In fact, it has become clear that whilst 2021 was the year of experimentation – with an explosion of tools being used as people tried out new things, 2022 has been the year of consolidation – with people reverting to their trusty old favourites. In fact, many of the tools that were knocked off their perches in 2021, have now recovered their lost ground this year.
Innovative technologies in AI, virtual worlds and digital humans are shaping the future of design and content creation across every industry. Experience the latest advances from NVIDIA in all these areas at SIGGRAPH, the world’s largest gathering of computer graphics experts, [which ran from Aug. 8-11].
How to Start a Career in AI — from blogs.nvidia.com by Brian Caulfield Four most important steps to starting a career in AI, seven big questions answered.
What Is Direct and Indirect Lighting? — from blogs.nvidia.com by JJ Kim In computer graphics, the right balance between direct and indirect lighting elevates the photorealism of a scene.
Immersive learning experiences allow learners to interact by simulating real-life scenarios. Are you ready to offer engaging virtual environments and experiences to your workforce? Dive right into this thoroughly curated top list featuring the best content providers for VR training and bring your teams one step closer to the Metaverse.
A virtual reality simulation designed by a University of Oregon (UO) professor could help spur people to environmental action.
Participants in Project Shell don a virtual reality headset and take on the body of a loggerhead sea turtle, sporting flippers instead of arms. During a 15-minute immersive experience, they journey from a hatchling to an adult turtle, dodging hazards like ships and wayward fishing gear.
Participating in the simulation increased people’s empathy and concern for environmental issues, new research shows.
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“Embodiment of non-human bodies is a powerful tool that environmental storytellers can use,” said Daniel Pimentel, a professor in the UO’s School of Journalism and Communication who led the work. “I hope that this experience can help raise awareness and hopefully engage the public in a way that trickles down to more support.”
AI Plus VR at Purdue University Global — from er.educause.edu by Abbey Elliott, Michele McMahon, Jerrica Sheridan, and Gregory Dobbin Adding artificial intelligence to virtual reality provides nursing students with realistic, immersive learning experiences that prepare them to treat patients from diverse backgrounds.
Excerpt:
Adding artificial intelligence (AI) to immersive VR simulations can deepen the learning by enabling patient interactions that reflect a variety of patient demographics and circumstances, adjusting patient responses based on students’ questions and actions. In this way, the immersive learning activities become richer, with the goal of providing unique experiences that can help students make a successful transition from student to provider in the workforce. The use of AI and immersive learning techniques augments learning experiences and reinforces concepts presented in both didactic and clinical courses and coursework. The urgency of the pandemic prompted the development of a vision of such learning that would be sustainable beyond the pandemic as a tool for education on a relevant and scalable platform.
Speaking of emerging technologies and education/learning, also see:
3 Ways AI Can Help Students with Disabilities — from er.educause.edu Artificial intelligence can improve accessibility and ensure that students with disabilities have access to rich learning opportunities.
Instead of putting learners in front of 2D videos where they’re answering questions or just clicking boxes, the metaverse allows learners to experience what a job is actually like before accepting and will enable leaders to see if employees are ready for the next level of work. In the same way flight simulators can prepare pilots for many aspects of operating and flying an aircraft, through technologies like VR the metaverse can prepare employees for almost anything at work.
“This technology can impact every stage of the HR journey for an employee,” Belch says. “We all know the interviewing process is flawed and riddled with bias. Let’s have someone do the job and show us whether or not they can do the job.” And if they mess up in VR, they’re not going to take down the whole factory. From hiring and beyond, there is an abundance of potential spaces that the metaverse can capitalize on and improve.
Research in medical training has found that information retention rates can reach 80 percent after a full year of training through immersive simulated experiences compared to just 20 percent for traditional training. “People are picking it up and are much more comfortable performing their tasks after going through the simulation,” Jordan says. “It’s incredibly powerful.”
The gamification of learning can be critical for gifted children in particular, who often struggle to stay focused, engaged, and challenged in a traditional educational environment. Gamification can be so effective in gifted education because the learner forgets they are “working” and instead feels they are “playing.” It allows the gifted brain to relax into the “flow” of learning, and more effectively use their intellect for problem solving and creativity.
That’s a good point. How can you reconcile these two things?
Do you have an idea for how we could make this better?
From DSC: Perhaps we should post those types of questions up on the walls of many board rooms and conference rooms around the nation…or have it be a slide in a presentation…or…
The recipe required key ingredients to happen. In addition to an accredited school to manage students, admissions and the for-credit learning, it also needed a platform. That’s where EngageVR comes in. There are other platforms that will ultimately host schools, perhaps AltSpace, Horizon or others, but the first is on Engage.
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The bottom line is this: creators, coders, educators, entrepreneurs, investors, corporations, parents and students all played a role in finally bringing the first global virtual reality high school to life. It won’t be the last school to open in the metaverse, but to all those involved in this inaugural launch — the Neil Armstrongs of your age — a special tip of the hat today for having the vision and the willingness to launch a better and more equitable era of education.
As a training manager, you need to step up your game to cater to the corporate training needs of these thinkers. Functional and creative instructional strategies should be used to engage learners and offer sticky learning, in the classroom and online. The strategies need to involve learners emotionally, offer an experiential set up, and appeal to their creative side.
University CIOs, deans, provosts, faculty and staff from more than 100 institutions convened online for the Adobe EduMAX 2021 conference, where academic leaders shared how they are transforming teaching and learning practices across their campuses. Key discussion points included:
How digital literacy increases engagement to bring faculty and students together, whether they are in-person, online or in a hybrid environment.
How digital literacy closes the skills gap in higher education and industry by fostering critical essential skills that employers value.
How faculty can integrate digital literacy across the curriculum for all students.
A NEW ERA OF 3D DESIGN COLLABORATION AND SIMULATION
NVIDIA Omniverse™ is an easily extensible, open platform built for virtual collaboration and real-time physically accurate simulation. Creators, designers, researchers, and engineers can connect major design tools, assets, and projects to collaborate and iterate in a shared virtual space. Developers and software providers can also easily build and sell Extensions, Apps, Connectors, and Microservices on Omniverse’s modular platform to expand its functionality.
Tools for Building Branching Scenarios — from christytuckerlearning.com by Christy Tucker When would you use Twine, Storyline, Rise, or other tools for building branching scenarios? It depends on the project and goals.
Excerpt:
When would you use Twine instead of Storyline or other tools for building branching scenarios? An attendee at one of my recent presentations asked me why I’d bother creating something in Twine rather than just storyboarding directly in Storyline, especially if I was using character images. Whether I would use Twine, Storyline, Rise, or something else depends on the project and the goals.
I received an email from Adobe that was entitled, “This week on Adobe Live: Graphic Design.” (I subscribe to their Adobe Creative Cloud.) Inside the email, I saw and clicked on the following:
Below are some of the screenshots I took of this incredible service! Wow!
From DSC: So Abobe — via Behance — is already doing several pieces of the “Learning from the Living [Class] Room” vision. I knew of Behance…but I didn’t realize the magnitude of what they’ve been working on and what they’re currently delivering. Very sharp indeed!
Churches are doing this as well — one device has the presenter/preacher on it (such as a larger “TV”), while a second device is used to communicate with each other in real-time.
From DSC: Many people talk about engagement when they discuss learning, and with good reason. It seems to me that what they are really getting at is the topic of getting and maintaining someone’s *attention.* Attention is the gatekeeper to further learning. I wonder if some of the next generation learning platforms that employ some level of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled features, will look to a learner’s preferences (as stored in their cloud-based learner’s profile) in order to help gain/maintain such attention.
And this also helps explain why allowing more learner agency — i.e., more choice, more control — in pursuing their own interests and passions really helps: A motivated learner is paying closer attention to what’s going on.
From DSC: And along these lines, that’s one of the key reasons I’d like to see more involvement from the Theatre Departments, Computer Science Departments, and from those involved with creative writing across the land — in terms of helping develop content for remote and online-based education. Actors, actresses, set designers, costumer designers, audio/video editors, programmers/software developers, and more who could collaborate on these kinds of ideas.
Last comment on this. I don’t mean that we should present our classes like many advertisements do (i.e., running a thousand images by me within 30 seconds). But changing things up periodically — both visually and audibly — can help regain/reset your students’ attentions.
From DSC: What if each learner/person/student could have a lifelong, cloud-based “tribute” site?
What if you could hire a career coach to sift through the tributes to find common themes?
From DSC: I recently asked friends and family to help me celebrate a significant birthday for my wife by creating a tribute for her — using a service calledTribute.co.It was a fun, meaningful, relational experience — it opened the doors to some great communications.
Here’s a video that describes what aTributeis (from the company of that same name).
So I put out potential suggestions for what I hoped that we could relay to my wife, and people contributed their videos. Then a person at Tribute edited the videos to come up with a highlight reel. They also presented to my wife all of the videos, not just the highlight reel.
That got me to wonder,“What if each learner had a cloud-based, lifelong tribute site that parents, guardians, grandparents, teachers, coaches, musical directors, pastors, friends, and others could leave encouraging and instructive messages on? Or when they note something that might be of use later on in terms of career selection, they could “jot it down.” For example:
[First-grade teacher] “I noticed Anne that when we did the art projects, you were enthralled with any sort of creative endeavor or project. We almost lost you in another world!”
[Family member] “Tony, I’ve noticed ____. Here’s something to consider for your future pathways. Would you be interested in exploring _____ — such as if we signed you up for some lessons in that area?”
[Eight grade teacher] “Eloise, I saw that your engagement level skyrocket when we studied ____, especially when you did the project on ___.”
[Basketball coach] “Chan, I appreciated your hard work in practice today. Keep up the good work and you will be a super player! You are fast, strong, and seem to have a competitive spirit about you. Consider making a workout chart and charting out the workouts that you do each day. Monitor your progress over time. As of today, here are some apps to do just that: ___.
[Pastor] “So glad Amanda that you were able to join us on our youth group visit to ___. I appreciated your end-of-the-day reflections on the experiences of the day. I also appreciated your hard work helping others.”
[Friend] “It was great horsing around on Garageband with you today Zach. I look forward to diving into iMovie next with you. Let’s create a movie for each other. You seem to have a very creative side to you.”
[High school CS Teacher] “Keep up the good work programming Jeremy! I hope that you will consider going into some type of job that uses critical thinking, mathematics, problem-solving — perhaps it will be programming, perhaps it will be engineering, or something else.”
[College professor/advisor] “You mentioned that you hate college to me the last two times we met. You don’t seem happy studying ___. Have you considered ____?”
[Tennis coach] Remember to bend those knees…get low. Keep your eyes on the seams of the ball.”
The idea behind such a service would be to offer encouragement, feedback, (if carefully put) constructive criticism, a message that “I’m on your team”…and/or…”Here’s what I see in you.”
Additional functionality/options
Contributors:
Like Twitter imposes a limit on characters, there could be options to impose a time limit on the length of a video, ability to add more than one video, and/or set a limit on how many videos someone can upload
If submitting a written piece, the option would be there to limit the number of characters and/or the word count.
From learners themselves (to their own tribute)
No time limit, no word count or character limit
Would act like a multimedia-based diary/journal of learning
Option to select whether might be worth re-listening to for career selection purposes.
