The SIIA CODiE Awards for 2016 — with thanks to Neha Jaiswal from uCertify for this resource; uCertify, as you will see, did quite well
Since 1986, the SIIA CODiE Awards have recognized more than 1,000 software and information companies for achieving excellence. The CODiE Awards remain the only peer-recognized program in the content, education, and software industries so each CODiE Award win serves as incredible market validation for a product’s innovation, vision, and overall industry impact.
From DSC:
Below are some questions and thoughts that are going through my mind:
Along these lines, are are some videos/images/links for you:
![The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV](http://danielschristian.com/learning-ecosystems/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian-July-2012.jpg)
Also see:
Also see:
Prysm Adds Enterprise-Wide Collaboration with Microsoft Applications — from ravepubs.com by Gary Kayye
Excerpt:
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.
20 awesome BYOD and mobile learning apps — from edutopia.org by Vicki Davis; updated 2/4/16
Excerpt:
We have now been Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) for three years, and boy, do the students bring it. They bring it all! We have iPads, Surface, iPhones, Droids, Chromebooks, Macs, and PC laptops. Here’s my current thinking.
7 best Google apps and tools — from interestingengineering.com
Excerpt:
Music is for everyone. So this year for Music In Our Schools month, we wanted to make learning music a bit more accessible to everyone by using technology that’s open to everyone: the web. Chrome Music Lab is a collection of experiments that let anyone, at any age, explore how music works. They’re collaborations between musicians and coders, all built with the freely available Web Audio API. These experiments are just a start. Check out each experiment to find open-source code you can use to build your own.
My challenge to you – 8 things all teachers should learn about #edtech — from ictevangelist.com by Mark Anderson
Excerpt:
I love the School Report scheme that the BBC run via Newsround. We all remember the Newsrounds of our youth. For me it was John Craven who made me watch it whenever it was on. It was this report I saw recently on eight things teachers should learn, which got me thinking about eight things I thought teachers should learn about edtech.
My work sees me regularly helping teachers learn different things related to the use of technology and so in this post, I’m going to talk about the eight things I think teachers should learn with #edtech to help support their use of technology to enhance learning in the classroom.
Mark mentions: Google, Padlet, Kahoot, Socrative, Camera, Microphone, Twitter, Videoconferencing software
Quiz accommodations for students in Canvas and Moodle — from thejournal.com by Emmett Dulaney03/16/16
Excerpt:
As we move toward interacting more with students who have an individualized education program (IEP) indicating that they need additional time on tests and quizzes or just need to deal with life issues, it is imperative that the learning management system (LMS) depended upon by an instructor and student alike be properly configured for such accommodations. Canvas and Moodle are currently two of the most popular learning management systems, and both offer the ability to make adjustments to quiz functions within the course without compromising the overall structure of the course. In this article, we will examine how to do so and offer some tips on situations where they are relevant.
Use these Chrome apps to unleash students’ creativity — from educatorstechnology.com
Excerpt:
[The] Chrome web store is packed full of all kinds of educational apps and extensions some of which are also integrated with Google Drive. For those of you looking for a handy resource of Chrome apps to use with students in class, check out this comprehensive chart. In today’s post we are sharing with you a collection of some practical Chrome extensions to unleash learners creativity. Using these resources, students will be able to engage in a number of creative literacy activities that will allow them to multimodally communicate their thoughts, share their ideas and develop new learning skills.
Integrating technology and literacy — from edutopia.org by Frank Ward
Excerpt:
How do you work technology into the pedagogy, instead of just using something cool? That task can be especially daunting in language arts literacy classrooms where reading and writing skill development is the crux of daily lessons. However, as 1:1 technology initiatives roll out, integrating technology into the classroom is our reality.
With hundreds of sites, apps, Chrome extensions, and platforms available, choosing the right ones can seem overwhelming. As an eighth-grade language arts teacher, I’ve experienced this myself. Following are four tools that can help provide immediate formative assessment data as well as top-of-the-rotation feedback to help students develop personal learning goals.
If, like my school, you’re in a “Chromebook District,” these suggested tools will work well because all integrate perfectly when you sign in with your Google ID, limiting the need for multiple passwords. This saves a lot of student confusion, too.
Teachers are using theater and dance to teach math — and it’s working — from washingtonpost.com by Moriah Balingit
Excerpt:
This giggly play session actually was a serious math lesson about big and small and non-standard measurements. Dreamed up by Richardson and kindergarten teacher Carol Hunt, it aims to get the children to think of animal steps as units of measurement, using them to mark how many it takes each animal to get from a starting line to the target.
Teachers call such melding of art and traditional subjects “art integration,” and it’s a new and increasingly popular way of bringing the arts into the classroom. Instead of art as a stand-alone subject, teachers are using dance, drama and the visual arts to teach a variety of academic subjects in a more engaging way.
Some older items include:
Tech Tip: Using Nearpod for math instruction — from smartblogs.com
Storytelling app a hit; launches a new chapter in transmedia — from blogs.vancouversun.com
Excerpt:
Paul Pattison and Luke Minaker knew they were onto something when they got an email from the mother of a nine-year-old who read the first instalment of their interactive story, Weirdwood Manor.
“She wrote that she couldn’t get her son to pick up a book,” said Pattison, technical director of All Play No Work, producer of the iPad app. “She got the app for her son and he went through it in two nights. He finished both books.
“And then because we don’t have book 3 out yet, unprompted by her he went over to the bookshelf and pulled off a paperback and started reading chapter books again.”
.
Microsoft Build: the 10 most important announcements — from theverge.com by Ben Popper and Dieter Bohn
Here come the bots!
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Every year, Microsoft holds a developer event called “Build.” And recently, those events have gone from snoozers to exciting showcases. Microsoft has a winner with Windows 10 (as long as you ignore the phones), a robust personal assistant in Cortana (that works just fine on a laptop), and a wild holographic future to plan with HoloLens. It’s a lot to take in, and at this year’s Build Microsoft we got updates on all of it. And a few surprises.
Going in, we weren’t totally sure what would be coming next for Windows 10, but it turns out there’s a lot that Microsoft has planned. It’s not just that there are new apps, there are also new bots, which will help people handle all sorts of small tasks. In fact, those bots and Microsoft’s vision of how they should work stole the entire show. Windows, Xbox: you’re cool, but the future is bots.
Why Microsoft wants to help developers build bots — from pcworld.com by Blair Hanley Frank
Conversations are cross-platform and mobile, even when Windows 10 Mobile isn’t winning
Excerpt:
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is pushing developers to create virtual assistants and intelligent chatbots to help users do everything from managing their calendars to booking hotel reservations.
To that end, Microsoft has published a new Bot Framework, which makes it easier to build chatbots using either C# or Node.js. Working with the tools isn’t so easy that anyone could do it, but they can help reduce some of the difficulties of conversing with a computer.
It was one of the main announcements from Nadella’s keynote address at Microsoft’s Build developer conference Wednesday.
Also see:
From DSC:
Questions/relevance for those working higher ed:
From DSC:
Below are several articles will help you stay up-to-date on the announcements from Apple today:
A related resource:
Addendum on 3/21/16 — After getting their tails kicked by Google…better late than never?
Key point from DSC:
Digitally-based means of learning are going to skyrocket!!! Far more than what we’ve seen so far! There are several trends that are occurring to make this so.
As background here, some of the keywords and phrases that are relevant to this posting include:
Some of the relevant products in this area include:
From DSC:
First of all, consider the following products and the functionalities they offer.
People who are in the same physical space can collaborate with people from all over the world — no matter if they are at home, in another office, on the road, etc.
For several of these products, remote employees/consultants/trainers/learners can contribute content to the discussions, just like someone in the same physical location can.
From DSC:
Many of these sorts of systems & software are aimed at helping people collaborate — again, regardless of where they are located. Remote learners/content contributors are working in tandem with a group of people in the same physical location. If this is true in business, why can’t it be true in the world of education?
So keep that in mind, as I’m now going to add on a few other thoughts and trends that build upon these sorts of digitally-based means of collaborating.
Q: Towards that end…ask yourself, what do the following trends and items have in common?
To wrap up this line of thought, below are some excerpts from recent articles that illustrate what I’m trying to get at here.
Embrace the Power of Data
A continuous improvement mindset is important. Back-end learning analytics, for example, can reveal where large numbers of students are struggling, and may provide insights into questions that require new feedback or content areas that need more development. Data can also highlight how students are interacting with the content and illuminate things that are working well—students’ lightbulb moments.
— Five Principles for Your Learning Design Toolkit
from edsurge.com by Amanda Newlin
Mitchell gave the example of flight simulators, which not only provide students with a way to engage in the activity that they want to learn, but also have data systems that monitor students’ learning over time, providing them with structured feedback at just the right moment. This sort of data-centric assessment of learning is happening in more and more disciplines — and that opens the door to more innovation, he argued.
…
A promising example, said Thille, is the use of educational technology to create personalized and adaptive instruction. As students interact with adaptive technology, the system collects large amounts of data, models those data, and then makes predictions about each student based on their interactions, she explained. Those predictions are then used for pedagogical decision-making — either feeding information back into the system to give the student a personalized learning path, or providing insights to faculty to help them give students individualized support.
…
“We need the models and the data to be open, transparent, peer-reviewable and subject to academic scrutiny.”
…
“We began to actually examine what we could do differently — based not upon hunches and traditions, but upon what the data told us the problems were for the students we enroll,” said Renick. “We made a commitment not to raise our graduation rate through getting better students, but through getting better — and that gain meant looking in the mirror and making some significant changes.”
…
A 21st-century learning culture starts with digital content. In 2010, Jackson State University was looking for ways that technology could better address the needs of today’s learner. “We put together what we call our cyberlearning ecosystem,” said Robert Blaine, dean of undergraduate studies and cyberlearning. “What that means is that we’re building a 21st-century learning culture for all of our students, writ large across campus.” At the core of that ecosystem is digital content, delivered via university-supplied iPads.
— 7 Things Higher Education Innovators Want You to Know
from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly
On Bennett’s wish list right now is an application that allows students to give feedback at specific points of the videos that they’re watching at home. This would help him pinpoint and fix any “problem” areas (e.g. insufficient instructions for difficult topics/tasks) and easily see where students are experiencing the most difficulties.
TechSmith’s now-retired “Ask3” video platform, for example, would have done the trick. It allowed users to watch a video and ask text-based questions at the point where playback was stopped. “I’d like to be able to look at my content and say, ‘Here’s a spot where there are a lot of questions and confusion,'” said Bennett, who also sees potential in an “I get it” button that would allow students to hit the button when everything clicks. “That would indicate the minimum viable video that I’d need to produce.” Learning Catalytics offers a similar product at a fee, Bennett said, “but I can’t charge my students $20 a year to use it.”
— 6 Flipped Learning Technologies To Watch in 2016
from thejournal.com by Bridget McCrea
Adobe’s Project Comet has been renamed ‘Experience Design’ — and it [launched on 3/14/16] — from thenextweb.com by Nate Swanner
Excerpt:
Adobe’s Project Comet is now Experience Design (XD), and is available in preview for anyone with an existing Adobe account.
Noting there are currently “lots of tools tackling many parts of the problem” of designing apps, Adobe is positioning XD to compete more directly with Sketch, and it does a fantastic job. Not only will you be able to design artboards, but XD lets you make macro changes and prototype as well.
It begins with the type of project you have (Web, iPhone, iPad or ‘custom size’ designs), but XD also has UI Kit packets preloaded. You can choose from iOS, Google’s Material Design or Windows. XD also shows you recent files so you can jump right back into prototyping.
Mobile World Congress 2016: Event Highlights
Excerpts:
Also see their blog.
Google brings the physical web to your phone — from techweekeurope.co.uk by Michael Moore
Google plans to make your smartphone a portal to the world around you thanks to a new smart browser.
Excerpt:
Google plans to make your smartphone a portal to the world around you thanks to a new smart browser.
The company’s next version of Chrome for Android, version 49 (currently in beta), will be able to alert users to low-energy beacons near to them, which can then be interacted with for interesting information or offers.
This means that walking past a tube station will send a pop-up alert about the next departure, or vouchers being sent when walking past a favourite shop, which is all part of what Google is calling ‘The Physical Web’.
Addendum on 2/19/16:
The campus: Where AV meets IoT — from avnetwork.com by Carolyn Heinze
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Digital in 2016 — from wearesocial.sg by Simon Kemp
Excerpt:
[On January 27, 2016] we’re very excited to share our huge new Digital in 2016 report: We Are Social’s comprehensive study of digital, social and mobile usage around the world.
Last year’s global report has already been read almost 2 million times on SlideShare, but we’ve also had many requests for information on other countries, so this year we’ve decided to produce a report in three distinct parts:
1. Digital in 2016: the main report, which you can read in the SlideShare embed above (or on SlideShare by clicking here), containing all the digital data, social stats and mobile numbers you need to understand the state of digital around the globe, as well as in-depth studies of 30 of the world’s key economies.
2. 2016 Digital Yearbook: an additional document which contains headline digital, social and mobile data and statistics for 232 countries around the world. You can read and download this report for free too – you’ll find it as another SlideShare embed further down in this post, but you can also find it on SlideShare by clicking here.
3. The Executive Summary: this blog post, which presents our analysis of the key trends and context behind the numbers in this year’s report, as well as our forecasts and predictions for the coming twelve months. You can also download the Executive Summary in PDF form by clicking here.
The tech that will change your life in 2016 — from wsj.com by Geoffrey A. Fowler and Joanna Stern
Gadgets, breakthroughs and ideas we think will define the state of the art in the year ahead
Excerpts:
Technology trends 2016 — from thefuturesagency.com by Rudy de Waele
Excerpt:
It’s this time of the year again for everyone in the business to release their yearly predictions. In order to save you some time, we collected all the most important and relevant trends – from the sources that matter, in one post.
The trends have been collected by The Futures Agency partner, speaker and content curator, Rudy de Waele, and were originally published on the shift 2020 Brain Food blog and newsletter.
CES 2016: Smart homes, smart cars, virtual reality — from cnbc.com by Harriet Taylor
Excerpt:
Nevertheless, there are still some distinct themes this year: Products that highlight the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), the connected home, autos and virtual reality will all have a big presence.
From smart to intelligent: 2016 AV trends — from avnetwork.com by Jonathan Owens
Excerpts:
Cloud, virtual reality among top tech trends for 2016 — from news.investors.com by Patrick Seitz
Excerpts:
Virtual reality, robot companions and wraparound smartphones: Top 5 tech trends due in 2016 — from scmp.com by Jack Liu
The headset cometh: A virtual reality content primer — from gigaom.com by
Excerpt:
When we talk about VR, we tend to talk in broad strokes. “Experiences,” we call them, as if that term is somehow covers and conveys the depth and disparity that exists between gaming, watching, and interacting with VR content. The reality of virtual reality, however, is not so easily categorized or described.
VR content is the big blanket term that clumsily and imprecisely covers large and vastly divergent portions of the content market as it stands. VR games, immersive video, and virtual cinema all fall under “VR content”, but they’re fundamentally different experiences, possibly appealing to very different portions of a potential mainstream VR market.
6 ways work will change in 2016 — from fastcompany.com by Jared Lindzon
Workplace trends for 2016 will be set in large part by what’s happening in the freelance world right now.
Excerpt:
Most major workplace trends don’t evolve overnight, and if you know where to look, you can already witness their approach.
Many of the trends that will come into focus in 2016 already exist today, but their significance is expected to grow and become mainstream in the year to come.
While such trends used to be set by the world’s largest companies, today many are championed by the smallest. Freelancers and independent employees need to stay ahead of future needs to ensure they are up to date with the most in-demand skills. Therefore, activity in the freelance market often serves as an early indication of the growing needs of traditional businesses.
At the same time, large organizations today are under greater threat of disruption, requiring early adoption and a heightened awareness of the surrounding business environment.
Here are some of the workplace trends that are expected to have far-reaching effects in 2016, from the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies to the home offices, cafes, and coworking spaces of the freelance economy.
7 top tech trends impacting innovators in 2016 — from innovationexcellence.com by Chuck Brooks
Excerpts:
Related:
Addendum on 1/13/16:
From DSC:
Back in July of 2012, I put forth a vision that I called Learning from the Living [Class]Room.
It’s a vision that involves a multitude of technologies — technologies and trends that we continue to see being developed and ones that could easily converge in the not-too-distant future to offer us some powerful opportunities for lifelong learning!
Consider that in won’t be very long before a learner will be able to reinvent himself/herself throughout their lifetime, for a very affordable price — while taking ala carte courses from some of the best professors, trainers, leaders, and experts throughout the world, all from the comfort of their living room. (Not to mention tapping into streams of content that will be available on such platforms.)
So when I noticed that Lynda.com now has a Roku channel for the big screen, it got my attention.
Lets add a few more pieces to the puzzle, given that some other relevant trends are developing quite nicely:
Anyway, these next few years will be packed with change — the pace of which will likely take us by surprise. We need to keep our eyes upward and outward — peering into the horizons rather than looking downwards — doing so should reduce the chance of us getting broadsided!
*It’s also possible that AR and VR will create
a future whereby we only need 1 “screen”
Addendum:
After I wrote/published the item above…it was interesting to then see the item below:
IBM opens Watson IoT Global Headquarters, extends power of cognitive computing to a connected world — from finance.yahoo.com
1000 Munich-based experts to drive IoT and industry 4.0 innovation
Launches eight new IoT client experience centers worldwide
Introduces Watson API Services for IoT on the IBM Cloud
Excerpt:
MUNICH, Dec. 15, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the opening of its global headquarters for Watson Internet of Things (IoT), launching a series of new offerings, capabilities and ecosystem partners designed to extend the power of cognitive computing to the billions of connected devices, sensors and systems that comprise the IoT. These new offerings will be available through the IBM Watson IoT Cloud, the company’s global platform for IoT business and developers.
Web design trends of 2016: free ebook bundle — from creativebloq.com
Excerpt:
Also see:
