What Will Online Learning Look Like in 10 Years? Zoom Has Some Ideas — from edsurge.com by Stephen Noonoo

Excerpt:

This week at Zoom’s annual conference, Zoomtopia, a trio of education-focused Zoom employees (er, Zoomers?) speculated wildly about what hybrid Zoom learning might look like 10 years from now, given the warp speed advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning expected. Below are highlights of their grandiose, if sometimes vague, vision for the future of learning on Zoom.

Zoom very much sees itself as one day innovating on personalized learning in a substantial way, although beyond breakout rooms and instant translation services, they have few concrete ideas in mind. Mostly, the company says it will be working to add more choices to how teachers can present materials and how students can display mastery to teachers in realtime. They’re bullish on Kahoot-like gamification features and new ways of assessing students, too.

Also see:

An Eighth Grader Was Tired of Being Late to Zoom School. So He Made an App for That. — from edsurge.com by Nadia Tamez-Robledo

“I could not find anything else that exists like this to automatically join meetings at the right times,” says Seth, a high school freshman based in Walnut Creek, Calif. “Reminders are just really easy to ignore. I’ll get a notification maybe five minutes before my meeting, and it’ll just sit there and not do anything. [LinkJoin] interrupts whatever you’re doing and says, ‘Join this meeting. In fact it’s already opening, so better get on it.’”

 

 

Zoom product updates showcase the art of the possible for hybrid work — from diginomica.com by Derek du Preez
Zoom’s annual conference – Zoomtopia – kicked off with a number of impressive product updates that highlight how we should be thinking about the future of hybrid work.

Excerpt:

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan kicked off the collaboration vendor’s annual conference – Zoomtopia – with a swathe of product updates that effectively showcase how we should be thinking about the future of hybrid work.

What’s clear is that Zoom is thinking well beyond its video call roots and is creating a platform that’s an effective place for people to get work done. Upcoming integrations with the likes of Google Drive and Dropbox are just part of this.

Features such as being able to continuously access and collaborate on content in a meeting, whether that be chats or files, whilst also having call transcriptions instantly accessible within the Zoom client after a call is completed, and having access to Zoom Whiteboard to create visual presentations – and being able to do this wherever you are – gives you an idea of how the vendor is thinking about making remote work as seamless and productive as possible.

From DSC:
The intense competition between vendors like Zoom, Cisco, Microsoft, and others will only benefit all of us in the longer term. Here’s to innovation! Online learning may never be the same again. For that matter, learning may never be the same again.

 

Gartner: 4 Key Trends Speeding AI Innovation — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Excerpt:

Research firm Gartner has identified four trends that are driving artificial intelligence innovation in the near term. These technologies and approaches will be key to scaling AI initiatives, the company emphasized in a news announcement…

 

In the US, the AI Industry Risks Becoming Winner-Take-Most — from wired.com by Khari Johnson
A new study illustrates just how geographically concentrated AI activity has become.

Excerpt:

A NEW STUDY warns that the American AI industry is highly concentrated in the San Francisco Bay Area and that this could prove to be a weakness in the long run. The Bay leads all other regions of the country in AI research and investment activity, accounting for about one-quarter of AI conference papers, patents, and companies in the US. Bay Area metro areas see levels of AI activity four times higher than other top cities for AI development.

“When you have a high percentage of all AI activity in Bay Area metros, you may be overconcentrating, losing diversity, and getting groupthink in the algorithmic economy. It locks in a winner-take-most dimension to this sector, and that’s where we hope that federal policy will begin to invest in new and different AI clusters in new and different places to provide a balance or counter,” Mark Muro, policy director at the Brookings Institution and the study’s coauthor, told WIRED.

Also relevant/see:

 

“Algorithms are opinions embedded in code.”

 

A Judge Rules Apple Must Make It Easier To Shop Outside The App Store — from npr.org by Bobby Allyn
Judge Rules Apple Must Change Its Tightly Controlled App Store | The ruling follows a three-week trial in which Epic, the maker of the hit video game Fortnite, argued Apple’s App Store policies are an abuse of power and hurt developers.

Excerpt:

A federal judge ordered Apple on Friday to crack open the tightly controlled App Store and “steer” people using apps to payment methods other than Apple’s own processor, which usually collects a 30% commission on app purchases.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is the most significant strike yet against Apple’s commission, something critics call “the Apple tax.” It could force the tech giant to revamp its entire business model for apps on iPhones and iPads.

Also see:

Factbox-Apple vs Epic case: heated arguments, dramatic calls — from reuters.com
A U.S. judge on Friday issued a ruling in Fortnite creator Epic Games’ antitrust lawsuit against Apple Inc’s App Store, striking down some of Apple’s restrictions on how developers can collect payments in apps.

Apple can no longer force developers to use in-app purchasing, judge rules — from cnbc.com by Kif Leswing
The trial took place in Oakland, California, in May, and included both company CEOs testifying in open court.

  • Federal Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on Friday handed down a decision in a closely watched trial between Apple and Epic Games.
  • Rogers issued an injunction that said Apple will no longer be allowed to prohibit developers from providing links or other communications that direct users away from Apple in-app purchasing.
  • Rogers said Apple was not a monopolist and “success is not illegal.”

Tech Stocks Are Jumping as Judge Forces Changes to Apple’s App Store — from
A slew of tech stocks are rallying after a Northern California judge ruled that Apple must allow developers who distribute their apps via its store to bypass the company’s payment systems—a move that could alter which companies collect billions of dollars now paid to Apple. The decision arrives after a legal fight that began roughly a year ago.  

 
 

Top 300 Tools for Learning 2021 [Hart]

Top 300 Tools for Learning 2021 — from toptools4learning.com by Jane Hart

Excerpt:

2021 was the YEAR OF DISRUPTION! There were a substantial number of new tools nominated this year so the main list has now been extended to 300 tools to accommodate them, and each of the 3 sub-lists has been increased to 150 tools. Although the top of this year’s list is relatively stable, there is quite bit of movement of tools on the rest of the list, and the effect of the new tools has been to push other established tools down – if not off the list altogether. Further analysis of the list appears in the right-hand column of the table below.

This table shows the overall rankings as well as the rankings on the 3 sub-lists: Top 150 Tools for Personal Learning (PL150), the Top 150 Tools for Workplace Learning (WL150) and the Top 150 Tools for Education (ED150). NEW tools are shaded YELLOW, tools coming BACK on the list are shaded GREEN. The most popular context in which each tool is used is also highlighted in BLUE.  Click on a tool name to find out more about it.

 


Top 300 Tools for Learning 2021 -- from Jane Hart


 

 

The Fight to Define When AI Is ‘High Risk’ — from wired.com by Khari Johnson
Everyone from tech companies to churches wants a say in how the EU regulates AI that could harm people.

Excerpt:

The AI Act is one of the first major policy initiatives worldwide focused on protecting people from harmful AI. If enacted, it will classify AI systems according to risk, more strictly regulate AI that’s deemed high risk to humans, and ban some forms of AI entirely, including real-time facial recognition in some instances. In the meantime, corporations and interest groups are publicly lobbying lawmakers to amend the proposal according to their interests.

 

This 12-year-old coder is set to earn over $400,000 after about 2 months selling NFTs — from cnbc.com by Taylor Locke

Excerpt:

But lately, non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, and the smart contracts, or collections of code, that power them, have caught Ahmed’s attention.

“I first learned about NFTs earlier this year,” Ahmed, who is based in London, tells CNBC Make It. “I got fascinated with NFTs because you can easily transfer the ownership of an NFT by the blockchain.”

This 12-year-old coder is set to earn over $400,000 after about 2 months selling NFTs

From DSC:
Law professors who teach property and contracts might be interested in this as well.  🙂 

And speaking of emerging technologies and the law, also see:

 
 
 
 

For recalculating those due dates out there: timeanddate.com — with thanks to Lisa Smith at the WMU-Cooley Law School for this resource; Lisa showed how this was used with Cidi Labs Multi-Tool to batch change dates and times within Canvas

Days Calculator -- calculating days between two dates

From DSC:
Along the lines of time and tools for the classroom…I also find classroomscreen.com helpful in providing some solid timers.

classroomscreen.com

 

The Michigan Learning Channel is now available through your antenna on ALL Michigan PBS stations! 

The weekday summer 2021 schedule for the Michigan Learning Channel

 
 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian