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.
If you’ve ever wanted to try out the Amazon Echo before shelling out for one, you can now do just that right from your browser. Amazon has launched a dedicated website where you can try out an Echo simulation and put Alexa’s myriad of skills to the test.
From DSC: The use of the voice and gesture to communicate to some type of computing device or software program represent growing types of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). With the growth of artificial intelligence (AI), personal assistants, and bots, we should expect to see more voice recognition services/capabilities baked into an increasing amount of products and solutions in the future.
Given these trends, personnel working within K-12 and higher ed need to start building their knowledgebases now so that we can begin offering more courses in the near future to help students build their skillsets. Current user experience designers, interface designers, programmers, graphic designers, and others will also need to augment their skillsets.
Amazon’s $180 Echo and the new Google Home (due out later this year) promise voice-activated assistants that order groceries, check calendars and perform sundry tasks of your everyday life. Now, with a little initiative and some online instructions, you can build the devices yourself for a fraction of the cost. And that’s just fine with the tech giants.
At this weekend’s Bay Area Maker Faire, Arduino, an open-source electronics manufacturer, announced new hardware “boards”—bundles of microprocessors, sensors, and ports—that will ship with voice and gesture capabilities, along with wifi and bluetooth connectivity. By plugging them into the free voice-recognition services offered by Google’s Cloud Speech API and Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service, anyone can access world-class natural language processing power, and tap into the benefits those companies are touting. Amazon has even released its own blueprint and code repository to build a $60 version of its Echo using Raspberry Pi, another piece of open-source hardware.
From DSC: Perhaps this type of endeavor could find its way into some project-based learning out there, as well as in:
Simulators are an important part of their education. Stepping into one of three full-mission bridge simulators replicates the experience of standing in an ocean liner’s pilothouse and lets students practice their skills in handling a ship — without risk.
“In the simulator, you can push the limits of the environment: increase the amount of current that’s there, go to the limits of the amount of wind that can be handled by the tugs,” says Capt. Victor Schisler, one of Cal Maritime’s simulator instructors.
Oculus has announced a new pilot program for high school students to use virtual reality as a tool for social change.
As part of the VR for Good initiative, the 360 Filmmaker Challenge will connect nine San Francisco Bay Area high schools with professional filmmakers to create three- to five- minute 360 degree films about their communities. Students will receive a Samsung Gear VR, a Galaxy S6, Ricoh Theta S 360 cameras and access to editing software to make their films, according to Oculus.
Interested in watching the 2015 hit film The Martian from the surface of the moon? Adobe wants you to take you there.
Adobe isn’t entering the latest next-generation space race to compete with SpaceX, Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic anytime soon. But it is for the first time entering the worlds of virtual reality and augmented reality through new Adobe Primetime products.
[On May 17th] Adobe debuted Virtual Cinema, a feature that will allow Primetime clients to develop experiences for users to enter a virtual environment. According to Adobe, users will be able to view traditional video in a custom environment—a cinema, home theater or branded atmosphere—and watch existing TV and motion picture content in a new way. There’s also potential for product placement within the virtual/augmented reality experience.
While the technology world’s attention is on virtual reality, a team of researchers at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is fixated on another way to experience the world — augmented reality (AR).
Microsoft’s forthcoming AR headset, HoloLens, is at the forefront of this technology. The company calls it the first holographic computer. In AR, instead of being surrounded by a virtual world, viewers see virtual objects projected on top of reality through a transparent lens.
CWRU was among the first in higher education to begin working with HoloLens, back in 2014. They’ve since discovered new ways the tech could help transform education. One of their current focuses is changing how students experience medical-science courses.
Follow these steps to record or stream mixed reality footage with the HTC Vive
A mixed reality video is one of the coolest ways to show people what a virtual environment feels like. A green screen makes it easy for a VR-ready PC to automatically remove everything from a camera’s feed, except for your body movements. Those movements are then seamlessly combined with a view from another camera in a virtual environment. As long as the two cameras are synced, you can seamlessly combine views of two realities into a single video. In essence, mixed reality capture is doing what Hollywood or your weatherman has been doing for years, except at a fraction of the cost and in real-time. The end result is almost magical.
From curriculum to career with cognitive systems
Data-driven cognitive technologies will enable personalised education and improve outcomes for students, educators and administrators. Ultimately, education experiences will be transformed and improved when data can accompany the students throughout their life-long learning journey.
In this research, we explore how educators are using digital education services to deliver personalised programs. Through inputs from a series of in-depth interviews, surveys and social listening, we paint a picture of how the world of work and learning might evolve over the next forty years.
Per Jack Du Mez at Calvin College, use this app to randomly call on your students — while instilling a game-like environment into your active learning classroom (ALC)!
Description:
Randomly is an app made specifically for teachers and professors. It allows educators to enter their students into individual classes. They can then use the Random Name Selector feature to randomly call on a student to answer a question by one of two ways: Truly random, where repeated names are allowed, or a one pass – where all students are called once before they are called again. The device you’re using will even call out (vocally) the student’s name for you!
This app can also be used to randomly generate groups for you. You can split your class into groups by number of groups or by number of students per group. It intelligently knows what to do with any remaining students too!
This app supports Apple Watch, so you can call on your students with the use of your Apple Watch!
From DSC: In the future, given facial and voice recognition software, I could see an Augmented Reality (AR)-based application whereby a faculty member or a teacher could see icons hovering over the students — letting the faculty member/teacher know who has been called upon recently and who hasn’t been called upon recently (with settings to change the length of time for this type of tracking — i.e., this student has been called upon in this class session, or in the last week, or in the last month, etc.).
Inspired2Educate is a national recognition program that encourages current K-20 educators to honor the teachers or administrators who inspired them to embrace education as their life’s work. Educators can share their story with PeopleAdmin for a chance to win $2,000.
Educators can tell their stories either via videos or via a written format and each month PeopleAdmin will award one person with $1,000 for professional development and $1,000 for their educational institution.
Cookie Monster, Elmo and friends are about to hit a new digital learning curve.
Sesame Workshop, the not-for-profit org that produces “Sesame Street,” and tech giant IBM have entered into a partnership to develop new personalized educational products and platforms for preschool-age kids — with the goal of transforming the ways children learn and teachers teach.
Under the three-year agreement, Sesame Workshop and Big Blue will design interactive educational experiences for use in homes and schools that adapt to the learning preferences and aptitude levels of individual preschoolers.
For now, the organizations are treating the project as an R&D investment. IBM and Sesame Street will deploy engineers, educators and researchers to work side-by-side in classrooms and in their own labs and learning facilities. Later this year, they plan to test and share prototypes with leading teachers, academics, researchers, technologists, gamers, performers and media execs to solicit feedback and brainstorm ways in which cognitive computing can best help preschoolers learn.
From DSC: This will be an important experiment to watch. If it shows promise, it could help parents, pre-school teachers, and the pre-schoolers themselves. Then, the trajectory could make its way to helping early elementary students, to middle school students, to high school students and beyond.
If successful, this is exactly the sort of thing that I could see as one of the key ingredients in the Learning from the [Class] Room vision. Teachers, parents, coaches, etc. will still be critical. But these type of tools and technologies could be running in the background within a blended learning environment — one that can operate at a distance if need be.
The proverb goes hindsight is 20/20, which essentially means you can make better decisions later on when you have become more knowledgeable about the world. But wouldn’t it be nice to be able to make good decisions from the outset when you’re still young? The following tips were compiled for young engineers and interestingly, most of these suggestions revolve around lifelong learning. Experienced engineers weighed in and added their voice to help create this top 15 list of the best tips for young engineers.
It is not a secret that science and engineering professions are occupied mainly by men with only about 20% taken by females. The number of women on executive boards is also extremely low. In order to succeed, both female and male minds are needed for any kind of jobs, especially in science-related industries. Let’s see what initiatives already exist in order to bring more girls and women into STEM!
MakerBot is excited to inspire the next generation of astronauts and Starfleet cadets by supporting the Star Trek Replicator Challenge, a 3D printing challenge developed by Future Engineers for the ASME Foundation, NASA and Star Trek. Participants in the challenge must create a digital model of a non-edible, food-related item for astronauts to 3D print in the year 2050. The Star Trek Replicator Challenge is the third in a series of ‘Future Engineers’ challenges aimed to educate students K-12 about 3D printing and engineering design.
Staring at a blank page can be daunting. Add a reluctant writer to the mix, and what should be a great opportunity for personal expression becomes a personal nightmare. These 4 apps will strengthen students’ writing skills and turn written composition from a chore into an engaging learning activity.
Below is a collection of some very good iPad apps to use with your kids and young learners to help them develop their reading fluency. The apps provide a wide variety of reading materials that include interactive stories, engaging activities and games, quizzes and many more. And because reading is a composite skill, using these apps will also enable kids to practice a number of key subskills related to reading including: pronunciation, vocabulary, phonics, word recognition, and spelling. Check them out and share with us your feedback. Enjoy.
Microsoft has announced beta testing of Minecraft: Education Edition, which is the company’s education-focused suite for Minecraft that integrates tools for teachers and students to help them use the game more effectively in the classroom.
The education-centered offshoot of was first revealed in January of this year. This May, a closed beta of the game will involve more than 100 schools in 30 countries, reports Pradeep of MS Power User. By June, any school will be able to access the Education Edition for free as long as teachers have a fully updated operating system and an Office 365 Education account. Eventually, Microsoft plans to charge $5 per user each year.
Minecraft: Education Edition is specifically tailored to teach the skills that Minecraft cultivates – namely collaboration, navigation, social skills, and empathy.
High school students take note: here’s a cool tool in the form of an app. The free app runs on iOS and Android and just got launched last month pulling almost 5 out of 5 stars after several thousand reviews. For the 20 million college-bound students and 30 million parents, we know you’re drowning in a sea of data scattered all over for the more than 4,000 U.S. colleges and universities. So, Schoold is like Zillow for college hunting – or perhaps match.com for students and universities. It’s a one-stop-shop for everything you need to know, want to know, and have to line up.
Reading comprehension is a matter of decoding, reading speed, and critical thinking about the text, all of which can improve with tiered practice. (See 50 apps for struggling readers.)
So below, in an order of general complexity, are 15 apps for improved reading comprehension, ranging from word and sentence fluency, to recall, to critical thinking skills, to reading speed.
By the nature of reading and literacy progress, most are indeed for K-5 and SLP, but the latter apps, especially Reading Trainer, Compare Twist, and Enchanted Dictionary, can be used through high school in the right context. Let us know on our facebook page what we missed.
The 5 best new 3D tools for April— from creativebloq.com by Rob Redman
We select the best new tools for 3D and VFX artists this month.
Excerpt:
This time of year can often be a quiet one for those of us working in 3D art and visual effects, with developers gearing up for the events season and new releases being a bit thin on the ground.
However there are a few notable updates and newcomers, so have a read below to see what could help you improve your work or help you be more efficient.
By William J. Hussar, National Center for Education Statistics
and Tabitha M. Bailey, IHS Global Inc.
Description:
This publication provides projections for key education statistics. It includes statistics on enrollment, graduates, teachers, and expenditures in elementary and secondary schools, and enrollment and earned degrees conferred expenditures of degree-granting institutions. For the Nation, the tables, figures, and text contain data on enrollment, teachers, graduates, and expenditures for the past 14 years and projections to the year 2023. For the 50 States and the District of Columbia, the tables, figures, and text contain data on projections of public elementary and secondary enrollment and public high school graduates to the year 2023. In addition, the report includes a methodology section describing models and assumptions used to develop national and state-level projections.
An idea/question from DSC: Looking at the article below, I wonder…“Why can’t the ‘One Day University‘ come directly into your living room — 24×7?”
This is why I’m so excited about the “The Living [Class] Room” vision. Because it is through that vision that people of all ages — and from all over the world — will be able to constantly learn, grow, and reinvent themselves (if need be) throughout their lifetimes. They’ll be able to access and share content, communicate and discuss/debate with one another, form communities of practice, go through digital learning playlists (likeLynda.com’s Learning Paths) and more. All from devices that represent the convergence of the television, the telephone, and the computer (and likely converging with the types of devices that are only now coming into view, such as Microsoft’s Hololens).
You won’t just be limited to going back to college for a day — you’ll be able to do that 24×7 for as many days of the year as you want to.
Then when some sophisticated technologies are integrated into this type of platform — such as artificial intelligence, cloud-based learner profiles, algorithms, and the ability to setup exchanges for learning materials — we’ll get some things that will blow our minds in the not too distant future! Heutagogy on steroids!
Have you ever thought about how nice it would be if you could go back to college, just for the sake of learning something new, in a field you don’t know much about, with no tests, homework or studying to worry about? And you won’t need to take the SAT or the ACT to be accepted? You can, at least for a day, with something called One Day University, the brainchild of a man named Steve Schragis, who about a decade ago brought his daughter to Bard College as a freshman and thought that he wanted to stay.
One Day University now financially partners with dozens of newspapers — including The Washington Post — and a few other organizations to bring lectures to people around the country. The vast majority of the attendees are over the age 50 and interested in continuing education, and One Day University offers them only those professors identified by college students as fascinating. As Schragis says, it doesn’t matter if you are famous; you have to be a great teacher. For example, Schragis says that since Bill Gates has never shown to be one, he can’t teach at One Day University.
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We bring together these professors, usually four at at a time, to cities across the country to create “The Perfect Day of College.” Of course we leave out the homework, exams, and studying! Best if there’s real variety, both male and female profs, four different schools, four different subjects, four different styles, etc. There’s no one single way to be a great professor. We like to show multiple ways to our students.
Most popular classes are history, psychology, music, politics, and film. Least favorite are math and science.
We know the shelf-life of skills are getting shorter and shorter. So whether it’s to brush up on new skills or it’s to stay on top of evolving ones, Lynda.com can help you stay ahead of the latest technologies.
We first launched support for 360-degree videos back in March 2015. From musicians to athletes to brands, creators have done some incredible things with this technology. Now, they’ll be able to do even more to bring fans directly into their world, with 360-degree live streaming. And after years of live streaming Coachella for fans around the world who can’t attend the festival, this year we’re bringing you the festival like never before by live streaming select artist performances in 360 degrees this weekend. Starting today, we’re also launching spatial audio for on-demand YouTube videos. Just as watching a concert in 360 degrees can give you an unmatched immersive experience, spatial audio allows you to listen along as you do in real life, where depth, distance and intensity all play a role. Try out this playlist on your Android device.
CWRU was among the first in higher education to begin working with HoloLens, back in 2014. They’ve since discovered new ways the tech could help transform education. One of their current focuses is changing how students experience medical-science courses.
“This is a curriculum that hasn’t drastically changed in more than 100 years, because there simply hasn’t been another way,” says Mark Griswold, the faculty director for HoloLens at CWRU. “The mixed-reality of the HoloLens has the potential to revolutionize this education by bringing 3D content into the real world.”
“Imagine a physics class where you’re able to show how friction works. Imagine being able to experience gravity on Mars — by moving around virtually,” he says. “VR can make science, technology and art come alive.”
VR will soon become an open canvas for educators to create learning experiences. Eventually, fitting VR into the curriculum will be limited only by an instructor’s imagination and budget, says Christopher Sessums, the program director of research and evaluation at Johns Hopkins School of Education.
Burleson and and co-author Armanda Lewis imagine such technology in a year 2041 Holodeck, which Burleson’s NYU-X Lab is currently developing in prototype form, in collaboration with colleagues at NYU Courant, Tandon, Steinhardt, and Tisch.
“The “Holodeck” will support a broad range of transdisciplinary collaborations, integrated education, research, and innovation by providing a networked software/hardware infrastructure that can synthesize visual, audio, physical, social, and societal components,” said Burleson.
It’s intended as a model for the future of cyberlearning experience, integrating visual, audio, and physical (haptics, objects, real-time fabrication) components, with shared computation, integrated distributed data, immersive visualization, and social interaction to make possible large-scale synthesis of learning, research, and innovation.
…British television presenter Diane-Louise Jordan will guide students on a tour through Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, including his childhood home and school; and the bard’s view of London, including the famous Globe Theatre where his plays were performed. (Shakespeare actually died April 23, which this year falls on a Saturday.)
Also see:
You can register to see the recording on that page as well.
Film Students To Compete in Virtual Reality Production Contest — from campustechnology.com by Michael Hart One of the first ever competitions involving virtual reality production will challenge college film students to create their own 360-degree films.
HBO and Discovery Communications announced today that they are partnering with 3D-graphics startup OTOY — both companies taking equity stakes. The partnership marks an effort by the two networks to evolve entertainment experiences beyond two dimensional television. Virtual reality, augmented reality, and even holograms were all highlighted as areas OTOY would help its traditional media partners explore.
TV knows it must push toward virtual and augmented reality
Apple was granted a patent today for a type of live interactive augmented reality (AR) video to be used in future iOS devices, indicating the company may soon enter the AR/VR game. The patent does not appear to be directly related to an AR/VR headset, but is certainly a step in that direction.
The patent describes Apple’s planned augmented reality technology as layered, live AR video that users can interact with via touchscreen. In the live video, objects can be identified and an information layer can be generated for them.
“In some implementations,” the patent text notes, “the information layer can include annotations made by a user through the touch sensitive surface.”
Virtual & Augmented Reality: Blooloop’s Guide to VR and AR — from blooloop.com Visitor attractions are racing to embrace Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies. But what are the potential opportunities and possible pitfalls of VR and AR?
From DSC: Let’s take some of the same powerful concepts (as mentioned below) into the living room; then let’s talk about learning-related applications.
MightyTV, which has raised more than $2 million in venture funding to date, launched today with a former Google exec at the helm. The startup’s technology incorporates machine learning with computer-generated recommendations in what is being touted as a “major step up” from other static list-making apps.
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In this age of Roku and Apple TV, viewers can choose what to watch via the apps they’ve downloaded. MightyTV curates those programs — shows, movies and YouTube videos — into one app without constantly switching between Amazon, HBO, Netflix or Hulu.
…
Among the features included on MightyTV are:
* A Tinder-like interface that allows users to swipe through content, allowing the service to learn what you’d like to watch * An organizer tool that lists content via price range * A discovery tool to see what friends are watching * Allows for group viewings and binge watching
From DSC: What if your Apple TV could provide these sorts of functionalities for services and applications that are meant for K-12 education, higher education, and/or corporate training and development?
Instead of Amazon, HBO, Netflix or Hulu — what if the interface would present you with a series of learning modules, MOOCs, and/or courses from colleges and universities that had strong programs in the area(s) that you wanted to learn about?
That is, what if a tvOS-based system could learn more about you and what you are trying to learn about? It could draw upon IBM Watson-like functionality to provide you with a constantly morphing, up-to-date recommendation list of modules that you should look at. Think microlearning. Reinventing oneself. Responding to the exponential pace of change. Pursuing one’s passions. More choice/more control. Lifelong learning. Staying relevant. Surviving.
…all from a convenient, accessible room in your home…your living room.
A cloud-based marketplace…matching learners with providers.
Now tie those concepts in with where LinkedIn.com and Lynda.com are going and how people will get jobs in the future.
April 12, 2016 — Mountain View, CA—BlueJeans Network, the global leader in cloud-based video communication services, today unveiled the Enterprise Video Cloud, a comprehensive platform built for today’s globally distributed, modern workforce with video communications at the core. New global research shows that 85% of employees are already using video in the workplace and 72% believe that video will transform the way they communicate at work.
“There is a transformation happening among business today – face-to-face video is quickly rising as the preferred communications medium, offering new opportunities for deeper personal relations and outreach, as well as for improved internal and external collaboration,” said Krish Ramakrishnan, CEO of BlueJeans. “Once people experience the power of video, they ‘hang-up’ on traditional conference calling. We are seeing this happen with the emergence of video cultures that power the most innovative cultures—from Facebook and Netflix to Viacom and Del Monte.”
From DSC: I wonder if we’ll see video communication vendors such asBlueJeans orThe Video Call Centermerge with vendors likeBluescape,Mezzanine, orT1Vwith their collaboration tools. If so, some serious collaboration could all happen…again, right from within your living room!
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