Jennifer Gonzalez on the Aerodynamics of Exceptional Schools | SXSW EDU
On 03/06/2019,
in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Blockchain, credentialing, education, emerging technologies, experimentation, K-12 related, learner profiles, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, platforms, student-related, technologies for your home, tools, United States,
by Daniel Christian
Blockchain Deployment Checklist — from The Journal by Sara Friedman
While the technology is still in the nascent stages, blockchain-based education systems have the potential to revolutionize how school districts manage student data.
From DSC:
Unfortunately, the checklist provided in this solid article was too long and complicated…it needs to be streamlined. But I think it’s likely that we’ll see more products out there in the future that will remove these complexities.
Along these lines, I think we’ll see cloud-based learner profiles in the future. Throughout our lifetimes, we will own the data and direct who can — and can’t — access it.
Also see:
- Blockchain 101 — from legal.thomsonreuters.com by Judith Alison Lee and Gibson Dunn
- Fujitsu and Sony think blockchain is the best way to store education records — from zdnet.com by Asha McLean (with thanks to Michael Mathews, CIO at ORU, for his post on LinkedIn on this)
On 03/01/2019,
in 3D, A/V -- audio/visual, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, attention, bots, digital learning, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, heutagogy, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, languages and translation, learning, learning ecosystem, multimedia, social learning / networks, social media, tools, ubiquitous learning, usability, user experience (UX), user interface design, vendors, XR - extended reality,
by Daniel Christian
The 10+ best real-world examples of augmented reality — from forbes.com by Bernard Marr
Excerpt:
Augmented reality (AR) can add value, solve problems and enhance the user experience in nearly every industry. Businesses are catching on and increasing investments to drive the growth of augmented reality, which makes it a crucial part of the tech economy.
As referenced by Bernard in his above article:
From DSC:
Along these lines, I really appreciate the “translate” feature within Twitter. It helps open up whole new avenues of learning for me from people across the globe. A very cool, practical, positive, beneficial feature/tool!!!
On 02/22/2019,
in adjunct faculty, attention, education, engagement / engaging students, faculty/staff, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, instructional design, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, learning theories, multimedia, science, social learning / networks, streams of content, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, universities,
by Daniel Christian
Summary of the #LrnSciChat on 19 February 2019 on
Dual Coding in Learning and Teaching. — from wakelet.com
Dual coding is simply combining verbal and visual information to enrich the learning experience.
Dr. C. Kuepper-Tetzel
Also see the posters out at The Learning Scientists website.
On 02/15/2019,
in accessibility / UDL, adjunct faculty, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, distance education, education, education technology, face-to-face, faculty/staff, future of higher education, health, higher education, K-12 related, law schools, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, neurodivergent/special needs, nursing, online learning, organizational change, professional development, teachers, teaching & learning, United States, universities,
by Daniel Christian
The information below is from Deb Molfetta, Outreach Coordinator at EdDPrograms.org
EdDPrograms.org helps educators and administrators research doctoral education opportunities. Their organization’s work in education began in 2008 with projects ranging from a new teacher survival guide to their own teacher education scholarship program. More recently they realized that there weren’t any websites dedicated to professional development through Doctor of Education (EdD) programs, which is why they created their own – EdDPrograms.org. It covers a lot of ground, but here are a few sections they think administrators will appreciate:
- A detailed overview of the EdD, including what to expect and how to choose a program
https://www.eddprograms.org/schools/
. - Specialized guides to EdD programs for leadership positions
https://www.eddprograms.org/schools/educational-leadership/
https://www.eddprograms.org/schools/organizational-leadership/
. - A comprehensive directory of EdD programs organized by state and delivery format. For example:
https://www.eddprograms.org/schools/online/
https://www.eddprograms.org/schools/michigan/
EdDPrograms.org is owned and operated by a group that has been creating post-secondary education resources since 2008. According to Deb, they have a history of providing students with objective, fact-based resources.
On 02/12/2019,
in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, adult learning, career development, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, CMS/LMS, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, consortiums, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, credentialing, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, distance education, education, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, future, future of higher education, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, library / librarians, lifelong learning, love of learning, MBA, media/film, microlearning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, multimedia, Natural Language Processing (NLP), online learning, online media, online tutoring, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, smart classrooms, social learning / networks, society, staying relevant, streams of content, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, technology (general), television, tools, training / L&D, TVs, user experience (UX), user interface design, vendors, videoconferencing, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration,
by Daniel Christian
From DSC:
In a next generation learning system, it would be sharp/beneficial to have a Netflix-like interface to check out potential functionalities that you could turn on and off (at will) — as one component of your learning ecosystem that could feature a setup located in your living room or office.
For example, put a Netflix-like interface to the apps out at eduappcenter.com (i.e., using a rolling interface at first, then going to a static page/listing of apps…again…similar to Netflix).
On 02/04/2019,
in accessibility / UDL, assessment, curriculum, Daniel S. Christian, K-12 related, learning, learning preferences, neurodivergent/special needs, society, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, Uncategorized, youth,
by Daniel Christian
From DSC:
For anyone out there who thinks that teaching and learning is easy and who agrees with the uninformed saying that goes “Those who can’t do…teach”…might I recommend a few potential to-do’s for you to try out…?
- Try teaching 30-35 students yourself for at least 4-6 weeks about a topic that you just found out that you’ll be teaching and one that you don’t know much about. (And see if you enjoy the process that some teachers sometimes have to go through…putting down the tracks right in front of the trains that are rapidly moving down the tracks right behind them.) Also, you must have at least one student in your class who requires an Individualized Education Program (IEP) as well as 4-5 students who constantly cause trouble and who don’t want to be in school at all.
. - Identify each student’s strengths, weaknesses, and learning preferences — and their Zone of Proximal Development — then customize the learning that each of your 30-35 learners receives (with the goal of keeping each student moving forward at their most appropriate pace, while staying encouraged and yet appropriately challenged).
. - Attend Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings and work with other IEP team members to significantly contribute to the appropriate student’s (or students’) teaching and learning environment(s). For a real challenge, at least one of those students will be someone who is struggling, but is very much hanging in there — someone who is “right in the middle of the pack,” so to speak. (My guess is that if you did this, you would never think of teaching, nor teachers, nor other specialists in quite the same way again. My guess is that you would develop a whole new appreciation for how complex teaching and learning really is.)
Regarding that last item about at least one of your students requiring an IEP, here are some questions that might come up:
- What specialized services are needed this year?
- What do the teachers need to know about this student’s cognitive processing/executive functioning?
- How has the student been doing with the specialized services and teaching and learning strategies that have been attempted since the last IEP meeting?
- If their scores are going down, how are you going to address that issue (especially given limited resources)?
- How is the student’s motivation level doing? Is attending school still a positive experience? Or are things starting to become negative and/or downright painful for the student? Are they starting to get bummed out about having to come to school?
- How are they relating with and collaborating with other students? If poorly, how are you going to address that issue? How are you going to handle group-related projects (especially after reading all of those articles that assert which skills the workplace values these days)?
- What do you do with grades and assessments? Do you treat the student differently and give them higher grades to keep them encouraged? But if you do that, will your school system back you up on that or will someone come down hard on you for doing that? Or, perhaps you will find yourself struggling internally — trying to figure out what grades are really for and wondering if they are helpful in the first place. In fact, you might find yourself wondering if grades aren’t really just a mechanism for ranking and comparing individuals, schools, and even entire school systems (which, as we know, impacts property values)?
- What do grades really produce — game players or (lifelong) learners? It won’t surprise you to know that I would argue that the former is what gets “produced.” Grades don’t really produce as many learners as they do game-players (i.e., students who know the minimum amount of work that they need to do and still get that all important A).
So, as you can hopefully see here, learning is messy. It’s rarely black and white…there’s a lot of gray out there and a lot of things to consider. It’s not a one-size fits all. And teaching others well is certainly NOT easy to do!
RELEVANT IDEAS:
While I’m thinking about related ideas here…wouldn’t it be great if EVERY. SINGLE. STUDENT. could have their own IEP and their own TEAM of specialists — people who care about their learning?
What if each student could have their own cloud-based learner profile — a portion of which would be a series of VoiceThreads per student, per period of time (or per mastering a particular topic or area)? Such VoiceThreads could include multimedia-based comments, insights, and recommendations for how the student is doing and how they best learn. Through the years, those teams of people — people who care about that student’s learning — could help that student identify their:
- strengths
- weaknesses
- passions/interests
- their optimal learning strategies and preferences
- potential careers
The students could periodically review such feedback.
For every single student, we could build a history of feedback, helpful suggestions,
and recommendations via audio, video, text, graphics, etc.
On 01/31/2019,
in business, career development, collaboration, communications, computer science, corporate / business world, creativity, curriculum, education, engineering, ethics, global / globalization, higher education, ideas, K-12 related, leadership, marketplaces, morals/values, reinvent, relationships, society, staying relevant, STEAM-related, surviving, using teams, workplace,
by Daniel Christian
LinkedIn 2019 Talent Trends: Soft Skills, Transparency and Trust — from linkedin.com by Josh Bersin
Excerpts:
This week LinkedIn released its 2019 Global Talent Trends research, a study that summarizes job and hiring data across millions of people, and the results are quite interesting. (5,165 talent and managers responded, a big sample.)
In an era when automation, AI, and technology has become more pervasive, important (and frightening) than ever, the big issue companies face is about people: how we find and develop soft skills, how we create fairness and transparency, and how we make the workplace more flexible, humane, and honest.
…
The most interesting part of this research is a simple fact: in today’s world of software engineering and ever-more technology, it’s soft skills that employers want. 91% of companies cited this as an issue and 80% of companies are struggling to find better soft skills in the market.
What is a “soft skill?” The term goes back twenty years when we had “hard skills” (engineering and science) so we threw everything else into the category of “soft.” In reality soft skills are all the human skills we have in teamwork, leadership, collaboration, communication, creativity, and person to person service. It’s easy to “teach” hard skills, but soft skills must be “learned.”
Also see:
Employers Want ‘Uniquely Human Skills’ — from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser
Excerpt:
According to 502 hiring managers and 150 HR decision-makers, the top skills they’re hunting for among new hires are:
- The ability to listen (74 percent);
- Attention to detail and attentiveness (70 percent);
- Effective communication (69 percent);
- Critical thinking (67 percent);
- Strong interpersonal abilities (65 percent); and
- Being able to keep learning (65 percent).
On 01/23/2019,
in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Amazon, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business, career development, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, CMS/LMS, computer science, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, digital audio, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, interactivity, internet, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning spaces, lifelong learning, microlearning, mobile learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Near Field Communication (NFC), personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, smart classrooms, society, technologies for your home, tools, training / L&D, trends, TVs, United States, using teams, vendors, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, workplace,
by Daniel Christian
Amazon has 10,000 employees dedicated to Alexa — here are some of the areas they’re working on — from businessinsider.com by Avery Hartmans
Summary (emphasis DSC):
- Amazon’s vice president of Alexa, Steve Rabuchin, has confirmed that yes, there really are 10,000 Amazon employees working on Alexa and the Echo.
- Those employees are focused on things like machine learning and making Alexa more knowledgeable.
- Some employees are working on giving Alexa a personality, too.
From DSC:
How might this trend impact learning spaces? For example, I am interested in using voice to intuitively “drive” smart classroom control systems:
- “Alexa, turn on the projector”
- “Alexa, dim the lights by 50%”
- “Alexa, open Canvas and launch my Constitutional Law I class”
On 01/23/2019,
in colleges, community colleges, education, education technology, higher education, IT in HE, K-12 related, student-related, tools, United States, universities, vendors,
by Daniel Christian
EdGuards News: A helpful news resource about education and technology with a shift towards cybersecurity; with thanks to Amy Lynn for this resource and the item below as well
NOTE:
- EdGuards provides security scanning solutions and services for PeopleSoft, Ellucian, and other systems.
Also see:
- Higher Education Cyber Attacks History — from edguards.com (from June 15, 2018)
This article covers the most notorious cyber attacks performed on educational institutions from 2002 to 2018.
