technology (general)

The 9 best online collaboration tools for remote workers [Kirkwood]

On 02/10/2018, in business, career development, collaboration, corporate / business world, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, project-based learning, technologies for your home, technology (general), telecommunications, tools, vendors, videoconferencing, web-based collaboration, workplace, by Daniel Christian

The 9 best online collaboration tools for remote workers — from invisionapp.com by Jes Kirkwood

Excerpts:

With this in mind, we asked remote workers from companies like Treehouse, Help Scout, Zapier, Buffer, and Zest to share their favorite online collaboration tools. Here’s what they said.

Slack: The best team communication app
Zoom: The best video conferencing app
InVision: The best design collaboration app
GitHub: The best software development tool
Trello: The best project management software
Dashlane: The best password manager
Google Drive: The best file management app
Zapier: Workflow automation for business
World Time Buddy: Time converter for distributed teams

The Implications of Gartner’s Top 10 Tech Trends of 2018 for Education — from gettingsmart.com by Jim Goodell, Liz Glowa and Brandt Redd

Excerpt:

In October, Gartner released a report with predictions about the top tech trends for business in 2018. Gartner uses the term the intelligent digital mesh to describe “the entwining of people, devices, content and services” that will create the “foundation for the next generation of digital business models and ecosystems.” These trends are classified within three categories.

Intelligent: How AI is seeping into virtually every technology and with a defined, well-scoped focus can allow more dynamic, flexible and potentially autonomous systems.
Digital: Blending the virtual and real worlds to create an immersive digitally enhanced and connected environment.
Mesh: The connections between an expanding set of people, business, devices, content and services to deliver digital outcomes.

What are the implications of these trends for education?
Education often falls behind the business world in realizing the potential of new technologies. There are however a few bright spots where the timing might be right for the tech trends in the business world to have a positive impact in education sooner rather than later.

The top 10 trends according to Gartner are analyzed below for their implications for education…
…
1) Artificial Intelligence Foundation
2) Intelligent Apps and Analytics
3) Intelligent Things

What these firms all have in common are powerful digital platforms that provide the scale and scope to expand into new growth markets and geographies at speeds never before possible.

From DSC:
To me, the item below provides another example of the exponential pace of change that we are beginning to experience:

Corporate Longevity Forecast: The Pace of Creative Destruction is Accelerating — from innosight.com by Scott Anthony, S. Patrick Viguerie, Evan Schwartz and John Van Landeghem

Excerpt/Executive Summary:

Few companies are immune to the forces of creative destruction. Our corporate longevity forecast of S&P 500 companies anticipates average tenure on the list growing shorter and shorter over the next decade.

Key insights include:

The 33-year average tenure of companies on the S&P 500 in 1964 narrowed to 24 years by 2016 and is forecast to shrink to just 12 years by 2027 (Chart 1).
Record private equity activity, a robust M&A market, and the growth of startups with billion-dollar valuations are leading indicators of future turbulence.
A gale force warning to leaders: at the current churn rate, about half of S&P 500 companies will be replaced over the next ten years.
Retailers were especially hit hard by disruptive forces, and there are strong signs of restructuring in financial services, healthcare, energy, travel, and real estate.
The turbulence points to the need for companies to embrace a dual transformation, to focus on changing customer needs, and other strategic interventions.

…
Are Corporations Ready for Increased Turbulence?

Viewed as a larger picture, S&P 500 turnover serves as a barometer for marketplace change. Shrinking lifespans of companies on the list are in part driven by a complex combination of technology shifts and economic shocks, some of which are beyond the control of corporate leaders. But frequently, companies miss opportunities to adapt or take advantage of these changes. For example, they continue to apply existing business models to new markets, are slow to respond to disruptive competitors in low-profit segments, or fail to adequately envision and invest in new growth areas which often takes a decade or longer to pay off.

At the same time, we’ve seen the rise of other companies take their place on the list by creating new products, business models, and serving new customers. Some of the market forces driving these exits and entries include the mass disruption in retail, the rising dominance of digital technology platforms, the downward pressure on energy prices, strength in global travel and real estate, as well as the failure of stock buyback efforts to improve performance.

The NEW Periodic Table of iOS Apps for AR and VR — from ictevangelist.com by Mark Anderson

You can download a high-quality version of the table here.

Lenovo is including its standalone Daydream headset in classroom VR kits starting this Spring — from 9to5google.com by Ben Schoon

Our Screenless Future Calls For Augmented Parenting — from fastcompany.com by Anya Kamenetz
How will parents manage their children’s screen time when there are no screens?

8 ways augmented and virtual reality are changing medicine — from israel21c.org by Abigail Klein Leichman
Israeli companies are using futuristic technologies to simplify complex surgery, manage rehab, relieve pain, soothe autistic kids and much more.

Augmented reality system lets doctors see under patients’ skin without the scalpel — from ualberta.ca by Katie Willis
New technology lets clinicians see patients’ internal anatomy displayed right on the body.

27 Mixed Reality (MR / AR) Influencers to Follow in 2018 — from by Mark Metry
Influencers to Follow in 2018

DAQRI Founder’s Passionate TED Talk on Potential Impact of Augmented Reality Gets Personal — from augmented.reality.news by Adario Strange

In-demand skills for 2018 [linkedin]

On 01/11/2018, in business, career development, collaboration, communications, computer science, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, leadership, Microsoft, programming, society, staying relevant, student-related, technology (general), workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

The Skills Companies Need Most in 2018 – And The Courses to Get Them — from linkedin.com by Paul Petrone

Excerpt:

Using a combination of LinkedIn data and survey results, we determined both the soft and the hard skills companies need most. And then we provided LinkedIn Learning courses that teach those skills, which we’ve made free for all of January 2018.

Enjoy. Learning these skills will help you stay ahead of change and make the most of all that opportunity in 2018.

Also see:

LinkedIn Data Reveals the Most Promising Jobs and In-Demand Skills of 2018 — from linkedin.com by Rachel Bowley

Excerpt:

As we enter 2018 it’s become clear that the jobs landscape in the United States is changing. How people are thinking about their careers and how they define success is changing. The rise of technology across every industry has created a flurry of new jobs and associated skills (and these aren’t necessarily all tech roles). While we all may take a different approach to reach our own definition of success, we’ve compiled a list of the most promising jobs and in-demand skills, plus a few stand-out trends, to help you get there.

The Trends

You don’t need to be technical to be successful. Despite the prominence of technical jobs and skills, soft skills like management, leadership, and strategy are equally as important. The proof is in the data: we surveyed 2,000 business leaders who told us the soft skills most in-demand are leadership, communication, collaboration, and time management. In fact, 57% of them said these soft skills are more important than hard skills.
Customer is king. As we saw in our Emerging Jobs Report, as a side effect of the technology boom, customer success, marketing, and sales-related jobs are growing quickly. Reaching potential customers and ensuring current customers are successful with your product are both critical for business success.
Technology is here to stay. Year-over-year technology jobs and skills have dominated these lists, and that’s a trend that’s likely here to stay. All jobs are likely going to require some technical skills in the future, so make sure to brush up on the basics.

DC: Reflections on “TV is (finally) an app: The goods, the bads and the uglies for learning” [Norris & Soloway]

On 01/11/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, analytics, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, communities of practice, content development, aggregation, repositories, convergence, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, digital video, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, more voice more choice more control, multimedia, Natural Language Processing (NLP), RSS, second screen apps, social learning / networks, society, staying relevant, streams of content, student-related, teachers, teaching online, technologies for your home, technology (general), television, tools, training / L&D, trends, user experience (UX), videoconferencing, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, web-based collaboration, webinars, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

TV is (finally) an app: The goods, the bads and the uglies for learning — from thejournal.com by Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway

Excerpts:

Television. TV. There’s an app for that. Finally! TV — that is, live shows such as the news, specials, documentaries (and reality shows, if you must) — is now just like Candy Crunch and Facebook. TV apps (e.g., DirecTV Now) are available on all devices — smartphones, tablets, laptops, Chromebooks. Accessing streams upon streams of videos is, literally, now just a tap away.

…

Plain and simple: readily accessible video can be a really valuable resource for learners and learning.

…

Not everything that needs to be learned is on video. Instruction will need to balance the use of video with the use of printed materials. That balance, of course, needs to take in cost and accessibility.

…

Now for the 800 pound gorilla in the room: Of course, that TV app could be a huge distraction in the classroom. The TV app has just piled yet another classroom management challenge onto a teacher’s back.

…

That said, it is early days for TV as an app. For example, HD (High Definition) TV demands high bandwidth — and we can experience stuttering/skipping at times. But, when 5G comes around in 2020, just two years from now, POOF, that stuttering/skipping will disappear. “5G will be as much as 1,000 times faster than 4G.” Yes, POOF!

From DSC:
Learning via apps is here to stay. “TV” as apps is here to stay. But what’s being described here is but one piece of the learning ecosystem that will be built over the next 5-15 years and will likely be revolutionary in its global impact on how people learn and grow. There will be opportunities for social-based learning, project-based learning, and more — with digital video being a component of the ecosystem, but is and will be insufficient to completely move someone through all of the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

I will continue to track this developing learning ecosystem, but voice-driven personal assistants are already here. Algorithm-based recommendations are already here. Real-time language translation is already here. The convergence of the telephone/computer/television continues to move forward. AI-based bots will only get better in the future. Tapping into streams of up-to-date content will continue to move forward. Blockchain will likely bring us into the age of cloud-based learner profiles. And on and on it goes.

We’ll still need teachers, professors, and trainers. But this vision WILL occur. It IS where things are heading. It’s only a matter of time.

CES 2018 preview [JWT Intelligence]

On 01/05/2018, in health, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, society, technology (general), voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, by Daniel Christian

CES 2018 preview — from jwtintelligence.com

Excerpt:

The Innovation Group rounds up a preview of what’s in store at CES.

Next week, the electronics industry will descend on Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show, the country’s top showcase for technology and innovation. Vendors will show off everything from new gadgets (drones, TVs) to the future of cities and transportation (smart robots, self-driving cars).

What can attendees expect from this year’s CES? And what trends will rise to the top this year? Below, the Innovation Group rounds up our top picks.

This year, expect to see more enhanced voice and image recognition technology, allowing seamless interactions between consumer, lifestyle and retail.

Top 10 Technology Trends for 2018: IEEE Computer Society Predicts the Future of Tech

On 01/02/2018, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Blockchain, bots, career development, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, computer science, data related items, ethics, legislatures / government / legal, morals/values, robotics, technology (general), Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, by Daniel Christian

Top 10 Technology Trends for 2018: IEEE Computer Society Predicts the Future of Tech — from computer.org

Excerpts:

The top 10 technology trends predicted to reach adoption in 2018 are:

Deep learning (DL)
Digital currencies.
Blockchain.
Industrial IoT.
Robotics.
Assisted transportation.
Assisted reality and virtual reality (AR/VR).
Ethics, laws, and policies for privacy, security, and liability.
Accelerators and 3D.
Cybersecurity and AI.

Existing Technologies: We did not include the following technologies in our top 10 list as we assume that they have already experienced broad adoption:

A. Data science
B. “Cloudification”
C. Smart cities
D. Sustainability
E. IoT/edge computing

Also relevant/see:

Five Trends for Voice Assistants in 2018 — from chatbotsmagazine.com by Gillian Armstrong
It’s going to be an interesting year…

18 striking AI Trends to watch in 2018 – Part 1 as well as 18 striking AI Trends to watch in 2018 – Part 2 — from datahub.packtpub.com by Sugandha Lahoti

Excerpt:

Artificial Intelligence is the talk of the town. It has evolved past merely being a buzzword in 2016, to be used in a more practical manner in 2017. As 2018 rolls out, we will gradually notice AI transitioning into a necessity. We have prepared a detailed report, on what we can expect from AI in the upcoming year. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride through the future. (Don’t forget to wear your VR headgear! )

Here are 18 things that will happen in 2018 that are either AI driven or driving AI:

Artificial General Intelligence may gain major traction in research.
We will turn to AI enabled solution to solve mission-critical problems.
Machine Learning adoption in business will see rapid growth.
Safety, ethics, and transparency will become an integral part of AI application design conversations.
Mainstream adoption of AI on mobile devices
Major research on data efficient learning methods
AI personal assistants will continue to get smarter
Race to conquer the AI optimized hardware market will heat up further
We will see closer AI integration into our everyday lives.
The cryptocurrency hype will normalize and pave way for AI-powered Blockchain applications.
Advancements in AI and Quantum Computing will share a symbiotic relationship18 striking AI Trends to watch in 2018 – Part 1
Deep learning will continue to play a significant role in AI development progress.
AI will be on both sides of the cybersecurity challenge.
Augmented reality content will be brought to smartphones.
Reinforcement learning will be applied to a large number of real-world situations.
Robotics development will be powered by Deep Reinforcement learning and Meta-learning
Rise in immersive media experiences enabled by AI.
A large number of organizations will use Digital Twin.

Inside AI — from inside.com
The year 2017 has been full of interesting news about Artificial Intelligence, so to close out the year, we’re doing two special retrospective issues covering the highlights.

Excerpt:

A Reality Check For IBM’s A.I. Ambitions. MIT Tech Review.
This is a must read piece about the failures, and continued promise, of Watson. Some of the press about Watson has made IBM appear behind some of the main tech leaders, but, keep in mind that Google, Amazon, Facebook, and others don’t do the kinds of customer facing projects IBM is doing with Watson. When you look at how the tech giants are positioned, I think IBM has been vastly underestimated, given that they have the one thing few others do – large scale enterprise A.I. projects. Whether it all works today, or not, doesn’t matter. The experience and expertise they are building is a competitive advantage in a market that is very young where no other companies are doing these types of projects that will soon enough be mainstream.

The Business of Artificial Intelligence. Harvard Business Review.
This cover story for the latest edition of HBR explains why artificial intelligence is the most powerful general purpose technology to come around in a long time. It also looks into some of the key ways to think about applying A.I. at work, and how to expect the next phase of this technology to play out.

The Robot Revolution Is Coming. Just Be Patient. Bloomberg.
We keep hearing that robots and A.I. are about to make us super productive. But when? Sooner than we think, according to this.

An excerpt from A2Apple.com:

Alexa Wants You to Talk to Your Ads — from wired.com by Ricki Harris

Excerpt:

There are few electronic devices with which you cannot order a Domino’s pizza. When the craving hits, you can place an order via Twitter, Slack, Facebook Messenger, SMS, your tablet, your smartwatch, your smart TV, and even your app-enabled Ford. This year, the pizza monger added another ordering tool: If your home is one of the 20 million with a voice assistant, you can place a regular order through Alexa or Google Home. Just ask for a large extra-cheese within earshot, and voila—your pizza is in the works.

Amazon’s Alexa offers more than 25,000 skills—the set of actions that serve as applications for voice technology. Yet Domino’s is one of a relatively small number of brands that has seized the opportunity to enter your home by creating a skill of its own. Now that Amazon Echoes and Google Homes are in kitchens and living rooms across the country, they open a window into user behavior that marketers previously only dreamt of. But brands’ efforts to engage consumers directly via voice have been scattershot. The list of those that have tried is sparse: some banks; a couple of fast food chains; a few beauty companies; retailers here and there. Building a marketing plan for Alexa has been a risky venture. That’s because, when it comes to our virtual assistants, no one knows what the *&^& is going on.

But if 2017 was the year that Alexa hit the mainstream, 2018 will be the year that advertisers begin to take her seriously by investing time and money in figuring out how to make use of her.

8 emerging AI jobs for IT pros — from enterprisersproject.com by Kevin Casey
What IT jobs will be hot in the age of AI? Take a sneak peek at roles likely to be in demand

Excerpt:

If you’re watching the impact of artificial intelligence on the IT organization, your interest probably starts with your own job. Can robots do what you do? But more importantly, you want to skate where the puck is headed. What emerging IT roles will AI create? We talked to AI and IT career experts to get a look at some emerging roles that will be valuable in the age of AI.

Getting Intelligent About Artificial Intelligence: 6 Ways Executives Can Start — from forbes.comby Davia Temin

Excerpt:

This past June, Fortune Magazine asked all the CEOs of the Fortune 500 what they believed the biggest challenge facing their companies was. Their biggest concern for 2017: “The rapid pace of technological change” said 73% of those polled, up from 64% in 2016. Cyber security came in only a far second, at 61%, even after all the mega hacks of the past year.

So, what does “technological change” entail? For almost all Fortune 500 CEOs, it means, in part, artificial intelligence. And, as we wrote in our piece yesterday on Forbes.com, “Forget The Hype: What Every Business Leader Needs To Know About Artificial Intelligence Now,” AI is on the lips of almost every global CEO and Board of Directors.

But apart from the Big 8 technology companies – Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba – business leaders, especially of earlier generations, may feel they don’t know enough about AI to make informed decisions.

Artificial intelligence is helping astronomers discover new planets — from wired.co.uk
AI could help us discover planet nine, dark matter and more gravitational waves

Excerpt:

For the first time, artificial intelligence has been used to discover two new exoplanets. One of the discoveries, made by Nasa’s Kepler mission, brings the Kepler-90 solar system to a total of 8 planets – the first solar system found with the same number as our own.

DC: The next generation learning platform will likely offer us such virtual reality-enabled learning experiences such as this “flight simulator for teachers.”

On 12/22/2017, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, active learning, adult learning, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Blockchain, bots, business, business side of he, career development, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, convergence, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, immersion, informal learning, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, K-12 related, languages and translation, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, learning spaces, lifelong learning, multimedia, Natural Language Processing (NLP), online learning, participation, pedagogy, personalized/customized learning, platforms, second screen apps, simulations, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, technology (general), television, tools, training / L&D, transmedia, TVs, ubiquitous learning, universities, user experience (UX), virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Virtual reality simulates classroom environment for aspiring teachers — from phys.org by Charles Anzalone, University at Buffalo

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Two University at Buffalo education researchers have teamed up to create an interactive classroom environment in which state-of-the-art virtual reality simulates difficult student behavior, a training method its designers compare to a “flight simulator for teachers.”

The new program, already earning endorsements from teachers and administrators in an inner-city Buffalo school, ties into State University of New York Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher’s call for innovative teaching experiences and “immersive” clinical experiences and teacher preparation.
…
The training simulator Lamb compared to a teacher flight simulator uses an emerging computer technology known as virtual reality. Becoming more popular and accessible commercially, virtual reality immerses the subject in what Lamb calls “three-dimensional environments in such a way where that environment is continuous around them.” An important characteristic of the best virtual reality environments is a convincing and powerful representation of the imaginary setting.

Also related/see:

How Virtual Reality Is Helping Train New Teachers — from edweek.org by Liana Loewus

TeachLive.org
TLE TeachLivE™ is a mixed-reality classroom with simulated students that provides teachers the opportunity to develop their pedagogical practice in a safe environment that doesn’t place real students at risk. This lab is currently the only one in the country using a mixed reality environment to prepare or retrain pre-service and in-service teachers. The use of TLE TeachLivE™ Lab has also been instrumental in developing transition skills for students with significant disabilities, providing immediate feedback through bug-in-ear technology to pre-service teachers, developing discrete trial skills in pre-service and in-service teachers, and preparing teachers in the use of STEM-related instructional strategies.

Virtual reality lessons can help students become better real-life teachers — from news.psu.edu by Jim Carlson

10 amazing virtual museum tours — from virtualiteach.com

Classroom Simulator at University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education

This start-up uses virtual reality to get your kids excited about learning chemistry — from Lora Kolodny and Erin Black

MEL Science raised $2.2 million in venture funding to bring virtual reality chemistry lessons to schools in the U.S.
Eighty-two percent of science teachers surveyed in the U.S. believe virtual reality content can help their students master their subjects.

This start-up uses virtual reality to get your kids excited about learning chemistry from CNBC.

From DSC:
It will be interesting to see all the “places” we will be able to go and interact within — all from the comfort of our living rooms! Next generation simulators should be something else for teaching/learning & training-related purposes!!!

The next gen learning platform will likely offer such virtual reality-enabled learning experiences, along with voice recognition/translation services and a slew of other technologies — such as AI, blockchain*, chatbots, data mining/analytics, web-based learner profiles, an online-based marketplace supported by the work of learning-based free agents, and others — running in the background. All of these elements will work to offer us personalized, up-to-date learning experiences — helping each of us stay relevant in the marketplace as well as simply enabling us to enjoy learning about new things.

But the potentially disruptive piece of all of this is that this next generation learning platform could create an Amazon.com of what we now refer to as “higher education.” It could just as easily serve as a platform for offering learning experiences for learners in K-12 as well as the corporate learning & development space.

I’m tracking these developments at:
http://danielschristian.com/thelivingclassroom/

* Also see:

Blockchain, Bitcoin and the Tokenization of Learning — from edsurge.com by Sydney Johnson

Excerpt:

In 2014, Kings College in New York became the first university in the U.S. to accept Bitcoin for tuition payments, a move that seemed more of a PR stunt than the start of some new movement. Much has changed since then, including the value of Bitcoin itself, which skyrocketed to more than $19,000 earlier this month, catapulting cryptocurrencies into the mainstream.

A handful of other universities (and even preschools) now accept Bitcoin for tuition, but that’s hardly the extent of how blockchains and tokens are weaving their way into education: Educators and edtech entrepreneurs are now testing out everything from issuing degrees on the blockchain to paying people in cryptocurrency for their teaching.

The 10 Most Exciting Digital Health Stories of 2017 [Mesko]

On 12/21/2017, in 3D, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, health, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, Microsoft, robotics, technology (general), user experience (UX), vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, wearables, by Daniel Christian

The 10 Most Exciting Digital Health Stories of 2017 — from medicalfuturist.com by Dr. Bertalan Mesko
Gene-edited human embryo. Self-driving trucks. Practical quantum computers. 2017 has been an exciting year for science, technology – and digital health! It’s that time of the year again when it’s worth looking back at the past months; and list the inventions, methods and milestone events in healthcare to get a clearer picture what will shape medicine for the years to come.

Excerpt:

Medical chatbots and health assistants on the rise
Chatbots, A.I. supported messaging apps or voice controlled bots are forecasted to replace simple messaging apps soon. In healthcare, they could help solve easily diagnosable health concerns or support patient management, e.g. general organizational issues. In the last months, several signs have pointed to the direction that a more widespread use is forthcoming.

Ada Health has been the fastest growing medical app in Europe in 2017. Over 1.5 million people already tried the health companion app, which is able to assess the user’s health based on the indicated symptoms using its vast, A.I.-based database. The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) started to use a chatbot app for dispensing medical advice for a trial period in 2017, with the aim of reducing the burden on its 111 non-emergency helplines. The NHS is developing the app with Babylon Health, one of the new breed of paid, doctor-on-demand services. Although the initial results how patients utilize the new resource show somewhat mixed achievements, I believe, this is the way to go in the future.

Some predictions for 2018: Learning-wise & tech-wise

On 12/20/2017, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, accessibility / UDL, Amazon, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assistive technologies, Blockchain, bots, business, career development, change, CMS/LMS, collaboration, communications, corporate / business world, data related items, education technology, emerging technologies, future, future of higher education, Google, health, higher education, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, online learning, pace of change, robotics, social media, society, technology (general), trends, United States, universities, vendors, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

eLearning: Predictions for 2018 — from news.elearninginside.com by Cait Etherington

Excerpts:

The educational technology sector grew substantially in 2017 and all signs point to even greater growth in 2018. Over the past year, the sector was buoyed by several key factors, including a growing recognition that as big data restructures work at an unprecedented pace, there is an urgent need to rethink how education is delivered. In fact, there is now growing evidence that colleges and universities, especially if they continue to operate as they have in the past, will simply not be able to produce the workers needed to fill tomorrow’s jobs. Ed tech, with its capacity to make education more affordable, flexible, and relevant, is increasingly being embraced as the answer to the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s growing talent pipeline challenges.

…

K-12 virtual schools will become a preferred choice
Voice-activation will transform the Learning Management System (LMS) sector
Data will drive learning
Higher ed will increase online course and program offerings

12 tech trends that will define 2018 — from businessinsider.com by Chris Weller

Excerpts:

No one can predict how the future will shake out, but we can make some educated guesses.

Global design and strategy firm frog has shared with Business Insider its forecasts for the technologies that will define the upcoming year. Last year, the firm correctly predicted that buildings would harness the power of nature and that businesses would continue using artificially-intelligent bots to run efficiently.

Get ready to step into the future.

Artificial intelligence will inspire how products are designed
Other companies will join Google in the ‘Algorithm Hall of Fame’
Virtual and augmented reality will become communal experiences
Democracy will cozy up to the blockchain
Augmented reality will invite questions about intellectual property
Consumer tech will feel even friendlier
Tech will become inclusive for all
Anonymous data will make life smarter but still private
Ultra-tiny robots will replace medicine for certain patients
The way we get around will fundamentally transform
Businesses will use data and machine learning to cater to customers
Social media will take on more corporate responsibility

Education must transform to make people ready for AI — from ft.com by Jo Owen
Schools will need to teach know-how, not know-what

Excerpts:

A recent study by Oxford university estimates that nearly half of all jobs in the US are at risk from automation and computers in the next 20 years. While advancing technologies have been endangering jobs since the start of the Industrial Revolution, this time it is not just manual posts: artificial intelligence — the so-called fourth industrial revolution — promises to change the shape of professional work as well.

For instance, lawtech is already proving adept at sorting and analysing legal documents far faster and more cheaply than junior lawyers can. Similarly, routine tasks in accounting are succumbing to AI at the expense of more junior staff.

The next generation will need a new set of skills to survive, let alone thrive, in an AI world. Literacy, numeracy, science and languages are all important, but they share one thing in common: computers are going to be far better than humans at processing these forms of explicit knowledge. The risk is that the education system will be churning out humans who are no more than second-rate computers, so if the focus of education continues to be on transferring explicit knowledge across the generations, we will be in trouble.

…

The AI challenge is not just about educating more AI and computer experts, although that is important. It is also about building skills that AI cannot emulate. These are essential human skills such as teamwork, leadership, listening, staying positive, dealing with people and managing crises and conflict.

Evaluation and league tables are a barrier to success — you get what you measure in education as much as you do in business.

From DSC:
“Teamwork, leadership, listening, staying positive, dealing with people and managing crises and conflict.” Do our standardized tests measure these types of things? No, I agree with you. They don’t. They measure “know-what skills.”

“We are doubling down on the idea that if we get children to know things and regurgitate them in a certain way in an exam, then we are setting them up for success in life.”

Tom Ravenscroft

Also see:

Capitalism that Works for Everyone — from gettingsmart.com by Tom Vander Ark

Excerpts:

Inequality Gets Worse From Here
Our new report on the future of work and learning illustrated how the combination of artificial intelligence, big data and enabling technologies like robotics are changing the employment landscape fast.

…

Our new paper on the future of work and learning suggests a couple solutions…

High-Tech, High Touch: Digital Learning Report and Workbook, 2017 Edition — from Intentional Futures, with thanks to Maria Andersen on Linkedin for her posting therein which was entitled, “Spectrums to Measure Digital Learning”
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Our work uncovered five high-tech strategies employed by institutions that have successfully implemented digital learning at scale across a range of modalities. The strategies that underscore the high-tech, high-touch connection are customizing through technology, leveraging adaptive courseware, adopting cost-efficient resources, centralizing course development and making data-driven decisions.

Although many of the institutions we studied are employing more than one of these strategies, in this report we have grouped the institutional use cases according to the strategy that has been most critical to achieving digital learning at scale. As institutional leaders make their way through this document, they should watch for strategies that target challenges similar to those they hope to solve. Reading the corresponding case studies will unpack how institutions employed these strategies effectively.

…

Digital learning in higher education is becoming more ubiquitous as institutions realize its ability to support student success and empower faculty. Growing diversity in student demographics has brought related changes in student needs, prompting institutions to look to technology to better serve their students. Digital courseware gives institutions the ability to build personalized, accessible and engaging content. It enables educators to provide relevant content and interventions for individual students, improve instructional techniques based on data and distribute knowledge to a wider audience (MIT Office of Digital Learning, 2017).

PARTICIPATION IN DIGITAL LEARNING IS GROWING
Nationally, the number of students engaged in digital learning is growing rapidly. One driver of this growth is rising demand for distance learning, which often relies on digital learning environments. Distance learning programs saw enrollment increases of approximately 4% between 2015 and 2016, with nearly 30% of higher education students taking at least one digital distance learning course (Allen, 2017). Much of this growth is occurring at the undergraduate level (Allen, 2017). The number of students who take distance learning courses exclusively is growing as well. Between 2012 and 2015, both public and private nonprofit institutions saw an increase in students taking only distance courses, although private, for-profit institutions have seen a decrease (Allen, 2017).

Plan now to attend the 2018 Next Generation Learning Spaces Conference — tour USC’s campus!

On 11/09/2017, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, adjunct faculty, adult learning, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assessment, attention, Augmented Reality (AR), Blockchain, bots, change, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, distance education, education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, faculty/staff, future of higher education, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), hybrid learning, ideas, innovation, IT in HE, K-12 related, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, learning spaces, learning theories, liberal arts, lifelong learning, maker movement, Mixed Reality (MR), mobile learning, mobile technologies, multimedia, online learning, pedagogy, personalized/customized learning, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, reinvent, smart classrooms, social learning / networks, staying relevant, student-related, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, technology (general), tools, traditional / tradition, trends, United States, universities, user experience (UX), vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, visualizing information, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
I am honored to be currently serving on the 2018 Advisory Council for the Next Generation Learning Spaces 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 recent change for me. I am still an Adjunct Faculty Member
at Calvin College, but I am no longer a Senior Instructional Designer there.
My brand is centered around being an Instructional Technologist.

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 the most recent conference out in San Diego back in February/March of this year. 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 load, 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. You can obtain the agenda/brochure for the conference by providing some basic contact information here.

Per Kristen Tadrous, here’s why you want to check out USC:

A true leader in innovation: USC made it to the Top 20 of Reuter’s 100 Most Innovative Universities in 2017!
Detailed guided tour of leading spaces led by the Information Technology Services Learning Environments team
Benchmark your own learning environments by getting a ‘behind the scenes’ look at their state-of-the-art spaces
There are only 30 spots available for the site tour

Building Spaces to Inspire a Culture of Innovation — a core theme at the 4^th Next Generation Learning Spaces summit, taking place this February 26-28 in Los Angeles. An invaluable opportunity to meet and hear from like-minded peers in higher education, and continue your path toward lifelong learning. #ngls2018 http://bit.ly/2yNkMLL

Learning Ecosystems

The 9 best online collaboration tools for remote workers [Kirkwood]

By 2027: Avg tenure of co’s on the S&P 500 will be just 12 years! DC: To me, another example of the exponential pace of change that we’re beginning to experience

CES 2018 preview [JWT Intelligence]

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