroom conversations. On the screen, everyone can see and hear and participate.
From DSC:
Yet another example of the changes occurring in the learning ecosystems out there.
COVID-19 Fuels Big Enrollment Increases in Virtual Schools — from edweek.org by Mark Lieberman
Excerpt:
Florida Virtual School’s enrollment is up 54 percent year over year for its individual online course offerings and 64 percent for full-time programs. Public schools’ online programs managed by the for-profit provider K12 Inc. have grown from 122,000 enrollments in fall 2019 to 170,000 a year later. Applications to Connections Academy, a virtual school provider owned by Pearson, are up 61 percent.
The Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School filled up months before it usually starts receiving the bulk of new applicants. An Oklahoma virtual charter school earlier this summer was enrolling 1,000 students a day. Enrollment in virtual schools is also up in Connecticut, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
Editorial: Spaces is only a small part of Apple’s enormous AR/VR puzzle — from uploadvr.com by Jeremy Horwitz
Excerpt:
A demonstration of Spaces’ latest tech shows a cartoony teacher offering whiteboard presentations with accompanying lip and body synchronization — a gentle evolution of existing VR avatar technology. You could easily imagine the 3D model replaced with one of Apple’s current Memoji avatars, enabling an iPad- or iPhone-toting teacher to offer a presentation to a virtual class over Zoom.
VR Pre-Algebra with Ms. Jeffries // Volume Review https://t.co/EBT95NewaA via @YouTube
— Daniel Christian (@dchristian5) September 1, 2020
So what is the book about? — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark; which discusses his book entitled, Artificial Intelligence for Learning: How to use AI to Support Employee Development
Excerpt:
AI changes everything. It changes how we work, shop, travel, entertain ourselves, socialize, deal with finance and healthcare. When online, AI mediates almost everything – Google, Google Scholar, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Amazon, Netflix. It would be bizarre to imagine that AI will have no role to play in learning – it already has.
Both informally and formally, AI is now embedded in many of the tools real learners use for online learning – we search for knowledge using AI (Google, Google Scholar), we search for practical knowledge using AI (YouTube), Duolingo for languages, and CPD is becoming common on social media, almost all mediated by AI. It is everywhere, just largely invisible. This book is partly about the role of AI in informal learning but it is largely about its existing and potential role in formal learning – in schools, Universities and the workplace. AI changes the world, so it changes why we learn, what we learn and how we learn.
Also see:
- Abandon lectures: increase attendance, attitudes and attainment — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark
Excerpt:
The groups were taught a module in a physics course, in three one hour sessions in one week. In short; attendance increased, measured attitudes were better (students enjoyed the experience (90%) and thought that the whole course would be better if taught this way (77%)). More importantly students in the experimental group outperformed the control group, doing more than twice as well in assessment than the control group.
Top 200 Tools for Learning — from toptools4learning.com by Jane Hart
Excerpt:
The Top Tools for Learning 2020 was compiled by Jane Hart from the results of the 14th Annual Learning Tools Survey, and released on 1 September 2020. For general information about the survey and this website, visit the About page. For observations and infographics of this year’s list, see Analysis 2020.
From DSC:
- If one doesn’t have access to the Internet, a computer, or any such mobile technology as seen in the image above…could TV become the medium through which one could be educated during this next year of the Coronavirus situation? That is, until we can develop better and more equitable policies, plans, funding, systems, infrastructures, and connectivity for all students!
- After that, could we see more televisions morph into smart/connected TVs?
- Could PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and other major networks collaborate with the U.S. Department of Education to help us educate all students?
- Could the largest internet company of 2030 be an online school as Thomas Frey predicts?
A few years ago, I had hoped that Apple was going to go all-in with their tvOS platform.
Though it’s still early in the game, that really hasn’t happened to the extent that I had hoped. That said, more recently, I was encouraged to see this article from back in July:
Let’s ask the employees of PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and other networks if they would be willing to work with the U.S. Department of Education to help educate ALL students! Though educational TV is not new, I’m talking about taking things to a *whole* new level.
With that in mind, I created the following graphic:
(One might ask why I used an old television in the above graphic. I was trying to get at the idea that one might not have a lot of resources to work with.)
Back-to-School Help for Students Without Internet — from by James K. Willcox
For millions of families, broadband access is a challenge. These resources can help bridge that digital divide.
Excerpt:
“If it wasn’t glaringly clear before, the pandemic has confirmed the vital importance of a broadband internet connection—one that is reliable, affordable, and in some cases, simply available,” says Jonathan Schwantes, senior policy counsel in Consumers Reports’ Washington, D.C., office. “Unfortunately, far too many Americans lack access or are unable to afford broadband.”
A new state-by-state report on America’s K-12 students by Common Sense and Boston Consulting finds that almost 16 million students and 10 percent of teachers lack adequate internet or computing devices at home. Minority households are among the most affected. Though 18 percent of white homes lack broadband, the figure rises to 26 percent for Latinx homes and 30 percent for Black homes. The percentage is even higher among Native American households.
From DSC:
Though this solid article lists some very helpful resources, we have to do much better than this as a nation! It’s not right.
My thanks to James McQueen for this resource.
From DSC:
After reading Jeff Young’s article re: learning engineering and seeing the Nudge application from Duke University...it once again occurred to me that we really need a standard for loading questions into a memory-refreshing application. Just like HyperText Markup Language (HTML) made the World Wide Web so successful and impactful, we need an easy-to-use standard for dumping questions into a personalized database of questions for each cloud-based learner profile.
After taking a module, you would be asked if you wanted to be reminded of / quizzed upon the key ideas presented therein. You would then receive periodic quizzes on those items. You can choose to opt-out of that learning module’s content at any time.
Such an application would help reduce the impact of the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. This type of standard/feature would really help students and people in:
- law schools, dental schools, medical schools, and seminaries
- vocational programs
- traditional undergraduate and graduate programs
- K-12 systems
- Homeschooling-based situations
- Places of worship
- Communities of practice — as well as lifelong learners
A person could invoke a quiz at any point, but would be quizzed at least once a day. If you missed a day, those questions would not be taken out of the pool of questions to ask you. If you got a question right, the time interval would be lengthened before you were asked that question again. But questions that you struggled with would be asked more frequently. This would also help interleave questions and aid in recall. Such spaced repetition would cause struggle from time to time, aiding in deeper learning.
From DSC:
I instantly see the inequities involved here — as only those with the resources can choose this route. Also, one would have to be careful about how many others are around you choosing to do the same thing. (Otherwise, it defeats the purpose of social distancing, and one might as well be back in a physical classroom.)
All that said, I post this because I’m intrigued by the different ways people are enhancing their learning ecosystems. The creativity out there is wonderful to see. Learning should be fun.
For that matter, a few words could be interchanged to create a slightly different perspective here…
[DC] Cisco Webex: Is this level of audio quality in your videoconferencing products? If not, please purchase/integrate this co's tech.
"Your answer to high-quality audio for remote learning.
High-Quality Audio for Multi-User/Multi-Location Conferencing"https://t.co/XreOLVTXMj pic.twitter.com/Akut67piRe— Daniel Christian (@dchristian5) July 28, 2020
Zoom Launches Zoom For Home — from which-50.com
Excerpts:
Zoom Video Communications has announced Zoom for Home, which it describes as a new category of software experiences and hardware devices to support remote work use cases. The focus is on improving employee experiences to connect remotely and be productive.
Features for the all-in-one 27-inch device include: three built-in wide-angle cameras for high-resolution video; an 8-microphone array for crystal-clear audio in meetings and phone calls; and, an ultra-responsive touch display for interactive screen sharing, whiteboarding, annotating, and ideation.
Also see:
- ZOOM FOR HOME – DTEN ME: VIDEO CONFERENCING JUST GOT PERSONAL — from blog.dten.com by Scott Krueckeberg
- VIDEO CONFERENCE LIKE A BOSS — from blog.dten.com by Nia Celestin
From DSC:
Again, we see some further innovation in this space. The longer the Coronavirus impacts things, the further ahead the online-learning space will be catapulted. This type of device consolidates several devices into one, while making it intuitive and likely easy to annotate items on it.