After acquiring the rights to the New Media Consortium’s Horizon project earlier this year, Educause has now published a preview of the 2018 Higher Education Edition of the Horizon Report — research that was in progress at the time of NMC’s sudden dissolution. The report covers the key technology trends, challenges and developments expected to impact higher ed in the short-, mid- and long-term future.
But it dawned on me today that the future of our very own AV market may not be in the hands of any new product, new technology or even an AV company at all. In fact, there’s likely one AV guy (or girl) out there, today, that controls the future of AV for all of us, but doesn’t even know it, yet.
I’m talking about Jeff Bezos’ personal AV technician. Yes, that Jeff Bezos — the one who started Amazon.
Follow my logic.
The Amazon Alexa is AMAZING. Probably the most amazing thing since Apple’s iPhone. And, maybe even more so. The iPhone was revolutionary as it was a handheld phone, an email client, notes taker, voice recorder, calendar, to-do list, wrist watch and flashlight — all in one. It replaced like 10 things I was using every single day. And I didn’t even mention the camera!
…
Alexa seamlessly and simply connects to nearly everything you want to connect it to. And, it’s updated weekly — yes, weekly — with behind-the-scenes Friday-afternoon firmware and software upgrades. So, just when you think Alexa doesn’t do something you want it to do, she can — you just have to wait until an upcoming Friday — as someone will add that functionality. And, at any time, you can add Alexa SKILLS to yours and have third-party control of your Lutron lighting system, your shades and blinds, your HVAC, your TV, your DVR, your CableTV box, your SONOS, your home security system, your cameras and even your washer and dryer (yes, I have that functionality — even though I can’t find a use for it yet). It can even call people, play any radio station in the world, play movie previews, play Jeopardy!, play Sirius/XM radio — I mean, it can do nearly anything. It’s squarely aimed at the average consumer or home application — all to simplify your life.
But it could EASILY be upgraded to control everything. I mean everything. Projectors, digital signage networks, AV-over-IP systems, scalers, switchers, audio systems, commercial-grade lighting systems, rooms, buildings, etc. — you get the idea.
From DSC: By the way, I wouldn’t be so sure that Bezos doesn’t realize this; there’s very little that gets by that guy.
Crestron will soon be shipping the Crestron AirBoard PoE electronic whiteboard technology. Crestron AirBoard enables viewing of electronic whiteboard content on any display device, thereby solving the problem of meeting participants — remote participants, especially — not being able to see the whiteboard unless they’re seated with a direct line of sight.
…
With Crestron AirBoard, annotations can be saved and then posted, emailed, or texted to either a central web page (education applications) or to invited participants (corporate applications). Meeting participants simply choose “whiteboard” as a source on the in-room Crestron TSW or Crestron Mercury touch screen to start the session. When “end meeting” is selected, the user is prompted to save and send the file.
From DSC: Along these lines, will faculty use their voices to control their room setups (i.e., the projection, shades, room lighting, what’s shown on the LMS, etc.)?
Or will machine-to-machine communications, the Internet of Things, sensors, mobile/cloud-based apps, and the like take care of those items automatically when a faculty member walks into the room?
Click on the image to get a larger image in a PDF file format.
From DSC: So regardless of what was being displayed up on any given screen at the time, once a learner was invited to use their devices to share information, a graphical layer would appear on the learner’s mobile device — as well as up on the image of the screens (but the actual images being projected on the screens would be shown in the background in a muted/pulled back/25% opacity layer so the code would “pop” visually-speaking) — letting him or her know what code to enter in order to wirelessly share their content up to a particular screen. This could be extra helpful when you have multiple screens in a room.
For folks at Microsoft: I could have said Mixed Reality here as well.
World of active learning in higher ed — from universitybusiness.com by Sherrie Negrea Formal and informal learning spaces transforming campuses internationally
Excerpts:
Active learning spaces are cropping up at campuses on nearly every continent as schools transform lecture halls, classrooms and informal study areas into collaborative technology hubs. While many international campuses have just started to create active learning spaces, others have been developing them for more than a decade.
As the trend in active learning classrooms has accelerated internationally, colleges in the U.S. can learn from the cutting-edge classroom design and technology that countries such as Australia and Hong Kong have built.
“There are good examples that are coming out from all over the world using different kinds of space design and different types of teaching,” says D. Christopher Brooks, director of research at Educause, who has conducted research on active learning spaces in the United States and China.
“If the students are engaged and motivated and enjoying their learning, they’re more likely to have improved learning outcomes,” says Neil Morris, director of digital learning at the University of Leeds. “And the evidence suggests that these spaces improve their engagement, motivation and enjoyment.”
As you know, online education is rapidly expanding. At BestColleges.com we believe it’s important to evaluate the latest trends in distance education and measure the impact to both students and academic institutions. This is an industry that evolves quickly and these results offer relevant, current insights we are excited to learn from and share with the online learning community.
To keep up with these trends, we surveyed 1,800 online students and university administrators and published two reports based on our findings:
2018 Online Education Trends Report – Synthesizing all of the data we gathered in our study, this academic report provides a holistic look at the current state of online education and offers predictions for where it’s headed.
The Student’s Guide to Online Education – Most students we spoke with wished they’d known more about online education and how to choose a quality online program prior to enrolling. We built this guide as a launching point for prospective students to gain that knowledge and make informed decisions on their education.
In an effort to develop a broader understanding of how common perceptions of online education are changing, we added several questions for both students and school administrators to the study this year. A majority of students (79%) felt that online learning is either “better than” or “equal to” on-campus learning. They felt their employers (61%), future employers (61%), and the general public (58%) also had a similarly positive perception of online learning.
From DSC: It is highly likely that in the very near future, the question won’t even be asked anymore what employers think of online-based learning and whether they will hire someone that’s taken a significant portion of their coursework online. They won’t have a choice. This is especially true if and when more advanced technologies and capabilities get further baked into online-based learning — i.e., truly personalized/customized learning (which most faculty members — including myself — and teachers can’t deliver), virtual reality, artificial intelligence, chatbots, personal digital assistants, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and more.
The better question could become:
To what extent will campus-based learning be impacted when truly personalized/customized learning is offered via online-based means?
My guess? There will continue to be a significant amount of people who want to learn in a physical campus-based setting — and that’s great! But the growth of online learning will grow even more (a lot more) if truly personalized learning occurs via online-based means.
99% of administrators found that demand for online education has increased or stayed the same over the past few years. Almost 40% of respondents plan to increase their online program budgets in the next year.
This year, 34% of schools reported that their online students are younger than in previous years, falling into the “traditional” college age range of 18-25, and even younger as high school students take college courses before graduating. Several schools noted that recent high school graduates are entering the workforce while also pursuing a college education.
Teachers in Long Island’s Baldwin Schools have been invited to apply for funds to redesign their classroom space as a way to encourage innovation and are reinvigorating their own personal teaching styles along the way, according to The Hechinger Report.
Ann Marie Lynam, a middle school teacher who works with students ranging from those with special needs students to the academically advanced, finds that a multifunction, mobile classroom with a variety of comfortable seating options has forced her to become more innovative in her teaching style and encourages collaborative efforts that rely more on conversation and less on technology.
Tricia Wilder, a kindergarten teacher at a nearby school, redesigned her space with flexible seating and a “theater nook” that encourages creative play and has also added more technology to the classroom to facilitate individualized instruction.
What may surprise us though is how the underlying elements of these beautiful designs can follow certain principles–what Goldhagen refers to as “embodied metaphors.” These embodied metaphors suggest, reinforce, and captivate an action sequence from us that is both cognitive and non-cognitive in response. Examples of these natural, unconscious design principles that evoke conscious responses include:
Natural landscapes settle a person’s elevated heart rate after just 20 seconds
Bright lights stimulate creativity and bright ideas
Closed spaces offer a sense of refuge
Expansive spaces invite exploration
Colors can heighten (red for anger) and dampen (pink for calm) emotions
Sharp edge surfaces suggest retreat
Curving surfaces suggest approach
Repeating patterns with respites from that same pattern can stimulate problem-solving capacity
This has profound implications for the built environments of school buildings. Goldhagen cites one study of 34 different British schools where the six design parameters of color, choice, complexity, flexibility, light, and connectivity affected a student’s learning progress by 25 percent! The difference in learning between the best and worst designed classrooms was equal to the progress of an average student over an entire academic year.
…
The difference in learning between the best and worst designed classrooms was equal to the progress of an average student over an entire academic year.
Too often, children in poverty live in dwellings that are cognitively dulling environments, often limited in natural sunlight, creative use of color, changes in texture, or sightlines to landscaping, greenery, or vegetation. Low-income housing often wrings out the least costly, most expedient design. These children of poverty often leave such home dwellings and enter school buildings and classrooms each day that are equally devoid of cognitive inspiration. Where is the inspiration in uniform rows of wooden desks and plastic chairs?
How well does your school’s built environment contribute to human flourishing?
The VR / AR / MR Breakdown
This year will see growth in a variety of virtual technologies and uses. There are differences and similarities between virtual, augmented, and mixed reality technologies. The technology is constantly evolving and even the terminology around it changes quickly, so you may hear variations on these terms.
Augmented reality is what was behind the Pokémon Go craze. Players could see game characters on their devices superimposed over images of their physical surroundings. Virtual features seemed to exist in the real world.
Mixed reality combines virtual features and real-life objects. So, in this way it includes AR but it also includes environments where real features seem to exist in a virtual world.
The folks over at Recode explain mixed reality this way:
In theory, mixed reality lets the user see the real world (like AR) while also seeing believable, virtual objects (like VR). And then it anchors those virtual objects to a point in real space, making it possible to treat them as “real,” at least from the perspective of the person who can see the MR experience.
And, virtual reality uses immersive technology to seemingly place a user into a simulated lifelike environment.
… Where You’ll Find These New Realities Education and research fields are at the forefront of VR and AR technologies, where an increasing number of students have access to tools. But higher education isn’t the only place you see this trend. The number of VR companies grew 250 percent between 2012 and 2017. Even the latest iPhones include augmented reality capabilities. Aside from the classroom and your pocket, here are some others places you’re likely to see VR and AR pop up in 2018.
VR/AR for Impact experiences shown this week at WEF 2018 include:
OrthoVR aims to increase the availability of well-fitting prosthetics in low-income countries by using Virtual Reality and 3D rapid prototyping tools to increase the capacity of clinical staff without reducing quality. VR allows current prosthetists and orthosists to leverage their hands-on and embodied skills within a digital environment.
The Extraordinary Honey Bee is designed to help deepen our understanding of the honey bee’s struggle and learn what is at stake for humanity due to the dying global population of the honey bee. Told from a bee’s perspective, The Extraordinary Honey Bee harnesses VR to inspire change in the next generation of honey bee conservationists.
The Blank Canvas: Hacking Nature is an episodic exploration of the frontiers of bioengineering as taught by the leading researchers within the field. Using advanced scientific visualization techniques, the Blank Canvas will demystify the cellular and molecular mechanisms that are being exploited to drive substantial leaps such as gene therapy.
LIFE (Life-saving Instruction For Emergencies) is a new mobile and VR platform developed by the University of Oxford that enables all types of health worker to manage medical emergencies. Through the use of personalized simulation training and advanced learning analytics, the LIFE platform offers the potential to dramatically extend access to life-saving knowledge in low-income countries.
Tree is a critically acclaimed virtual reality experience to immerse viewers in the tragic fate that befalls a rainforest tree. The experience brings to light the harrowing realities of deforestation, one of the largest contributors to global warming.
For the Amazonian Yawanawa, ‘medicine’ has the power to travel you in a vision to a place you have never been. Hushuhu, the first woman shaman of the Yawanawa, uses VR like medicine to open a portal to another way of knowing. AWAVENAis a collaboration between a community and an artist, melding technology and transcendent experience so that a vision can be shared, and a story told of a people ascending from the edge of extinction.
Types of Virtual Reality Technology
We can segregate the type of Virtual Reality Technology according to their user experience
Non-Immersive Non-immersive simulations are the least immersion implementation of Virtual Reality Technology.
In this kind of simulation, only a subset of the user’s senses is replicated, allowing for marginal awareness of the reality outside the VR simulation. A user enters into 3D virtual environments through a portal or window by utilizing standard HD monitors typically found on conventional desktop workstations.
Semi Immersive In this simulation, users experience a more rich immersion, where a user partly, not fully involved in a virtual environment. Semi immersive simulations are based on high-performance graphical computing, which is often coupled with large screen projector systems or multiple TV projections to properly simulate the user’s visuals.
Fully immersive Offers the full immersive experience to the user of Virtual Reality Technology, in this phase of VR head-mounted displays and motion sensing devices are used to simulate all of the user senses. In this situation, a user can experience the realistic virtual environment, where a user can experience a wide view field, high resolutions, increased refresh rates and a high quality of visualization through HMD.
These workers already routinely use technology such as tablets to access plans and data on site, but going from 2D to 3D at scale brings that to a whole new level. “Superimposing the digital model on the physical environment provides a clear understanding of the relations between the 3D design model and the actual work on a jobsite,” explained Olivier Pellegrin, BIM manager, GA Smart Building.
The application they are using is called Trimble Connect. It turns data into 3D holograms, which are then mapped out to scale onto the real-world environment. This gives workers an instant sense of where and how various elements will fit and exposes mistakes early on in the process.
Also see:
Trimble Connect for HoloLens is a mixed reality solution that improves building coordination by combining models from multiple stakeholders such as structural, mechanical and electrical trade partners. The solution provides for precise alignment of holographic data on a 1:1 scale on the job site, to review models in the context of the physical environment. Predefined views from Trimble Connect further simplify in-field use with quick and easy access to immersive visualizations of 3D data. Users can leverage mixed reality for training purposes and to compare plans against work completed. Advanced visualization further enables users to view assigned tasks and capture data with onsite measurement tools. Trimble Connect for HoloLens is available now through the Microsoft Windows App Store. A free trial option is available enabling integration with HoloLens. Paid subscriptions support premium functionality allowing for precise on-site alignment and collaboration. Trimble’s Hard Hat Solution for Microsoft HoloLens extends the benefits of HoloLens mixed reality into areas where increased safety requirements are mandated, such as construction sites, offshore facilities, and mining projects. The solution, which is ANSI-approved, integrates the HoloLens holographic computer with an industry-standard hard hat. Trimble’s Hard Hat Solution for HoloLens is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2018. To learn more, visit mixedreality.trimble.com.
From DSC:
Combining voice recognition / Natural Language Processing (NLP) with Mixed Reality should provide some excellent, powerful user experiences. Doing so could also provide some real-time understanding as well as highlight potential issues in current designs. It will be interesting to watch this space develop. If there were an issue, wouldn’t it be great to remotely ask someone to update the design and then see the updated design in real-time? (Or might there be a way to make edits via one’s voice and/or with gestures?)
I could see where these types of technologies could come in handy when designing / enhancing learning spaces.
There’s been a lot of cool stuff happening lately around Augmented Reality (AR), and since I love exploring and having fun with new technologies, I thought I would see what I could do with AR and the Web?—?and it turns out I was able to do quite a lot!
Most AR demos are with static objects, like showing how you can display a cool model on a table, but AR really begins to shine when you start adding in animations!
With animated AR, your models come to life, and you can then start telling a story with them.
If you’re in the market for some art in your house or apartment, Art.com will now let you use AR to put digital artwork up on your wall.
The company’s ArtView feature is one of the few augmented reality features that actually adds a lot to the app it’s put in. With the ARKit-enabled tech, the artwork is accurately sized so you can get a perfect idea of how your next purchase could fit on your wall. The feature can be used for the two million pieces of art on the site and can be customized with different framing types.
Bailenson’s newest book, Experience on Demand, builds on that earlier work while focusing more clearly — even bluntly — on what we do and don’t know about how VR affects humans.
…
“The best way to use it responsibly is to be educated about what it is capable of, and to know how to use it — as a developer or a user — responsibly,” Bailenson wrote in the book.
Among the questions raised:
“How educationally effective are field trips in VR? What are the design principles that should guide these types of experiences?”
How many individuals are not meeting their potential because they lack the access to good instruction and learning tools?”
“When we consider that the subjects were made uncomfortable by the idea of administering fake electric shocks, what can we expect people will feel when they are engaging all sorts of fantasy violence and mayhem in virtual reality?”
“What is the effect of replacing social contact with virtual social contact over long periods of time?”
“How do we walk the line and leverage what is amazing about VR, without falling prey to the bad parts?”
Explore what’s next in learning spaces + design thinking that breaks the barriers of tradition and inspire innovation
Retool your learning environments with virtual & augmented reality
Connect your learning space design with strategic planning initiatives
Discover next generation learning solutions during our networking breaks
Overcome institutional and financial roadblocks to building active learning spaces
Redesign spaces with limited budgets
From DSC: I am honored to be serving on the Advisory Council for this conference with a great group of people. Missing — at least from my perspective — from the image below is Kristen Tadrous, Senior Program Director with the Corporate Learning Network. Kristen has done a great job these last few years planning and running this conference.
NOTE: The above graphic reflects a change for me. I am still an Adjunct Faculty Member at Calvin College, but I am no longer a Senior Instructional Designer there.
This national conference will be held in Los Angeles, CA on February 26-28, 2018. It is designed to help institutions of higher education develop highly-innovative cultures — something that’s needed in many institutions of traditional higher education right now.
I have attended the first 3 conferences and I moderated a panel at last year’s conference out in San Diego. I just want to say that this is a great conference and I encourage you to bring a group of people to it from your organization! I say a group of people because a group of 5 of us (from a variety of departments) went one year and the result of attending the NGLS Conference was a brand new Sandbox Classroom — an active-learning based, highly-collaborative learning space where faculty members can experiment with new pedagogies as well as with new technologies. The conference helped us discuss things as a diverse group, think out loud, come up with some innovative ideas, and then build the momentum to move forward with some of those key ideas.
If you haven’t already attended this conference, I highly recommend that you check it out.
“Rise of the machines” — from January 2018 edition of InAVate magazine AI is generating lots of buzz in other verticals, but what can AV learn from those? Tim Kridel reports.
From DSC: Learning spaces are relevant as well in the discussion of AI and AV-related items.
A full-width frosted glass panel sits on the desk surface, above it fixed in the ceiling is a Wolfvision VZ-C12 visualiser. This means the teaching staff can write on the (wipeclean) surface and the text appears directly on two 94-in screens behind them, using Christie short-throw laser 4,000 lumens projectors. When the lecturer is finished or has filled up the screen with text, the image can be saved on the intranet or via USB. Simply wipe with a cloth and start again. Not only is the technology inventive, but it allows the teaching staff to remain in face-to-face contact with the students at all times, instead of students having to stare at the back of the lecturer’s head whilst they write.
From Elliott Masie’s Learning TRENDS – January 3, 2018.
#986 – Updates on Learning, Business & Technology Since 1997.
2. Curation in Action – Meural Picture Frame of Endless Art.
What a cool Curation Holiday Gift that arrived. The Meural Picture Frame is an amazing digital display, 30 inches by 20 inches, that will display any of over 10,000 classical or modern paintings or photos from the world’s best museums.
A few minutes of setup to the WiFi and my Meural became a highly personalized museum in the living room. I selected collections of an era, a specific artist, a theme or used someone else’s art “playlist”.
It is curation at its best! A personalized and individualized selection from an almost limitless collection. Check it out at http://www.meural.com
Also see:
From DSC: As I understand it, you can upload your own artwork and photography into this platform. As such, couldn’t we put such devices/frames in schools?!
Wouldn’t it be great to have each classroom’s artwork available as a playlist?! And not just the current pieces, but archived pieces as well!
Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to walk down the hall and swish through a variety of pieces?
Wouldn’t such a dynamic, inspirational platform be a powerful source of creativity in our hallways? The frames could display the greatest works of art from around the world!
Wouldn’t such a platform give young/budding artists and photographers incentive to do their best work, knowing many others can see their creative works as a part of a playlist?
Wouldn’t it be cool to tap into such a service and treasure chest of artwork and photography via your Smart/Connected TV?
What is it?
A video wall is a large-scale ultra-resolution digital display that joins multiple display screens with minimal bezels to create what is essentially one large screen. While the multiple monitors can be tiled to display one large image, the technology also lends itself well to viewing multiple sources at one time. Video walls are linked via software to a computer or other media source. Video walls typically are arrayed as flat-screen planar displays; sometimes the walls are curved. Found in public spaces like stadiums and airports, video walls are increasingly used in higher education as tools for pedagogy and research. Sizes vary. One example consists of 24 HD displays tiled and connected to create a 50-million-pixel screen. Another example combines twelve 55-inch ultra-resolution LED screens. A video wall at Stanford University measures 16 x 9 feet while one at Georgia State University measures 24 feet wide.
…
What are the implications for teaching and learning?
Video walls help create a dynamic, interactive, hands-on educational environment that enhances research, encourages active learning, and bolsters collaboration between faculty and students. Used for visualization and modeling of large data sets, for example, this technology helps learners and researchers view in-put with different perspectives, helping them draw new conclusions and deeper analyses, and contributing to the development of new knowledge. Through that capacity, coupled with the immersive experience created by large-scale displays, video walls help learners bridge quantitative and qualitative methods, inter-disciplinary exploration, and diverse modes of inquiry to address complex questions across the arts and sciences.
How soon before teachers/professors/trainers can quickly reconfigure their rooms’ settings via their voices? For example, faculty members will likely soon be able to quickly establish lighting, volume levels, blinds, or other types of room setups with their voices. This could be in addition to the use of beacons and smartphones that automatically recognize who just walked into the room and how that person wants the room to be configured on startup.
This functionality is probably already here…I just don’t know about it yet.
