The 2017 Dean’s List: EdTech’s 50 Must-Read Higher Ed Blogs — from edtechmagazine.com by Meghan Bogardus Cortez These administrative all-stars, IT gurus, teachers and community experts understand how the latest technology is changing the nature of education.
Excerpt:
With summer break almost here, we’ve got an idea for how you can use some of your spare time. Take a look at the Dean’s List, our compilation of the must-read blogs that seek to make sense of higher education in today’s digital world.
Follow these education trailblazers for not-to-be-missed analyses of the trends, challenges and opportunities that technology can provide.
If you’d like to check out the Must-Read IT blogs from previous years, view our lists from 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013.
From DSC: I would like to thank Tara Buck, Meghan Bogardus Cortez, D. Frank Smith, Meg Conlan, and Jimmy Daly and the rest of the staff at EdTech Magazine for their support of this Learning Ecosystems blog through the years — I really appreciate it.
Thanks all for your encouragement through the years!
Colleges and universities are concentrating on student success to address concerns about the costs, value, and outcomes of higher education. Student success initiatives are making use of every available resource and opportunity and involving every relevant stakeholder. Institutional technology is all three: resource, opportunity, and stakeholder.
The 2017 issues list identifies the four focus areas for higher education information technology:
Develop the IT foundations
Develop the data foundations
Ensure effective leadership
Enable successful students
These issues and focus areas are not just about today. Higher education information technology is very clearly building foundations for student success to last into the future.
Expanding on the preview of its annual ranking of IT issues for higher education released last fall, Educause today announced its full report on the key issues, trends and technologies poised to impact higher ed in 2017. The prevailing themes across the board, according to the higher education technology association with a membership of 2,100 colleges, universities and other education organizations: information security, student success and data-informed decision-making.
The top 10 IT issues for 2017, reiterated in today’s report:
5 Online Education Trends to Watch in 2017 — from usnews.com by Jordan Friedman Experts predict more online programs will offer alternative credentials and degrees in specialized fields.
Excerpts:
Greater emphasis on nontraditional credentials
Increased use of big data to measure student performance
Greater incorporation of artificial intelligence into classes
Growth of nonprofit online programs
Online degrees in surprising and specialized disciplines
I became a Strava user in 2013, around the same time I became an online course designer. Quickly I found that even as I logged runs on Strava daily, I struggled to find the time to log into platforms like Coursera, Udemy or Udacity to finish courses produced by my fellow instructional designers. What was happening? Why was the fitness app so “sticky” as opposed to the online learning platforms?
As a thought experiment, I tried to recast my Strava experience in pedagogical terms. I realized that I was recording hours of deliberate practice (my early morning runs), formative assessments (the occasional speed workout on the track) and even a few summative assessments (races) on the app. Strava was motivating my consistent use by overlaying a digital grid on my existing offline activities. It let me reconnect with college teammates who could keep me motivated. It enabled me to analyze the results of my efforts and compare them to others. I didn’t have to be trapped behind a computer to benefit from this form of digital engagement—yet it was giving me personalized feedback and results. How could we apply the same practices to learning?
I’ve come to believe that one of the biggest misunderstandings about online learning is that it has to be limited to things that can be done in front of a computer screen. Instead, we need to reimagine online courses as something that can enable the interplay between offline activities and digital augmentation.
A few companies are heading that way. Edthena enables teachers to record videos of themselves teaching and then upload these to the platform to get feedback from mentors.
DIY’s JAM online courses let kids complete hands-on activities like drawing or building with LEGOs and then has them upload pictures of their work to earn badges and share their projects.
My team at +Acumen has built online courses that let teams complete projects together offline and then upload their prototypes to the NovoEd platform to receive feedback from peers. University campuses are integrating Kaltura into their LMS platforms to enable students to capture and upload videos.
We need to focus less on building multiple choice quizzes or slick lecture videos and more on finding ways to robustly capture evidence of offline learning that can be validated and critiqued at scale by peers and experts online.
Some conference participants were concerned that this beleaguered region might grow. In fact, one attendee — an old friend who strategizes about technology for a big New York bank — commented that perhaps Wall Street would become “the new Rust Belt.” His concern was that automation of the finance industry would hollow out jobs in that field in the same way that robotics and other technologies have reduced manufacturing employment.
This is a sobering prospect, but there is plenty of evidence that it’s a real possibility. Key aspects of the finance industry have already been automated to a substantial degree. Jobs in the New York finance field have been declining for several years. According to data from research firm Coalition Ltd., more than 10,000 “front-office producer” jobs have been lost within the top 10 banks since 2011. Coalition also suggests that global fixed-income headcount has fallen 31% since 2011.
According to a new report, organizations are moving away from hierarchies, focusing on improving the employee experience, redesigning training, and reinventing the role of HR.
Business and HR leaders should rethink almost all of their management and HR practices as the proliferation of digital technologies transform the way organizations work, according to predictions for 2017 from Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
This year’s report includes 11 predictions about rapid technological, structural, and cultural changes that will reshape the world of work, including management, HR, and the markets for HR and workplace technology.
Artificial intelligence has a big year ahead — from cnet.com by Stepehn Shankland In 2017, AI won’t just be for the nerdy companies. Machine learning can help with mortgage applications and bridge safety, too.
Excerpt:
Get ready for AI to show up where you’d least expect it.
In 2016, tech companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft launched dozens of products and services powered by artificial intelligence. Next year will be all about the rest of the business world embracing AI.
Artificial intelligence is a 60-year-old term, and its promise has long seemed like it was forever over the horizon. But new hardware, software, services and expertise means it’s finally real — even though companies will still need plenty of human brain power to get it working.
AI was one of the hottest trends in tech this year, and it’s only poised to get bigger. You’ve already brushed up against AI: It screens out spam, organizes your digital photos and transcribes your spoken text messages. In 2017, it will spread beyond digital doodads to mainstream businesses.
The design world has seen its own changes and updates as well. And as we know, change is the only constant. We’ve asked some of the top creatives to share what 2017 design trends they think will be headed our way.
SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The market has evolved from technologists looking to learn and understand new big data technologies to customers who want to learn about new projects, new companies and most importantly, how organizations are actually benefitting from the technology. According to John Schroeder, executive chairman and founder of MapR Technologies, Inc., the acceleration in big data deployments has shifted the focus to the value of the data. John has crystallized his view of market trends into these six major predictions for 2017…
2016 was a rich year for medical technology. Virtual Reality. Augmented Reality. Smart algorithms analysing wearable data. Amazing technologies arrived in our lives and on the market almost every day. And it will not stop in the coming year. The role of a futurist is certainly not making bold predictions about the future. No such big bet has taken humanity forward. Instead, our job is constantly analysing the trends shaping the future and trying to build bridges between them and what we have today. Still, people expect me to come up with predictions about medical technologies every year, and thus here they are.
Artificial intelligence (and machine/deep learning) is the hottest trend, eclipsing, but building on, the accumulated hype for the previous “new big thing,” big data. The new catalyst for the data explosion is the Internet of Things, bringing with it new cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The rapid fluctuations in the relative temperature of these trends also create new dislocations and opportunities in the tech job market.
The hottest segment of the hottest trend—artificial intelligence—is the market for chatbots. “The movement towards conversational interfaces will accelerate,” says Stuart Frankel, CEO, Narrative Science. “The recent, combined efforts of a number of innovative tech giants point to a coming year when interacting with technology through conversation becomes the norm. Are conversational interfaces really a big deal? They’re game-changing. Since the advent of computers, we have been forced to speak the language of computers in order to communicate with them and now we’re teaching them to communicate in our language.”
Google changed the world with its PageRank algorithm, creating a new kind of internet search engine that could instantly sift through the world’s online information and, in many cases, show us just what we wanted to see. But that was a long time ago. As the volume of online documents continues to increase, we need still newer ways of finding what we want.
That’s why Google is now running its search engine with help from machine learning, augmenting its predetermined search rules with deep neural networks that can learn to identify the best search results by analyzing vast amounts of existing search data. And it’s not just Google. Microsoft is pushing its Bing search engine in the same direction, and so are others beyond the biggest names in tech.
3 Forces Shaping Ed Tech in 2017— from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser
Ovum’s latest report examines the key trends that are expected to impact higher education in the new year.
Excerpts:
Institutions Will Support the Use of More Innovative Tech in Teaching and Learning
Schools Will Leverage Technology for Improving the Student Experience
The Next-Generation IT Strategy Will Focus More on IT Agility
We’ve seen a lot of exciting new innovations take place over the course of 2016. This year has introduced interesting new uses for virtual reality—like using VR to help burn victims in hospitals mentally escape from the pain during procedures—and even saw the world’s first revolutionary augmented reality game in the form of Pokémon Go. The iPhone 7 was also introduced, leaving millions of people uncertain of their feelings regarding Apple, while Samsung loyalists just prayed that their smartphones would stay in one piece.
Undoubtedly, there have been quite a few ups and downs in technology over the past year. With any luck, 2017 will provide us with even more new innovations and advancements in tech. But what exactly do we have to look forward to? TMC recently caught up with Jordan Edelson, CEO of Appetizer Mobile, to discuss his thoughts on 2016 and his predictions for what’s to come in the future. You can find the entire exchange below.
2016 is fast drawing to a close. And while many will be glad to see the back of it, for those of us who work and play with Virtual Reality, it has been a most exciting year. By the time the bells ring out signalling the start of a new year, the total number of VR users will exceed 43 million. This is a market on the move, projected to be worth $30bn by 2020. If it’s to meet that valuation, then we believe 2017 will be an incredibly important year in the lifecycle of VR hardware and software development. VR will be enjoyed by an increasingly mainstream audience very soon, and here we take a quick look at some of the trends we expect to develop over the next 12 months for that to happen.
Every December, we take a look back at big ideas from the past twelve months that promise to gain momentum in the new year. With more than eleven thousand projects launched between our Design and Tech categories in 2016, we have a nice sample to draw from. More importantly, we have a community of forward-thinking backers who help creators figure out which versions of the future to pursue. Here are some of the emerging trends we expect to see more of in 2017.
Everyday artificial intelligence
Whether chatting with a device as if it’s a virtual assistant strikes you as a sci-fi dream come true or a dystopian nightmare, we’re going to see an increasing number of products that use voice-controlled artificial intelligence interfaces to fit into users’ lives more seamlessly. Among the projects leading the way in this arena are Vi, wireless earphones that double as a personal trainer; Bonjour, an alarm clock that wakes you up with a personalized daily briefing; and Dashbot, a talking car accessory that recalls Kit, David Hasselhoff’s buddy from Knight Rider. One of the factors driving this talking AI boom is the emergence of platforms like Microsoft’s Cognitive Service, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Speech API, which allow product developers to focus on user experience rather than low-level speech processing. For the DIY set, Seeed’s ReSpeaker offers a turnkey devkit for working with these services, and we’ll surely see more tools for integrating AI voice interfaces into all manner of products.
During Microsoft’s Build Conference earlier this year, CEO Satya Nadella delivered the three-hour keynote address, in which he highlighted his belief that the future of technology lies in human language. In this new wave of technology, conversation is the new interface, and “bots are the new apps.” While not as flashy as virtual reality nor as immediately practical as 3D printing, chatbots are nevertheless gaining major traction this year, with support coming from across the entire tech industry. The big tech enterprises are all entering the chatbot space, and many startups are too.
Out with the apps, in with the chatbots. The reason for the attention is simple: The power of the natural language processor, software that processes and parses human language, creating a simple and universal means of interacting with technology.
Developments in computing are driving the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance. In this interview Justine Cassell, Associate Dean, Technology, Strategy and Impact, at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, and co-chair of the Global Future Council on Computing, says we must ensure that these developments benefit all society, not just the wealthy or those participating in the “new economy”.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an important development and consumers globally will see it playing a much more prominent role — both in society and at work — next year, a new report said on Tuesday. Ericsson ConsumerLab, in its annual trend report titled “The 10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2017 and beyond”, said that 35 percent of advanced internet users want an AI advisor at work and one in four would like AI as their manager.At the same time, almost half of the respondents were concerned that AI robots will soon make a lot of people lose their jobs.
From driverless cars to robotic workers, the future is going to be here before you know it. Many emerging technologies you hear about today will reach a tipping point by 2025, according to a report from The World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Software & Society. The council surveyed more than 800 executives and experts from the technology sector to share their respective timelines for when technologies would become mainstream. From the survey results, the council identified 21 defining moments, all of which they predict will occur by 2030. Here’s a look at the technological shifts you can expect during the next 14 years.
… The first robotic pharmacist will arrive in the US 2021.
A new year is quickly approaching and Microsoft Research is offering a glimpse at what the tech scene has in store for 2017 along with some hints at the Redmond, Wash., tech giant’s own priorities for the coming year. This year, the company gathered prominent women researchers to share their thoughts on what to expect next year. Surprising nobody’s who’s been following Microsoft’s software and cloud computing strategy of late, the company is betting big on artificial intelligence (AI).
It’s still early days for the Internet of Things. As recently as 2014, 87 percent of consumers had never heard of the technology, according to Accenture. In 2016, and 19% of business and government professionals reported that they had never heard of the Internet of Things while 18% were only vaguely familiar with it, according to research from the Internet of Things Institute. Although the technology is getting the most traction in the industrial space, the most promising use cases for the technology are just starting to come to light. To get a sense of what to expect as we head into 2017, we spoke with Stanford lecturer and IoT author Timothy Chou, Ph.D.; Thulium.co CEO Tamara McCleary; industry observer and influencer Evan Kirstel; and Sandy Carter, CEO and founder of Silicon-Blitz.
15 tech trends in autonomous cars, artificial intelligence, and machine learning for 2017 — from venturebeat.com by John Brandon Tech is about to change dramatically next year. Want to stay up to date? These predictions from the famed design firm frog spell things out for you. In each section, a designer explains all of the details. Which one is already on your radar?
Data and cloud reign supreme: I smell a dynasty in the making! Cloud and distributed computing has remained in the #1 spot for the past two years and is the Top Skill on almost every list — including France, Germany, India, Ireland, Singapore, the U.S., and Spain. Following closely on its heels is statistical analysis and data mining, which came in #2 last year, and #1 in 2014. These skills are in such high demand because they’re at the cutting edge of technology. Employers need employees with cloud and distributed computing, statistical analysis and data mining skills to stay competitive.
From DSC: The need for people who have “IT”-related skills is consistent across the globe.
Campus Technology 2016: Revolution is in the air — from edtechmagazine.com by Amy Burroughs Georgia Tech educator and author forecasts that technology may be the answer to higher education’s ‘triple threat.’
Excerpts:
In his keynote address at Campus Technology 2016, educator and author Richard DeMillo predicted that technology will be the key to resolving the toughest challenges facing higher education. In his speech, “A Revolution in Higher Education: Tales from Unlikely Allies,” DeMillo said that this revolution may be quiet, but it is happening, as more educators and leaders embrace innovation.
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One problem, he said, is that the model of education that has dominated until now — small classrooms built around lecture-based pedagogy — is too expensive to be sustainable. Technology, however, now makes it possible to deliver education that is equally effective, yet less costly and less exclusionary (think MOOCs, online learning and emerging capabilities such as artificial intelligence). All this prompts a revolutionary rethinking of time-tested assumptions, he said.
What persists, he said, is his belief that higher education, for all its greatness, is not immune from the influence of politics, business, sociology and the economy.
But the classroom of tomorrow will look very different. The latest advancements in technology and innovation are paving the way for an educational space that’s interactive, engaging and fun.
The conventions of learning are changing. It’s becoming normal for youngsters to use games like Minecraft to develop skills such as team working and problem solving, and for teachers to turn to artificial intelligence to get a better understanding of how their pupils are progressing in lessons.
Virtual reality is also introducing new possibilities in the classroom. Gone are the days of imagining what an Ancient Egyptian tomb might look like – now you can just strap on a headset and transport yourself there in a heartbeat.
The potential for using VR to teach history, geography and other subjects is incredible when you really think about it – and it’s not the only tech that’s going to shake things up.
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Artificial intelligence is already doing groundbreaking things in areas like robotics, computer science, neuroscience and linguistics, but now they’re now entering the world of education too.
London-based edtech firm Digital Assess has been working on an AI app that has the potential to revolutionise the way youngsters learn.
With the backing of the UK Government, the company has been trialing its web-based application Formative Assess in schools in England.
Using semantic indexing and natural language processing in a similar way to social networking sites, an on-screen avatar – which can be a rubber duck or robot – quizzes students on their knowledge and provides them with individual feedback on their work.
Business will be a leading use case for AR over the next several years. An example is DHL’s use of wearables and AR in a warehouse pilot program to achieve improvement in the picking process. Other AR apps allow for automatic sign translation, or in a hands-busy environment, technicians can get equipment maintenance instructions through their HMDs while keeping focused on the task at hand.
“Virtual reality (VR) and AR capabilities will merge with the digital mesh to form a more seamless system of devices capable of orchestrating a flow of information that comes to the user as hyperpersonalized and relevant apps and services,” said Mr. Blau. “Integration across multiple mobile, wearable, IoT and sensor-rich environments (the digital mesh) will extend immersive applications beyond isolated and single-person experiences. Rooms and spaces will become active with things, and their connection through the mesh will appear and work in conjunction with immersive virtual worlds. “
From DSC: I would add those working in higher education to this as well — as well as vendors working on education-related solutions.
Don’t let the fun, casual name mislead you. Chatbots—software that you can “chat with”—have serious implications for the business world. Though many businesses have already considered their use for customer service purposes, a chatbot’s internal applications could be invaluable on a larger scale.For instance, chatbots could help employees break down siloes and provide targeted data to fuel every department. This digital transformation is happening, even in organizational structures that face challenges with other formats of real-time communication.
Still unclear on what chatbots are and what they do? Think of a digital assistant—such as iPhone’s Siri or Alexa, the Artificial Intelligence within the Amazon Echo. A chatbot reduces or eliminates the need for many mobile apps, as the answers are stored inside the chatbot. Need to know what the weather’s like in LA? Ask your chatbot. Is your flight running on time? Ask your chatbot. Is the package you ordered going to be delivered while you’re away? You get the gist.
From DSC: How might institutions of higher education as well as K-12 school districts benefit from such internal applications of chatbots? How about external applications of chatbots? If done well, such applications could facilitate solid customer service (i.e., self-service knowledgebases) and aid in communications.
Imagine being able to have your own personal assistant at your fingertips, who you can chat with, give instructions and errands to, and handle the majority of your online research — both personally and professionally.
That’s essentially what a chatbot does.
Capable of being installed on any messenger platform, such as Facebook messenger or text messages, a chat bot is a basic artificial intelligence computer software program that does the legwork for you — and communicates in a way that feels like an intelligent conversation over text or voice messaging.
Once-in-a-decade paradigm shift: Messaging — from chatbotsmagazine.com by Beerud Sheth In the history of the personal computing industry, we have had a paradigm shift about once every decade.
Virtual agents and chatbots will be the top consumer applications of artificial intelligence over the next five years, according to a consensus poll released today by TechEmergence, a marketing research firm for AI and machine learning.
The emphasis on virtual agents and chatbots is in many ways not surprising. After all, the tech industry’s 800-pound gorillas have all made big bets: Apple with Siri, Amazon with Alexa, Facebook with M and Messenger, Google with Google Assistant, Microsoft with Cortana and Tay. However, the poll’s data also suggests that chatbots may soon be viewed as a horizontal enabling technology for many industries.
The most prevalent indicator that the artificial intelligence-driven future is rapidly becoming reality is the rise of the chatbot – an A.I. software program designed to chat with people. Well, more accurately, the re-emergence of the bot. Basically, robots talking to humans talking to robots is the tech vision for the future.
Maybe one of the most obvious uses for this technology would be in service. If you can incorporate your self-service knowledge base into a bot that responds directly to questions and uses customer data to provide the most relevant answers, it’s more convenient for customers…
An artificial-intelligence lawyer chatbot has successfully contested 160,000 parking tickets across London and New York for free, showing that chatbots can actually be useful.
Dubbed as “the world’s first robot lawyer” by its 19-year-old creator, London-born second-year Stanford University student Joshua Browder, DoNotPay helps users contest parking tickets in an easy to use chat-like interface.
People in Asia are already using MyKai, and beginning today, you can too. Because it’s focused on banking—and banking alone—it works pretty well. But it’s also flawed. And it’s a bit weird. Unsettling, even. All of which makes it a great way of deconstructing the tech world’s ever growing obsession with “chatbots.”
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MyKai is remarkably adept at understanding what I’m asking—and that’s largely because it’s focused solely on banking. When I ask “How much money do I have?” or “How much did I spend on food in May?,” it understands. But when I ask who won the Spain-Italy match at Euro 2016, it suggests I take another tack. The thing to realize about today’s chatbots is that they can be reasonably effective if they’ve honed to a particular task—and that they break down if the scope gets to wide.
We’re embracing the bot revolution With these limitations in mind, we embrace the bot movement. In short, having our bite-sized courses delivered via messaging platforms will open up a lot of new benefits for our users.
The courses will become social.
It will become easier to consume a course via a channel that fits best for the course.
The courses will become more interactive.
Bots will remove some of the friction
The future of online learning will happen via messaging services.
Also relevant here:
From DSC: By posting such items, I’m not advocating that we remove teachers, professors, trainers, coaches, etc. from the education/training equations. Rather, I am advocating that we use technology as tools for educating and training people — and using technologies to help people of all ages grow, and reinvent themselves when necessary. Such tools should be used to help our overworked teachers, professors, trainers, etc. of the world in delivering excellent, effective elearning experiences for our students/employees.
The categories for the 2016 Campus Technology Innovators include:
Teaching and Learning
Student Systems and Services
Administration
IT Infrastructure and Systems
Education Futurists
From DSC: As one of the Judges for this year’s awards, I congratulate these award honorees on jobs that were well done! There were some solid submissions this year.
From DSC:
Below are some questions and thoughts that are going through my mind:
Will “class be in session” soon on tools like Prysm & Bluescape?
Will this type of setup be the next platform that we’ll use to meet our need to be lifelong learners? That is, will what we know of today as Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Content Management Systems (CMS) morph into this type of setup?
Via platforms/operating systems like tvOS, will our connected TVs turn into much more collaborative devices, allowing us to contribute content with learners from all over the globe?
Prysm is already available on mobile devices and what we consider a television continues to morph
Will second and third screens be used in such setups? What functionality will be assigned to the main/larger screens? To the mobile devices?
Will colleges and universities innovate into such setups? Or will organizations like LinkedIn.com/Lynda.com lead in this space? Or will it be a bit of both?
How will training, learning and development groups leverage these tools/technologies?
Are there some opportunities for homeschoolers here?
Along these lines, are are some videos/images/links for you:
To enhance the Prysm Visual Workplace, Prysm today announced an integration with Microsoft OneDrive for Business and Office 365. Using the OneDrive for Business API from Microsoft, Prysm has made it easy for customers to connect Prysm to their existing OneDrive for Business environments to make it a seamless experience for end users to access, search for, and sync with content from OneDrive for Business. Within a Prysm Visual Workplace project, users may now access, work within and download content from Office 365 using Prysm’s built-in web capabilities.
Key point from DSC: Digitally-based means of learning are going to skyrocket!!! Far more than what we’ve seen so far! There are several trends that are occurring to make this so.
As background here, some of the keywords and phrases that are relevant to this posting include:
Wireless content sharing
Wireless collaboration solutions
Active learning based classrooms
Conference rooms
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
Enterprise wireless display solutions
Enterprise collaboration solutions
Cross platform support: iOS, Android, Windows
Personalized learning
Learning analytics
Some of the relevant products in this area include:
Bluescape
Mezzanine from Oblong Industries
Montage from DisplayNote Technologies
ThinkHub and ViewHub from T1V
Mersive Solstice
Crestron AirMedia
Barco Clickshare
Haworth Workware Wireless
Christi Brio
AMX enzo
NovoConnect from Vivitek
Arrive MediaPoint
Apple TV
Chromecast
From DSC:
First of all, consider the following products and the functionalities they offer.
People who are in the same physical space can collaborate with people from all over the world — no matter if they are at home, in another office, on the road, etc.
For several of these products,remote employees/consultants/trainers/learners can contribute content to the discussions, just like someone in the same physical location can.
From DSC:
Many of these sorts of systems & software are aimed at helping people collaborate — again,regardless of where they are located.Remote learners/content contributors are working in tandem with a group of people in the same physical location. If this is true in business, why can’t it be true in the world of education?
So keep that in mind, as I’m now going to add on a few other thoughts and trends that build upon these sorts of digitally-based means of collaborating.
Q: Towards that end…ask yourself, what do the following trends and items have in common?
The desire to capture and analyze learner data to maximize learning
Colleges’ and universities’ need to increase productivity (which is also true in the corporate & K-12 worlds)
The trend towards implementing more active learning-based environments
The increasing use of leveraging students’ devices for their learning (i.e., the BYOD phenomenon)
The continued growth and increasing sophistication of algorithms
A: All of these things may cause digitally-based means of learning to skyrocket!!!
To wrap up this line of thought, below are some excerpts from recent articles that illustrate what I’m trying to get at here.
Embrace the Power of Data A continuous improvement mindset is important. Back-end learning analytics, for example, can reveal where large numbers of students are struggling, and may provide insights into questions that require new feedback or content areas that need more development. Data can also highlight how students are interacting with the content and illuminate things that are working well—students’ lightbulb moments.
Mitchell gave the example of flight simulators, which not only provide students with a way to engage in the activity that they want to learn, but also have data systems that monitor students’ learning over time, providing them with structured feedback at just the right moment. This sort of data-centric assessment of learning is happening in more and more disciplines — and that opens the door to more innovation, he argued.
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A promising example, said Thille, is the use of educational technology to create personalized and adaptive instruction. As students interact with adaptive technology, the system collects large amounts of data, models those data, and then makes predictions about each student based on their interactions, she explained. Those predictions are then used for pedagogical decision-making — either feeding information back into the system to give the student a personalized learning path, or providing insights to faculty to help them give students individualized support.
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“We need the models and the data to be open, transparent, peer-reviewable and subject to academic scrutiny.”
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“We began to actually examine what we could do differently — based not upon hunches and traditions, but upon what the data told us the problems were for the students we enroll,” said Renick. “We made a commitment not to raise our graduation rate through getting better students, but through getting better — and that gain meant looking in the mirror and making some significant changes.”
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A 21st-century learning culture starts with digital content. In 2010, Jackson State University was looking for ways that technology could better address the needs of today’s learner. “We put together what we call our cyberlearning ecosystem,” said Robert Blaine, dean of undergraduate studies and cyberlearning. “What that means is that we’re building a 21st-century learning culture for all of our students, writ large across campus.” At the core of that ecosystem is digital content, delivered via university-supplied iPads.
On Bennett’s wish list right now is an application that allows students to give feedback at specific points of the videos that they’re watching at home. This would help him pinpoint and fix any “problem” areas (e.g. insufficient instructions for difficult topics/tasks) and easily see where students are experiencing the most difficulties.
TechSmith’s now-retired “Ask3” video platform, for example, would have done the trick. It allowed users to watch a video and ask text-based questions at the point where playback was stopped. “I’d like to be able to look at my content and say, ‘Here’s a spot where there are a lot of questions and confusion,'” said Bennett, who also sees potential in an “I get it” button that would allow students to hit the button when everything clicks. “That would indicate the minimum viable video that I’d need to produce.”Learning Catalyticsoffers a similar product at a fee, Bennett said, “but I can’t charge my students $20 a year to use it.”
I am super excited about today’s announcement that the Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition is available for pre-order. We set out on a mission to deliver the world’s first untethered holographic computer and it is amazing to finally be at this point in time where developers will be receiving the very first versions so they can start building their own holographic experiences.
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With HoloLens, we are committed to providing the development community with the best experience possible. In order to help get developers started creating experiences for HoloLens, we’ve provided a number of great resources. First of all, there is a complete set of documentation provided to developers both by the people who have created the platform and by the people who have been building holographic experiences. We want to share all of our holographic knowledge with developers so they can start bringing their holographic dreams to reality as easily as possible. We have also provided a host of tutorial videos to help people along. All of the documentation and videos can be found at dev.windows.com/holographic.
![The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV](http://danielschristian.com/learning-ecosystems/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian-July-2012.jpg)
