Getting students ready for the gig economy — from gettingsmart.com by Emily Liebtag

Excerpt:

1) Finding a Passion and Making an Impact
Exploring passions, interests and causes that matter should be a part of every student’s education. Projects or several short-term gigs are a great way to help students reveal (or discover) their personal passions and to facilitate their interest explorations (all while still covering core content and standards). There are many students who already have opportunities to explore their passions during the regular school day through projects and are thriving as a result.

We’ve seen students at High Tech High create business plans and sell self-designed t-shirts, students at Thrive Public Schools engage in projects around kindness and empathy in their communities, and students at One Stone work with clients on advertising and marketing gigs, exploring their passions one project at a time.

Need ideas? Engage students in projects around the Sustainable Development Goals, snag an idea from the the PBL Q & A blog or simply ask students what they are curious about exploring in their community.

 

 

LinkedIn unveils the top skills that can get you hired in 2017

Excerpt:

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.

 

linkedin-topskills2016

 

 

linkedin-topskillsglobal2016

 

From DSC:
The need for people who have “IT”-related skills is consistent across the globe.

 

 

 

AI chatbot apps to infiltrate businesses sooner than you think — from searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com by Bridget Botelho
Artificial intelligence chatbots aren’t the norm yet, but within the next five years, there’s a good chance the sales person emailing you won’t be a person at all.

Excerpt:

In fact, artificial intelligence has come so far so fast in recent years, Gartner predicts it will be pervasive in all new products by 2020, with technologies including natural language capabilities, deep neural networks and conversational capabilities.

Other analysts share that expectation. Technologies that encompass the umbrella term artificial intelligence — including image recognition, machine learning, AI chatbots and speech recognition — will soon be ubiquitous in business applications as developers gain access to it through platforms such as the IBM Watson Conversation API and the Google Cloud Natural Language API.

 

 

3 corporate departments that chatbots will disrupt — from venturebeat.com by Natalie Lambert

Excerpt:

  1. Customer Service
  2. Human Resources
  3. Marketing

 

 

Facebook Messenger’s 11,000 chatbots are much more interactive — from androidcentral.com by Harish Jonnalagadda

Excerpt:

Facebook introduced chatbots on Messenger three months ago, and the search giant has shared today that over 11,000 bots are active on the messaging service. The Messenger Platform has picked up an update that adds a slew of new features to bots, such as a persistent menu that lists a bot’s commands, quick replies, ability to respond with GIFs, audio, video, and other files, and a rating system to provide feedback to bot developers.

 

 

Chatbots are coming to take over the world — from telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com

Excerpts:

In another example, many businesses use interactive voice response (IVR) telephony systems, which have limited functionalities and often provide a poor user experience. Chatbots can replace these applications in future where the user will interact naturally to get relevant information without following certain steps or waiting for a logical sequence to occur.

Chatbots are a good starting point, but the future lies in more advanced versions of audio and video bots. Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google with its voice assistance, are working in the same direction to achieve it. Bot ecosystems will become even more relevant in the phase of IoT mass adoption and improvement of input/output (I/O) technology.

 

 

With big players investing heavily in AI, Chatbots are likely to be an increasing feature of social media and other communications platforms.

 

 

Everything You Wanted to Know About Chatbots But Were Afraid to Ask — from businessinsider.com by Andrew Meola

Excerpt:

Chatbots are software programs that use messaging platforms as the interface to perform a wide variety of tasks—everything from scheduling a meeting to reporting the weather, to helping a customer buy a sweater.

Because texting is the heart of the mobile experience for smartphone users, chatbots are a natural way to turn something users are very familiar with into a rewarding service or marketing opportunity.

And when you consider that the top 4 messaging apps reach over 3 billion global users (MORE than the top 4 social networks), you can see that the opportunity is huge.

 

chatbotecosystem-businsider-sept2016

 

 

 

State-of-Content-Adobe-2016

 

Excerpt:

RULE #1: DESIGN FOR THE MULTISCREEN REALITY
Consumers are multiscreening more than ever before — optimize your content for it

  • On average, 83 percent of global consumers report they multiscreen, using 2.23 devices at the same time.

 

Design-Multiscreenreality-March2016

 

 

As attention spans shrink, 59 percent of consumers globally would rather engage with content that’s beautifully designed than simple — even when short on time.

 

 

More than half of consumers (57%) would prefer to watch videos on breaking news vs. read an article and 63 percent would rather skim several short stories than read deeper articles.

 

Globally, consumers use an average of 5 devices and 10 services

 

 

 

 

The North Face uses IBM’s Watson to make online shopping smarter — from thestreet.com by Rebecca Borison

Excerpt:

Aiming to solve one of e-commerce’s challenges of not offering personalized service, VF Corp’s “The North Face” on Monday launched a new online shopping tool using IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence system.

The tool, which is powered by Fluid and called XPS, guides a consumer through the online store to better find what he or she is looking for.

E-commerce today doesn’t generally give the personal attention a consumer might get when he walks into a store and is greeted by a human being. This new tool seeks to address that challenge.

 

NorthFace-Watson-Dec2015

 

 

Watch this robot solve a Rubik’s Cube in a world record 2.39 seconds — from singularityhub.com by Jason Dorrier

.

 

 

Novo Nordisk, IBM Watson Health to create ‘virtual doctor’ — from wsj.com by Denise Roland
Software could dispense treatment advice for diabetes patients

Excerpt:

Novo Nordisk A/S is teaming up with IBM Watson Health, a division of International Business Machines Corp., to create a “virtual doctor” for diabetes patients that could dispense treatment advice such as insulin dosage.

The Danish diabetes specialist hopes to use IBM’s supercomputer platform, Watson, to analyze health data from diabetes patients to help them manage their disease.

 

 

 

CES 2016: driverless cars and virtual reality to dominate at world’s biggest technology show — from mirror.co.uk
The world’s biggest technology showcase kicks off in Las Vegas on 6 January 2016. Here’s what we know about what will be happening at the Consumer Electronics Show

 

 

 

Build an automatic cookie decorating machine with LEGO Mindstorms — from lifehacker.com by Patrick Allan

Excerpt:

Decorating cookies by hand can be a pleasant activity, but with a LEGO Mindstorms set, you can crank out a bunch of perfectly iced cookies in no time at all.

 

 

World’s First Holographic Navigation System — from machinetomachinemagazine.com

Excerpt:

PARIS – The United States is the first commercial market to receive two innovative telematics devices that apply aerospace technology to land navigation. WayRay Navion is an augmented reality navigation system that projects holographic GPS imagery and driver notifications onto the windshield of a car, a first-of-its-kind for the automobile aftermarket. WayRay Element is a smart tracker that can be plugged into the diagnostics port of any automobile for monitoring driver performance, safety and fuel efficiency. The solutions arrive courtesy of WayRay, a Swiss startup dedicated to the advancement of connected car telematics, and Orange Business Services, a B2B global telecom operator and IT solutions integrator.

 

 

 

The hot products for holiday 2015: IBM Watson launches new app that can predict trends — from by Kimberly Whitler

Excerpt:

The holiday season—that favorite time of year for retailers and shoppers alike—is just around the corner.  And this year, IBM Watson is launching an app that provides shoppers with the ability to understand the top trends of the season and to predict which products are likely to sell out.

Distilling the sentiment of millions of online conversations across the internet (including social media sites, blogs, forums, ratings, reviews, etc.), the new Watson app (to download the free app, click here) goes beyond providing a static ranking of popular products to provide insight on how consumers feel about the products.

 

Also see:

 

IBMWatsonTrend-Nov2015

 

 

Addendum om 11/30/15:

 

From DSC:
Many times we don’t want to hear news that could be troubling in terms of our futures. But we need to deal with these trends now or face the destabilization that Harold Jarche mentions in his posting below. 

The topics found in the following items should be discussed in courses involving economics, business, political science, psychology, futurism, engineering, religion*, robotics, marketing, the law/legal affairs and others throughout the world.  These trends are massive and have enormous ramifications for our societies in the not-too-distant future.

* When I mention religion classes here, I’m thinking of questions such as :

  • What does God have in mind for the place of work in our lives?
    Is it good for us? If so, why or why not?
  • How might these trends impact one’s vocation/calling?
  • …and I’m sure that professors who teach faith/
    religion-related courses can think of other questions to pursue

 

turmoil and transition — from jarche.com by Harold Jarche

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

One of the greatest issues that will face Canada, and many developed countries in the next decade will be wealth distribution. While it does not currently appear to be a major problem, the disparity between rich and poor will increase. The main reason will be the emergence of a post-job economy. The ‘job’ was the way we redistributed wealth, making capitalists pay for the means of production and in return creating a middle class that could pay for mass produced goods. That period is almost over. From self-driving vehicles to algorithms replacing knowledge workers, employment is not keeping up with production. Value in the network era is accruing to the owners of the platforms, with companies such as Instagram reaching $1 billion valuations with only 13 employees.

The emerging economy of platform capitalism includes companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple. These giants combined do not employ as many people as General Motors did.  But the money accrued by them is enormous and remains in a few hands. The rest of the labour market has to find ways to cobble together a living income. Hence we see many people willing to drive for a company like Uber in order to increase cash-flow. But drivers for Uber have no career track. The platform owners get richer, but the drivers are limited by finite time. They can only drive so many hours per day, and without benefits. At the same time, those self-driving cars are poised to replace all Uber drivers in the near future. Standardized work, like driving a vehicle, has little future in a world of nano-bio-cogno-techno progress.

 

Value in the network era is accruing to the owners of the platforms, with companies such as Instagram reaching $1 billion valuations with only 13 employees.

 

For the past century, the job was the way we redistributed wealth and protected workers from the negative aspects of early capitalism. As the knowledge economy disappears, we need to re-think our concepts of work, income, employment, and most importantly education. If we do not find ways to help citizens lead productive lives, our society will face increasing destabilization. 

 

Also see:

Will artificial intelligence and robots take your marketing job? — from by markedu.com by
Technology will overtake jobs to an extent and at a rate we have not seen before. Artificial intelligence is threatening jobs even in service and knowledge intensive sectors. This begs the question: are robots threatening to take your marketing job?

Excerpt:

What exactly is a human job?
The benefits of artificial intelligence are obvious. Massive productivity gains while a new layer of personalized services from your computer – whether that is a burger robot or Dr. Watson. But artificial intelligence has a bias. Many jobs will be lost.

A few years ago a study from the University of Oxford got quite a bit of attention. The study said that 47 percent of the US labor market could be replaced by intelligent computers within the next 20 years.

The losers are a wide range of job categories within the administration, service, sales, transportation and manufacturing.

Before long we should – or must – redefine what exactly a human job is and the usefulness of it. How we as humans can best complement the extraordinary capabilities of artificial intelligence.

 

This development is expected to grow fast. There are different predictions about the timing, but by 2030 there will be very few tasks that only a human can solve.

 

 

Augmented Reality – hype, or the future? — from mybroadband.co.za by EE Publishers
The concept of Augmented Reality has existed for many years now – and commentators have remained rigidly sceptical about whether it will truly materialise in our everyday lives.

Excerpts:

Essentially, AR describes the way in which a device (such as a smartphone camera, wearables like Google Glasses, or a videogame motion sensor) uses an application to “see” the real world around us, and overlay augmented features onto that view.

These augmented features are aimed at adding value to the user’s experience of their physical environment.

We predict there will be three primary areas in which we will initially engage with AR:

The way we consume information: Imagine going to a library or museum and being able to have a “conversation” with key people throughout history, or instantly transform the world around to you resemble a bygone era.

The fields of product development, marketing and customer engagement: Overlaying new digital services into retail environments opens up a host of new possibilities for organisations to tailor products to their consumers.

Back office/operational functions within the organisation: Companies are already finding ways to use AR in their supply chain, logistics and warehousing environments. Find out, for example, if a particular unit is missing from a shelf.

 

 

From DSC:
I wonder how Machine-to-Machine communications, beacons, GPS, and more will come into play here…? The end result, I think is a connection between the physical world and the digital world:

 

DanielChristian-Combining-Digital-Physical-Worlds-Oct2014

 

 

World’s first open online MBA to be launched by MOOC platform Coursera — from by Seb Murray
The world’s first open digital MBA degree will be launched in a tie-up between Mooc maker Coursera and US b-school the University of Illinois.

Excerpt:

The world’s first open online MBA will launch in 2015 after a landmark decision from a top business school which is expected to pave the way for further digitization of the business degree and disrupt an already shaken education market.

The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign College of Business has received the seal of approval from its senate to launch the “iMBA”, in collaboration with Coursera, the $300 million-plus Silicon Valley start-up that produces MOOCs and has amassed nearly 13 million users.

 

Also see:

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign plans to start a low-cost online M.B.A. program in partnership with Coursera, the Silicon Valley-based MOOC provider, hoping to meet its land-grant mission of improving access and also to create a new stream of revenue at a time of shrinking state support for higher education.

Students enrolling in the new online master’s program, dubbed the iMBA, could complete the entire degree for about $20,000 — far less than the approximately $50,000 for the on-campus version or the $100,000 for the university’s executive M.B.A.

iMBA-May2015
 

Does Studying Fine Art = Unemployment? Introducing LinkedIn’s Field of Study Explorer — from LinkedIn.com by Kathy Hwang

Excerpt:

[On July 28, 2014], we are pleased to announce a new product – Field of Study Explorer – designed to help students like Candice explore the wide range of careers LinkedIn members have pursued based on what they studied in school.

So let’s explore the validity of this assumption: studying fine art = unemployment by looking at the careers of members who studied Fine & Studio Arts at Universities around the world. Are they all starving artists who live in their parents’ basements?

 

 

LinkedInDotCom-July2014-FieldofStudyExplorer

 

 

Also see:

The New Rankings? — from insidehighered.com by Charlie Tyson

Excerpt:

Who majored in Slovak language and literature? At least 14 IBM employees, according to LinkedIn.

Late last month LinkedIn unveiled a “field of study explorer.” Enter a field of study – even one as obscure in the U.S. as Slovak – and you’ll see which companies Slovak majors on LinkedIn work for, which fields they work in and where they went to college. You can also search by college, by industry and by location. You can winnow down, if you desire, to find the employee who majored in Slovak at the Open University and worked in Britain after graduation.

 

 
 
 

The Future of iBeacon: Trends for the Year Ahead — from beekn.net guest post by Stefan Wolpers

Excerpt:

Beacons will become a hardware commodity within the next 6 to 12 months:

 

 

Best of Beacons – Weekly Wrap Up for May 9 — from storify.com/jason_smith by Jason Smith, OHO Interactive
Great to see some new launches and some very interesting patent news from Apple. The Cisco Report on In Store experiences came out earlier but the data is very good.

 

 

Also see:

 

 

beaconsstefan-wolpers-2014

 

 

 

A TV app from Disney lets travelers browse its vacation offerings — from nytimes.com by Jane Levere

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

A SMART TV app being introduced by Walt Disney Parks and Resorts on Thursday will let potential travelers use their remote controls to research vacations at theme parks and hotels and on cruise ships and packaged tours.

Brad Baker, director of digital marketing for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, said the advent of smart, or Internet-connected, TVs had created “a really interesting space for us, since there is now a new way for us to be able to tell our story.”

 

Some mentioned functionality:

  • Aggregates videos, photographs, interactive theme park maps and other information from the websites of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts businesses and from their social media channels.
  • Has a trivia quiz
  • Some videos
  • Lets viewers request additional information by submitting their email address

 

 

From DSC:
The items below speak to the wonderful, powerful world of storytelling.  I see storytelling becoming more interactive/participatory — offering more choice and more control to the viewers.  There are applications in education, training, marketing, advertising, and more.  Finally, I’ve also included some interesting tools/sites for folks to create their own digitally-based stories. 


 

How storytelling can do wonders in blogging — by Kumail Hemani

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Why then was my history class one of the best classes I had? We never had to learn by heart any of the history notes in spite of all the dates, events, places and names. What we heard in that class got imprinted in our mind word by word as soon as they reached my ears.

Reason?

It was in the art of my teacher’s style of speaking and style of lectures. She never took our lessons as lectures, instead she choose to tell them through stories.

My teacher knew the art of true speaking. She spoke in such a style that we students felt everything happening around us. The lectures used to start forming an image in students mind, creating a flow, making everything seem like it is happening in the present. In such style of lectures, it only took us moments before everything made an impact on us and we understood everything word by word.

 

5 apps for making movies on mobile devices — from edutopia.org by Monica Burns

Excerpt:

Every year at Hollywood award shows, we see fantastic movies celebrated for their rich storytelling and dynamic performances. Your students can become moviemakers, too, thanks to some powerful apps for mobile devices. With these tools, your children can take videos and edit their work to make professional quality movies using iOS devices (iPads and iPhones) and Android tablets.

One good thing about this easy-to-use technology is that students can still use important English language arts skills like writing a narrative, planning a sequential story, and including key details when getting ready to make a movie. These apps can enhance the work that you are doing with children in the classroom and give them room to be creative storytellers.

 

Visual storytelling: Why data visualization is a content marketing fairytale — from searchenginejournal.com by Shane Jones

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Humans are scientifically designed to love stories.
More of our brain is engaged when we listen to stories. They cause our neurons to act as if we were actually doing the actions we hear in the story. Stories also have that human element we were talking about earlier, which makes them more entertaining and engaging.

If you do it right, you can use your data to tell the human story – and how it can be improved through the use of your product or service. In fact, the best content visuals do just that. They introduce viewers to a concept or situation (the problem you address), walk them through the main information about that concept or situation (how you’ll address it), and then provide a conclusion in the form of CTA (converting).

In summary, people are interested in learning about themselves, but they’re sick of learning through plain copy, and they’re programmed to desire visual content that tells a tale. Visualizing data is an effective strategy for giving them exactly what they want – information that is more visible and less difficult to digest.

 

Crowdsourced storytelling: How can you make the most of user-generated content? — from latd.com by Kim Gaskins

Excerpt:

Connect with people on an emotional level.
This may sound obvious, but there are countless ways to frame a particular project or issue to people you’re hoping to entice—so make sure to think like a good marketer. For example, Israel Mirsky is the founder of Uncoverage, a crowd-funding platform for investigative journalism, who has decided to focus his message on the issues that are most emotionally accessible to his audience. There’s a compelling business case backing Mirsky’s efforts; namely, there’s no longer any business model to support important but resource-intensive journalism that may bring in fewer advertising dollars than simple, click-worthy headlines. It’s a powerful argument, but it’s not the one Mirsky is taking to potential contributors: “I suspect that talking about the problem with investigative journalism isn’t the right value proposition to bring to the table here. The right one is the one that individuals care about: the people and the issues that matter to them.”

 

latitude-March2014

 

 

6 great examples of digital storytelling — from 8ms.com by Simon Heyes

Excerpt:

In the socially connected world, the attention span of an audience becomes shorter as more and more mundane content is thrust in front of their eyes. Digital storytelling allows a brand to evoke emotion, and become more connected with consumers.

If content is at the heart of digital marketing, then we believe audiences are at the heart of digital storytelling. By creating a story that is authentic to your brand and to your audience, and then building content around that story, you will connect your brand to the lives of your consumers.

Here are six handpicked examples where we believe great writing is combined with great imagery to create authentic content, and a brilliant digital story.

 

5 steps for successful transmedia storytelling — from 8ms.com by Simon Heyes

 

5tipstransmediastorytelling

 

 


From DSC:
I see storytelling becoming more interactive/participatory — offering more choice and more control to the viewers.  As such, here are some interesting tools/sites:


 

Interlude

interlude-March2014

 

inklewriter

inkle-March2014

 

Padcaster

Padcaster-March2014

 

Voicethread

Voicethread-March2014

 

Racontr.com

racontr-March2014

 

TouchCast

TouchCast-in-Education3

 

Metta

metta-March2014

 

Hapyak

hapyak-March2014

 


Also see:


 

5 reasons why you should be using storytelling in training — from dashe.com by Ben Nesvig

Excerpt:

Storytelling has been a popular tool for learning since the dawn of civilization, but thanks to technology bringing new mediums for storytelling, it has been on the rise in training in the workplace. Despite the fact that storytelling is a powerful vehicle for teaching, some still prefer to do a “data dump” because it’s easier than constructing a narrative, though not more effective. Below I provide 5 reasons why storytelling should be used more frequently in the workplace.

 

Digital storytelling: an efficient and engaging learning activity — from elearningindustry.com

 

 Storehouse
“The easiest way to create, share, and discover beautiful stories.”

 

 
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