Practical ideas for using augmented reality in contextual mobile learning — from blog.commlabindia.com by Aruna Vayuvegula

Excerpt:

Using Augmented Reality for contextual mLearning sounds too futuristic – a phenomenon that is being experimented in universities and research centers across the world. Wikipedia defines Augmented reality (AR) as a live, copy, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is rather hard for a non-technical person to perceive the implication of this definition in a learning situation.

However, when you come across a report that says

  • 864 million high-end cell phones could be AR enabled in 2014,
  • 103 million automobiles will have AR technology by 2020, (Ref: Semico)

You can’t ignore Augmented Reality (AR). You need to stop, to understand what it all means. That’s when I came across an article by Jason Haag, who spoke at DevLearn 13 on Augmented Reality in mobile learning. Published at Advanced Distributed Learning website, it lists some cool examples in the form of videos about AR in action. The video from the link given below is one of them; it truly helped me conceive the idea of AR in a learning context.

 

AR Music APP Enchantium by DAQRI — from realareal.com by Kiran Voleti

Excerpt:

In the 21st century classroom: Students can see the shape of knowledge, Students can hear the shape of knowledge, students can TOUCH the shape of knowledge.

 

Zientia: Changing the Way We Learn with Augmented Reality — from realareal.com by Kiran Voleti

 

AR-in-learning

 

AR-in-learning2

 

Enchantium is a 4D platform that uses augmented reality — from realareal.com by Kiran Voleti

Excerpt:

Discover a New Dimension of Play™ in a magical world of curated, kid-safe content where play sets can come to life and toys can talk, interact and learn new things.

Toys Become Enchanted

So much more than an app, Enchantium is a 4D platform that uses augmented reality and cutting edge technology to connect games and toys with interactive experiences.

 

Shift2020

 

Excerpt:

An 80 page eBook, paperback or hardcover photobook including insights, quotes and articles from industry leaders on the future of mobile technology and how it can change our world.

In addition to most of the original Mobile Trends 2020 contributors, the content is now extended with contributions of some 50 new experts from around the globe who are prominent futurists and trend-predictors and industry leaders.

 

The connected TV landscape: Why smart TVs and streaming gadgets are conquering the living room

The connected TV landscape: Why smart TVs and streaming gadgets are conquering the living room — from businessinsider.com.au by Mark Hoelzel

 

In the connected TV world, an app is analogous to a TV channel.

 

Some key points:

  • In total, there will be more than 759 million televisions connected to the Internet worldwide by 2018, more than doubling from 307.4 million at year-end 2013.
  • Globally, shipments of smart TVs will reach a tipping point in 2015, when they will overtake shipments of traditional TVs.
  • Two tendencies dominate the connected TV ecosystem: closed and open approaches.
  • Despite platform fragmentation, HTML5 offers at least a faint hope for increased unification between connected TVs, just as it does on mobile.
  • How will developers and operating system operators monetise smart TV apps? Media downloads, subscriptions and — to a much lesser degree — advertisements will drive the dollars. Smart TV platform operators have begun experimenting with ads.

 

GlobalNumberOfConnectedTVs

 

 

From DSC:
If in a connected TV world, an app is analogous to a TV channel…then I say let’s bring on the educationally-related, interactive, multimedia-based apps!

 

The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

 

From DSC:
I see the following items in the classrooms/learning spaces/”learning hubs” of the future:

  • iBeacon-like technology, quickly connecting the physical world with the online world (i.e. keep an eye on the Internet of Things/Everything  in the classroom); this may take place via wearable technology or via some other means of triggering events
  • Remote presence
  • Access to Artifical Intelligence (AI)-based resources
  • Greatly enhanced Human Computer Interactions (HCI) such as gesture-based interactions as well as voice and facial recognition
  • Interactive walls
  • BYOD baked into almost everything (requiring a robust networking infrastructure)
  • More makerspaces (see below for examples)
  • Tables and chairs (all furniture really) are on wheels to facilitate room configuration changes
  • Setups that facilitate collaborative/group work

 

 


Below are some other recent items on this topic:


 

To Inspire Learning, Architects Reimagine Learning Spaces — from MindShift by Allison Arieff

 

MakerLab_web

Excerpt:

As K–12 schools refocus on team-based, interdisciplinary learning, they are moving away from standardized, teach-to-test programs that assume a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching. Instead, there is a growing awareness that students learn in a variety of ways, and the differences should be supported. The students often learn better by doing it themselves, so teachers are there to facilitate, not just to instruct. Technology is there as a tool and resource, not as a visual aid or talking head.

 

 

3D printers and laser cutters?… it’s the classroom of the future — from standard.co.uk by Miranda Bryant

 

 

Rethinking our learning spaces — from rtschuetz.blogspot.com by Robert Schuetz

 

ClassroomMoveableFurnitureITESMCCM 02
CC Wikimedia – Thelmadatter

Excerpt:

Heutagogy, unlike pedagogy, focuses on self-directed learning. As learning and education become more heutaogical, shouldn’t our learning spaces accommodate this shift? What are the features and characteristics that define a modern learning space? Notice, that I have not used the word classroom. Several days of researching this topic has challenged my thinking on the concept of classroom. This verbiage has been replaced with terms like; ideation lab, innovation space, maker pods, gamer zone, and learning sector. The concept of specific learning zones is not new.

 

Transmedia Storytelling: Trends for 2014 —  from Robert Pratten, CEO  at Transmedia Storyteller Ltd on Dec 06, 2013

Excerpt:

Pratten-TransmediaStorytellingIn2014

 

Conducttr-Jan2014

 

From DSC:
Something here for education/learning? With the creativity, innovation, interactivity, participation, and opportunities for more choice/more control being offered here, I would say YES!

 

 

Also see:

 

 

 
 

The year ahead: ten amazing science and technology innovations coming up in 2014 — from telegraph.co.uk by Paul Kendall and Chris Bell
From the world’s largest underground hotel to Star Wars-style holographic communication, the coming year is set to unveil an array of incredible advances in science and technology

 

Leia display system

 

Former Windows leader Steven Sinofsky presents 10 Mega Trends in Tech for 2014 — from businessinsider.com by Jay Yarow; via Graeme Codrington (@FuturistGraeme) and Laura Goodrich (@LauraGoodrich)

 

Top Technology Trends for 2014  — from computer.org
Excerpt:

Supporting New Learning Styles
Online courses demand seamless, ubiquitous approach.

These days, students from all corners of the world can sign up for online classes to study everything from computer science, digital signal processing, and machine learning to European history, psychology, and astronomy–and all for free. As interest in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) continues to explode, there will be a corresponding need for technology to support these new learning systems and styles. Platforms such as Coursera, with more than 3 million users and 107 partners; and edX, a partnership between Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University with 1.7 million users; are hosting classes with thousands of online enrollees each. And although lectures are still the mainstay of MOOCs, the classes require web forums, online meetups, and keystroke loggers to check identities, as well as powerful servers to handle the volumes. MOOCs and other new online classes are creating a demand for learning that is seamless—happening continuously via different technologies; ubiquitous—drawing from pervasive and embedded technologies; and contextual—drawing awareness from location-based and other sensor-based technologies.

 

5 Higher-Education Trends for 2014 — from theatlantic.com by Sophie Quinton
Expect an increased emphasis on teacher effectiveness, technical education, and more.

Headings include:

  • Earning College Credit for What You Know
  • Career and Technical Education
  • Student-Loan Outrage
  • Data-Privacy Concerns
  • Teacher Effectiveness

 

Special Report: 2014 Top Tech to Watch — from spectrum.ieee.org

 

IEEE-TopTechToWatchIn2014

 

 

NMC Horizon Report — 2014 Higher Education Preview

 

NMCHorizonPreview2014

 

JWT’s 100 things to watch in 2014

 

JWT-100ThingsToWatchIn2014

 

IBM internal experts club together to offer 2014 predictions — from siliconangle.com by  Bert Latamore

Headings include:

  • Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Skills

 

2014 Technology Predictions Series: RadiumOne on Mobile — from siliconangle.com by Suzanne Kattau

 

Internet of Things may strangle enterprise bandwidth — from informationweek.comby Deepak Kumar
The Internet of Things is poised to bring a flood of WAN traffic and new Internet-enabled devices to enterprise WANs. Be sure your corporate network is ready for it.

 

7 things you should expect from your leaders in 2014 — from forbes.com by Glenn Llopis

 

10 Jobs for tomorrow that barely exist today (Infographic) — from jobmarketmonitor.com by Michel Cournoyer and Thomas Frey

 

Addendum on 1/4/14:

 

skills for tomorrow

 

From DSC:
First some recent/relevant postings:



IFTTT’s ingenious new feature: Controlling apps with your location
— from wired.com by Kyle VanHemert

 

An update to the IFTTT app lets you use your location in recipes. Image: IFTTT

 

Excerpt:

IFTTT stands athwart history. At a point where the software world is obsessed with finding ever more specialized apps for increasingly specific problems, the San Francisco-based company is gleefully doing just the opposite. It simply wants to give people a bunch of tools and let them figure it out. It all happens with simple conditional statements the company calls “recipes.” So, you can use the service to execute the following command: If I take a screenshot, then upload it to Dropbox. If this RSS feed is updated, then send me a text message. It’s great for kluging together quick, automated solutions for the little workflows that slip into the cracks between apps and services.

 

If This, Then That (IFTTT)

IFTTT-Dec2013

 

4 reasons why Apple’s iBeacon is about to disrupt interaction design — from wired.com by Kyle VanHemert

Excerpt:

You step inside Walmart and your shopping list is transformed into a personalized map, showing you the deals that’ll appeal to you most. You pause in front of a concert poster on the street, pull out your phone, and you’re greeted with an option to buy tickets with a single tap. You go to your local watering hole, have a round of drinks, and just leave, having paid—and tipped!—with Uber-like ease. Welcome to the world of iBeacon.

It sounds absurd, but it’s true: Here we are in 2013, and one of the most exciting things going on in consumer technology is Bluetooth. Indeed, times have changed. This isn’t the maddening, battery-leeching, why-won’t-it-stay-paired protocol of yore. Today we have Bluetooth Low Energy which solves many of the technology’s perennial problems with new protocols for ambient, continuous, low-power connectivity. It’s quickly becoming big deal.

 

The Internet of iThings: Apple’s iBeacon is already in almost 200 million iPhones and iPads — from forbes.com by Anthony Kosner

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Because of iBeacons’ limited range, they are well-suited for transmitting content that is relevant in the immediate proximity.

 

 


 

From DSC:
Along the lines of the above postings…I recently had a meeting whereby the topic of iBeacons came up. It was mentioned that museums will be using this sort of thing; i.e. approaching a piece of art will initiate an explanation of that piece on the museum’s self-guided tour application. 

That idea made me wonder whether such technology could be used in a classroom…and I quickly thought, “Yes!” 

For example, if a student goes to the SW corner of the room, they approach a table. That table has an iBeacon like device on it, which triggers a presentation within a mobile application on the student’s device.  The students reviews the presentation and moves onto the SE corner of the room whereby they approach a different table with another/different iBeacon on it.  That beacon triggers a quiz on the material they just reviewed, and then proceeds to build upon that information.  Etc. Etc.   Physically-based scaffolding along with some serious blended/hybrid learning. It’s like taking the concept of QR codes to the next level. 

Some iBeacon vendors out there include:

Data mining, interaction design, user interface design, and user experience design may never be the same again.

 

Learning from the Living (Class) Room [Grush & Christian]

CampusTechnology-12-5-13-DSCLivingClassRoom

 

Learning in ‘the Living [Class] Room’
From campustechnology.com by Mary Grush and Daniel Christian
Convergent technologies have the ability to support streams of low-cost, personalized content, both at home and in college.

 

A proposal for Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and any other company who wants to own the future living room [Christian]

DanielChristian-A-proposal-to-Apple-MS-Google-IBM-Nov182013

 

 

 

“The main obstacle to an Apple television set has been content. It has mostly failed to convince cable companies to make their programming available through an Apple device. And cable companies have sought to prevent individual networks from signing distribution deals with Apple.”

Apple, closer to its vision for a TV set, wants
ESPN, HBO, Viacom, and others to come along

qz.com by Seward, Chon, & Delaney, 8/22/13

 

From DSC:
I wonder if this is because of the type of content that Apple is asking for. Instead of entertainment-oriented content, what if the content were more focused on engaging, interactive, learning materials? More on educational streams of content (whether we — as individuals — create and contribute that content or whether businesses do)?

Also see:

 

internet of things

 

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The communications landscape has historically taken the form of a tumultuous ocean of opportunities. Like rolling waves on a shore, these opportunities are often strong and powerful – yet ebb and flow with time.

Get ready, because the next great wave is upon us. And, like a tropical storm, it is likely to change the landscape around us.

As detailed by analyst Chetan Sharma, this particular wave is the one created by the popularity of over-the-top (OTT) solutions – apps that allow access to entertainment, communication and collaboration over the Internet from smartphones, tablets and laptops, rather than traditional telecommunications methods. Sharma has coined this the mobile “fourth wave” – the first three being voice, messaging (SMS) and data access, respectively – and it is rapidly washing over us.

 

Addendum on 11/25:

 

SmartTVFeatures

 

 

 

 

IBM-Opening-up-Watson---11-15-13

 

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

For the first time, IBM will open up Watson as a development platform in the Cloud to spur innovation and fuel a new ecosystem of entrepreneurial software app providers who will bring forward a new generation of applications infused with Watson’s cognitive computing intelligence.

The Watson Ecosystem empowers development of “Powered by IBM Watson” applications. Partners are building a community of organizations who share a vision for shaping the future of their industry through the power of cognitive computing. IBM’s cognitive computing cloud platform will help drive innovation and creative solutions to some of life’s most challenging problems. The ecosystem combines business partners’ experience, offerings, domain knowledge and presence with IBM’s technology, tools, brand, and marketing.

 
 

CenterForDigitalEducation-2013Yearbook

 

Description:

The Yearbook is a unique publication produced annually by the Center for Digital Education (CDE) that highlights some of the outstanding trends,

people and events over the past year in education technology. The first part of the Yearbook gives readers market awareness by outlining how much money schools spent on education technology, where the funding came from and what technologies have been garnering the most attention.

The second part features 40 education innovators who are using technology to inspire their students, improve learning and better the K-20 education system. We hope that this 2013 Yearbook issue provides inspiration to our readers to continue on their quests towards innovation in education.

 

From DSC:
My quote in the Center for Digital Education’s 2013 Yearbook reads:

 

“Educational technologists need to be bold, visionary and creative. They need to be in tune with the needs, missions and visions of their organizations. We have the opportunity — and responsibility — to make lasting and significant contributions within our fields and for the organizations that we work for.”

 

 

“Learning in the Living [Class] Room” — as explained by Daniel Christian [Campus Technology]

Learning from the Living [Class] Room  — from Campus Technology by Daniel Christian and Mary Grush; with a huge thanks also going out to Mr. Steven Niedzielski (@Marketing4pt0) and to Mr. Sam Beckett (@SamJohnBeck) for their assistance and some of the graphics used in making these videos.

From DSC:
These 4 short videos explain what I’m trying to relay with a vision I’m entitling, Learning from the Living [Class] Room.  I’ve been pulse checking a variety of areas for years now, and the pieces of this vision continue to come into fruition.  This is what I see Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) morphing into (though there may be other directions/offshoots that they go in as well).

After watching these videos, I think you will see why I think we must move to a teambased approach.

(It looks like the production folks for Campus Technology had to scale things way back in terms of video quality to insure an overall better performance for the digitally-based magazine.) 


To watch these videos in a higher resolution, please use these links:


  1. What do you mean by “the living [class] room”?
  2. Why consider this now?
  3. What are some examples of apps and tech for “the living [class] room”?
  4. What skill sets will be needed to make “the living [class] room” a reality?

 

 


Alternatively, these videos can be found at:


 

DanielSChristianLearningFromTheLivingClassRoom-CampusTechnologyNovember2013

.

 

 

Citrix-Mobile-Education-10-31-13

 

 

Citrix-Mobile-Education-TOC-10-31-13

 

Description:

Education is at a tipping point. From the rising cost of a college education and the financial pressures upon local districts and state agencies to fund K-12 schools and programs, to the questions of how to employ mobile technologies and leverage social platforms to support the growing trend toward mobile, collaborative learning models, educators face an almost overwhelming set of challenges. While there are no easy answers to these and other issues, Citrix believes strongly that online learning technologies can help enhance and extend the teaching and learning process and provide greater, more wide-spread access to education to students. We are committed to developing and delivering learning solutions that will meet the evolving needs of teachers and students in this changing landscape. We hope that our sponsorship of this ebook and other projects will help you, the reader, gain a better understanding of the opportunities that online learning technologies provide, increase your mastery of these solutions, and enable you to put them to productive use. We look forward to working with you as we explore new and effective ways to help teachers teach and learners learn.

CaIlin Pitcher
Product Line Director, Collaboration, Citrix

 

Comments/disclosure from DSC:
I do not work for Citrix — I have been at Calvin College since
March 2007.  I was not paid to develop/contribute this piece.

I’d like to thank David Rogelberg for his work on this project.

 

 

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian