technology (general)

From DSC:
The pace of technological development is moving extremely fast; the ethical, legal, and moral questions are trailing behind it (as is normally the case). But this exponential pace continues to bring some questions, concerns, and thoughts to my mind. For example:

What kind of future do we want?
Just because we can, should we?
Who is going to be able to weigh in on the future direction of some of these developments?
If we follow the trajectories of some of these pathways, where will these trajectories take us? For example, if many people are out of work, how are they going to purchase the products and services that the robots are building?

These and other questions arise when you look at the articles below.

This is the 8th part of a series of postings regarding this matter.
The other postings are in the Ethics section.

Robot companions are coming into our homes – so how human should they be? — from theconversation.com

Excerpt:

What would your ideal robot be like? One that can change nappies and tell bedtime stories to your child? Perhaps you’d prefer a butler that can polish silver and mix the perfect cocktail? Or maybe you’d prefer a companion that just happened to be a robot? Certainly, some see robots as a hypothetical future replacement for human carers. But a question roboticists are asking is: how human should these future robot companions be?

A companion robot is one that is capable of providing useful assistance in a socially acceptable manner. This means that a robot companion’s first goal is to assist humans. Robot companions are mainly developed to help people with special needs such as older people, autistic children or the disabled. They usually aim to help in a specific environment: a house, a care home or a hospital.

The Next President Will Decide the Fate of Killer Robots—and the Future of War – from wired.com by Heather Roff and P.W. Singer

Excerpt:

The next president will have a range of issues on their plate, from how to deal with growing tensions with China and Russia, to an ongoing war against ISIS. But perhaps the most important decision they will make for overall human history is what to do about autonomous weapons systems (AWS), aka “killer robots.” The new president will literally have no choice. It is not just that the technology is rapidly advancing, but because of a ticking time bomb buried in US policy on the issue.

Your new manager will be an algorithm — from stevebrownfuturist.com

Excerpt:

It sounds like a line from a science fiction novel, but many of us are already managed by algorithms, at least for part of our days. In the future, most of us will be managed by algorithms and the vast majority of us will collaborate daily with intelligent technologies including robots, autonomous machines and algorithms.

Algorithms for task management
Many workers at UPS are already managed by algorithms. It is an algorithm that tells the humans the optimal way to pack the back of the delivery truck with packages. The algorithm essentially plays a game of “temporal Tetris” with the parcels and packs them to optimize for space and for the planned delivery route–packages that are delivered first are towards the front, packages for the end of the route are placed at the back.

Beware of biases in machine learning: One CTO explains why it happens — from enterprisersproject.com by Minda Zetlin

Excerpt:

The Enterprisers Project (TEP): Machines are genderless, have no race, and are in and of themselves free of bias. How does bias creep in?

Sharp: To understand how bias creeps in you first need to understand the difference between programming in the traditional sense and machine learning. With programming in the traditional sense, a programmer analyses a problem and comes up with an algorithm to solve it (basically an explicit sequence of rules and steps). The algorithm is then coded up, and the computer executes the programmer’s defined rules accordingly.

With machine learning, it’s a bit different. Programmers don’t solve a problem directly by analyzing it and coming up with their rules. Instead, they just give the computer access to an extensive real-world dataset related to the problem they want to solve. The computer then figures out how best to solve the problem by itself.

Technology vs. Humanity – The coming clash between man and machine — from futuristgerd.com by Gerd Leonhard

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

In his latest book ‘Technology vs. Humanity’, futurist Gerd Leonhard once again breaks new ground by bringing together mankind’s urge to upgrade and automate everything (including human biology itself) with our timeless quest for freedom and happiness.

Before it’s too late, we must stop and ask the big questions: How do we embrace technology without becoming it? When it happens—gradually, then suddenly—the machine era will create the greatest watershed in human life on Earth.

Digital transformation has migrated from the mainframe to the desktop to the laptop to the smartphone, wearables and brain-computer interfaces. Before it moves to the implant and the ingestible insert, Gerd Leonhard makes a last-minute clarion call for an honest debate and a more philosophical exchange.

Ethics: Taming our technologies
The Ethics of Invention: Technology and the Human Future — from nature.com by Sheila Jasanoff

Excerpt:

Technological innovation in fields from genetic engineering to cyberwarfare is accelerating at a breakneck pace, but ethical deliberation over its implications has lagged behind. Thus argues Sheila Jasanoff — who works at the nexus of science, law and policy — in The Ethics of Invention, her fresh investigation. Not only are our deliberative institutions inadequate to the task of oversight, she contends, but we fail to recognize the full ethical dimensions of technology policy. She prescribes a fundamental reboot.

Ethics in innovation has been given short shrift, Jasanoff says, owing in part to technological determinism, a semi-conscious belief that innovation is intrinsically good and that the frontiers of technology should be pushed as far as possible. This view has been bolstered by the fact that many technological advances have yielded financial profit in the short term, even if, like the ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons once used as refrigerants, they have proved problematic or ruinous in the longer term.

Robotics is coming faster than you think — from forbes.com by Kevin O’Marah

Excerpt:

This week, The Wall Street Journal featured a well-researched article on China’s push to shift its factory culture away from labor and toward robots. Reasons include a rise in labor costs, the flattening and impending decrease in worker population and falling costs of advanced robotics technology.

Left unsaid was whether this is part of a wider acceleration in the digital takeover of work worldwide. It is.

Adidas will open an automated, robot-staffed factory next year — from businessinsider.com

Beyond Siri, the next-generation AI assistants are smarter specialists — from fastcompany.com by Jared Newman
SRI wants to produce chatbots with deep knowledge of specific topics like banking and auto repair.

Machine learning
Of prediction and policy — from economist.com
Governments have much to gain from applying algorithms to public policy, but controversies loom

Excerpt:

FOR frazzled teachers struggling to decide what to watch on an evening off (DC insert: a rare event indeed), help is at hand. An online streaming service’s software predicts what they might enjoy, based on the past choices of similar people. When those same teachers try to work out which children are most at risk of dropping out of school, they get no such aid. But, as Sendhil Mullainathan of Harvard University notes, these types of problem are alike. They require predictions based, implicitly or explicitly, on lots of data. Many areas of policy, he suggests, could do with a dose of machine learning.

Machine-learning systems excel at prediction. A common approach is to train a system by showing it a vast quantity of data on, say, students and their achievements. The software chews through the examples and learns which characteristics are most helpful in predicting whether a student will drop out. Once trained, it can study a different group and accurately pick those at risk. By helping to allocate scarce public funds more accurately, machine learning could save governments significant sums. According to Stephen Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard and a former mayor of Indianapolis, it could also transform almost every sector of public policy.
…
But the case for code is not always clear-cut. Many American judges are given “risk assessments”, generated by software, which predict the likelihood of a person committing another crime. These are used in bail, parole and (most controversially) sentencing decisions. But this year ProPublica, an investigative-journalism group, concluded that in Broward County, Florida, an algorithm wrongly labelled black people as future criminals nearly twice as often as whites. (Northpointe, the algorithm provider, disputes the finding.)

‘Software is eating the world’: How robots, drones and artificial intelligence will change everything — from business.financialpost.com

Thermostats can now get infected with ransomware, because 2016 — from thenextweb.com by Matthew Hughes

Who will own the robots? — from technologyreview.com by David Rotman
We’re in the midst of a jobs crisis, and rapid advances in AI and other technologies may be one culprit. How can we get better at sharing the wealth that technology creates

Police Drones Multiply Across the Globe — from dronelife.com by Jason Reagan

LinkedIn lawsuit may signal a losing battle against ‘botnets’, say experts — from bizjournals.com by Annie Gaus

China’s Factories Count on Robots as Workforce Shrinks — from wsj.com by Robbie Whelan and Esther Fung
Rising wages, cultural changes push automation drive; demand for 150,000 robots projected for 2018

Researchers Are Growing Living Biohybrid Robots That Move Like Animals — from slate.com by Victoria Webster

Addendums on 9/14/16:

The rise of robots: forget evil AI – the real risk is far more insidious — from theguardian.com
It’s far more likely that robots would inadvertently harm or frustrate humans while carrying out our orders than they would rise up against us
Governments and nation states are now officially training for cyberwarfare: An inside look — from techrepublic.com by Steve Ranger

EDUCAUSE Research Snapshot | Leveraging Technology to Better Engage Students — from er.educause.edu

Using the word “resilience” w/ care; the increased price of college presents pressures many of us from a different generation didn’t have [Christian]

On 08/25/2016, in colleges, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, funding / grants, health, higher education, online learning, parents/guardians, personalized/customized learning, student-related, technology (general), United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Two things happened today that got me to reflect on the word resilience:

An all-campus conference with faculty and staff, whereby one of the breakout sessions was about supporting emotional resilience in our students. It was led by the head of the campus’ counseling center. She gave some data on the increased use of the counseling center over the last 4 years. Evidently, this isn’t just happening at our campus, but all over the country.
.
Then I ran into the article below; some excerpts are listed below as well.

When I’m teaching a First Year Seminar course this fall, one of the topics deals with resilience. When I’m addressing it, I want to focus on the parts highlighted in green below, and stay clear of the caution noted in red below.

An additional thought on this is that today’s students are dealing with the high prices of obtaining a college degree. This means that many of them have to work to get through school. Otherwise, many of these students will come out of school with enormous debts — debts that don’t go away until they are paid up. I’m not saying that by them working the students can pay all of their expenses — that’s becoming highly unlikely these days. But it can reduce the amounts of their debts. These debts affects when students get married, when they can buy a home, when and how much they can save for retirement, and more. So the stresses are very real — and different from many of us from a different generation. We can’t just say they need to be more resilient as an entire generation.

No, the job for us working within higher ed needs to be to bring the price of obtaining a degree down. Not just “no more increases.” No. Bring the costs down!

We can’t expect to have an arms race in the facilities that we offer as well as in our sports programs (and though I was an athlete in college I still say this) and expect costs to go down. Technology looks to me to be our best chance of bringing costs down, while maintaining quality. I don’t have the time to expand on that perspective now, but the greater use of online learning as well as the increased use of emerging technologies that can deliver more personalized learning should help.

Struggling students are not ‘lacking resilience’ – they need more support — from theguardian.com by Gabbi Binnie

Some excerpts:

Students often see the word as a synonym for strength, and therefore feel that lacking resilience is a sign of weakness. A professor could be saying “be more resilient” and mean that a student shouldn’t take critical comments on their work personally. But what a student hears is something like, you aren’t strong enough, or you need to man-up, or you lack backbone.
…
Times have changed
Problems are often discussed with an “it was different back in my day” attitude. So if students are accessing university counselling services more, it’s because the entire student population is losing its resilience. If disability services are overstretched, the same reason is given. And when tutors are asked to provide pastoral support – historically always a part of the personal tutor role – they feel it’s because these “modern students” need extra help.

Students might be asking for help earlier and for problems that they once might have kept to themselves. But to dismiss an entire generation isn’t fair.

Students are coping with all sorts of factors that make their lives a challenge: the worry about tuition fee debt, an intensely competitive graduate jobs market and the pressure of social media. By recognising this, university staff can start to support their students to become more resilient.
…
Resilience is a great concept. Learning not to be discouraged by past failings and recognising shortcomings is an extremely useful skill. Students need to be equipped to spring back from tough situations, or times when they didn’t achieve perfection – this is vitally important in universities.

As support staff we need to enable students to learn the skills of resilience. We need to standardise what we mean by it. And we should never use the term when discussing mental health.

The next battleground: The 4th Era of Personal Computing — from stevebrownfuturist.com by Steve Brown

Excerpt:

I believe we are moving into the fourth era of personal computing. The first era was characterized by the emergence of the PC. The second by the web and the browser, and the third by mobile and apps.

The fourth personal computing platform will be a combination of IOT, wearable and AR-based clients using speech and gesture, connected over 4G/5G networks to PA, CaaS and social networking platforms that draw upon a new class of cloud-based AI to deliver highly personalized access to information and services.

So what does the fourth era of personal computing look like? It’s a world of smart objects, smart spaces, voice control, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence.

Infographic: IoT and the classroom of tomorrow — from cr80news.com by Andrew Hudson
Student IDs among list of most used smart devices on campus

Excerpt:

The classroom of tomorrow will undoubtedly employ more and more smart devices, and coupled with the Internet of Things (IoT) phenomenon, the way in which students learn could be very different in the not-so-distant future.

A new survey conducted by Extreme Networks reveals that while smart classrooms and schools only represent a small fraction of campuses today, the promise is there for the technology to redefine the academic experience going forward. There are K-12 schools and universities across the country that are already using the IoT to connect smart devices that can “talk” to one another for the purpose of enhancing the learning experience.

From DSC:
I look forward to the time when machine-to-machine communications and sensors will give faculty members the settings that they want setup/initiated as soon as they walk into a room (some of this is most likely already occurring somewhere else…just not on our campus yet!):

The front lights lower down 50% (as the professor had requested previously)
The front 80′ LCD — a smart/Internet connected device — display is turned on and brings up that specific course on the screen (having already signed into the cloud-based CMS/LMS upon that professor entering the room; the system has already queried the appropriate back end system to ascertain what that professor teaches at that particular time and place)
The window treatments are lowered all the way down for better viewing
The speakers play a previously scheduled song, or a spoken poem, or an announcement, or what the students should be doing for the first 5-10 minutes of class
Etc.

Also:

Attendance is automatic (this clearly is already here today and has been for a while).
Students could receive any handouts that the professor wanted to wait to deliver until that particular date and time — again, automatically
Students could upload content that they created — automatically to an electronic parking lot, for the professor or other students to review and comment on

Also see the infographic, a portion of which is seen below:

Campus Technology 2016: Revolution is in the air — from edtechmagazine.com by Amy Burroughs
Georgia Tech educator and author forecasts that technology may be the answer to higher education’s ‘triple threat.’

Excerpts:

In his keynote address at Campus Technology 2016, educator and author Richard DeMillo predicted that technology will be the key to resolving the toughest challenges facing higher education. In his speech, “A Revolution in Higher Education: Tales from Unlikely Allies,” DeMillo said that this revolution may be quiet, but it is happening, as more educators and leaders embrace innovation.
…
One problem, he said, is that the model of education that has dominated until now — small classrooms built around lecture-based pedagogy — is too expensive to be sustainable. Technology, however, now makes it possible to deliver education that is equally effective, yet less costly and less exclusionary (think MOOCs, online learning and emerging capabilities such as artificial intelligence). All this prompts a revolutionary rethinking of time-tested assumptions, he said.

What persists, he said, is his belief that higher education, for all its greatness, is not immune from the influence of politics, business, sociology and the economy.

AI chatbot apps to infiltrate businesses sooner than you think — from searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com by Bridget Botelho
Artificial intelligence chatbots aren’t the norm yet, but within the next five years, there’s a good chance the sales person emailing you won’t be a person at all.

Excerpt:

In fact, artificial intelligence has come so far so fast in recent years, Gartner predicts it will be pervasive in all new products by 2020, with technologies including natural language capabilities, deep neural networks and conversational capabilities.

Other analysts share that expectation. Technologies that encompass the umbrella term artificial intelligence — including image recognition, machine learning, AI chatbots and speech recognition — will soon be ubiquitous in business applications as developers gain access to it through platforms such as the IBM Watson Conversation API and the Google Cloud Natural Language API.

3 corporate departments that chatbots will disrupt — from venturebeat.com by Natalie Lambert

Excerpt:

Customer Service
Human Resources
Marketing

Facebook Messenger’s 11,000 chatbots are much more interactive — from androidcentral.com by Harish Jonnalagadda

Excerpt:

Facebook introduced chatbots on Messenger three months ago, and the search giant has shared today that over 11,000 bots are active on the messaging service. The Messenger Platform has picked up an update that adds a slew of new features to bots, such as a persistent menu that lists a bot’s commands, quick replies, ability to respond with GIFs, audio, video, and other files, and a rating system to provide feedback to bot developers.

Chatbots are coming to take over the world — from telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com

Excerpts:

In another example, many businesses use interactive voice response (IVR) telephony systems, which have limited functionalities and often provide a poor user experience. Chatbots can replace these applications in future where the user will interact naturally to get relevant information without following certain steps or waiting for a logical sequence to occur.
…
Chatbots are a good starting point, but the future lies in more advanced versions of audio and video bots. Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google with its voice assistance, are working in the same direction to achieve it. Bot ecosystems will become even more relevant in the phase of IoT mass adoption and improvement of input/output (I/O) technology.

With big players investing heavily in AI, Chatbots are likely to be an increasing feature of social media and other communications platforms.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Chatbots But Were Afraid to Ask — from businessinsider.com by Andrew Meola

Excerpt:

Chatbots are software programs that use messaging platforms as the interface to perform a wide variety of tasks—everything from scheduling a meeting to reporting the weather, to helping a customer buy a sweater.

Because texting is the heart of the mobile experience for smartphone users, chatbots are a natural way to turn something users are very familiar with into a rewarding service or marketing opportunity.

And when you consider that the top 4 messaging apps reach over 3 billion global users (MORE than the top 4 social networks), you can see that the opportunity is huge.

Campus Technology Announces 2016 Innovators Award Honorees

On 06/09/2016, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, colleges, community colleges, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education, education technology, emerging technologies, higher education, innovation, IT in HE, teaching & learning, technology (general), tools, universities, by Daniel Christian

Campus Technology Announces 2016 Innovators Award Honorees

The categories for the 2016 Campus Technology Innovators include:

Teaching and Learning
Student Systems and Services
Administration
IT Infrastructure and Systems
Education Futurists

From DSC:
As one of the Judges for this year’s awards, I congratulate these award honorees on jobs that were well done! There were some solid submissions this year.

Reflections on “Thinking about the future of work to make better decisions about learning today” [Gorbis]

On 05/04/2016, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, emerging technologies, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, immersion, intelligent systems, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, machine-to-machine communications, maker movement, organizational change, pace of change, professional development, reinvent, society, staying relevant, surviving, technology (general), trends, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Thinking about the future of work to make better decisions about learning today — from er.edcause.edu by Marina Gorbis
By looking at historical patterns and identifying signals of change around us today, we can better prepare for the transformations occurring in both work and learning.

Excerpt:

Instead of debating whether learning is for learning’s sake or as a means for earning a living, we need to think about the forces and signals of transformation and what they mean for higher education today and tomorrow.

So let’s explore these deeper transformations.¹ From our experience of doing forecasting work for nearly fifty years, we at the IFTF believe that it is usually not one technology or one trend that drives transformative shifts. Rather, a cluster of interrelated technologies, often acting in concert with demographic and cultural changes, is responsible for dramatic changes and disruptions. Technologies coevolve with society and cultural norms—or as Marshall McLuhan is often quoted as having said: “We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us.” Nowhere does this apply more critically today than in the world of work and labor. Here, I focus on four clusters of technologies that are particularly important in shaping the changes in the world of work and learning: smart machines; coordination economies; immersive collaboration; and the maker mindset.

From DSC:
I appreciate this article — thanks Marina.

Marina’s article — and the work of The Institute for the Future (IFTF) — illustrates how important is it to examine the current and developing future landscapes — trying to ascertain the trends and potential transformations underway. Such a practice is becoming increasingly relevant and important.

Why?

Because we’re now traveling at exponential rates, not linear rates.

SparksAndHoney-ExpVsLinear2013

We’re zooming down the highway at 180mph — so our gaze needs to be on the horizons — not on the hoods of our cars.

The pace has changed significantly and quickly

Institutions of higher education, boot camps, badging organizations, etc. need to start offering more courses and streams of content regarding futurism — and teaching people how to look up.

Not only is this type of perspective/practice helpful for organizations, but it’s becoming increasingly key for us as individuals.

You don’t want to be the person who gets tapped on the shoulder and is told, “I’m sorry…but your services won’t be necessary here anymore. Please join me in the conference room down the hall.” You then walk down the hall, and as you approach the conference room, you notice that newly placed cardboard is covering the glass — and no one can see into the conference room anymore. You walk in, they shut the door, give you your last pay check and your “pink slip” (so to speak). Then they give you 5 minutes to gather your belongings. A security escort walks you to the front door.

Game over.

Pulse checking a variety of landscapes can contribute
towards keeping your bread and butter on the table.

Also see:

Credentials reform: How technology and the changing needs of the workforce will create the higher education system of the future — from er.educause.edu by Jamie Merisotis
The shift in postsecondary credentialing and the needs of the 21st-century workforce will revolutionize higher education. Colleges and universities have vast potential to be positive agents of this change.
.
New workers, new skills — from er.edcause.edu by Marina Gorbis
What are the most important skills—the work skills and the life skills—that students should acquire from their educational experience, and what is the best way to teach those skills?Excerpt:
We found that the following short list of skills not only continues to be relevant but also is even more important as meta-skills in the changing worlds of work:

Sense-making: the ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed
Social intelligence: the ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way and to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions
Novel and adaptive thinking: a proficiency in coming up with solutions and responses beyond those that are rote or rule-based
Cross-cultural competency: the ability to operate in different cultural settings, not just geographical but also those that require an adaptability to changing circumstances and an ability to sense and respond to new contexts
Computational thinking: the ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning
Media literacy: the ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms and to leverage these media forms for persuasive communication
Transdisciplinarity: a literacy in, and the ability to understand, concepts across multiple disciplines
Design mindset: the ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes
Cognitive load management: the ability to discern and filter data for importance and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques
Virtual collaboration: the ability to work productively, drive engagement, and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team

While we believe that these ten skills continue to be important, two additional skills have emerged from our ethnographic interviews for these new worker categories: networking IQ and hustle.

Train your brain to think about the future — from knowledgeworks.org by Katie King

Thinking about the future is like taking a jog: we can always find something to do instead, but we will be better off later if we take time to do it.

Why can’t the “One Day University” come directly into your living room — 24×7? [Christian]

On 04/21/2016, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, adult learning, art, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, convergence, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, distance education, economics, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, elearning, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, future, future of higher education, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, history, homeschooling/homeschoolers, ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, interactivity, internet, K-12 related, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, liberal arts, lifelong learning, love of learning, marketplaces, mathematics, media/film, microlearning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, multimedia, music, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, online learning, online media, personalized/customized learning, platforms, psychology, reinvent, religion, science, second screen apps, social learning / networks, staying relevant, strategy, streams of content, student-related, teaching online, technologies for your home, technology (general), telepresence, television, training / L&D, transmedia, trends, TVs, ubiquitous learning, universities, user experience (UX), videoconferencing, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

An idea/question from DSC:
Looking at the article below, I wonder…“Why can’t the ‘One Day University‘ come directly into your living room — 24×7?”

This is why I’m so excited about the “The Living [Class] Room” vision. Because it is through that vision that people of all ages — and from all over the world — will be able to constantly learn, grow, and reinvent themselves (if need be) throughout their lifetimes. They’ll be able to access and share content, communicate and discuss/debate with one another, form communities of practice, go through digital learning playlists (like Lynda.com’s Learning Paths) and more. All from devices that represent the convergence of the television, the telephone, and the computer (and likely converging with the types of devices that are only now coming into view, such as Microsoft’s Hololens).

You won’t just be limited to going back to college for a day — you’ll be able to do that 24×7 for as many days of the year as you want to.

Then when some sophisticated technologies are integrated into this type of platform — such as artificial intelligence, cloud-based learner profiles, algorithms, and the ability to setup exchanges for learning materials — we’ll get some things that will blow our minds in the not too distant future! Heutagogy on steroids!

Want to go back to college? You can, for a day. — from washingtonpost.com by Valerie Strauss

Excerpt:

Have you ever thought about how nice it would be if you could go back to college, just for the sake of learning something new, in a field you don’t know much about, with no tests, homework or studying to worry about? And you won’t need to take the SAT or the ACT to be accepted? You can, at least for a day, with something called One Day University, the brainchild of a man named Steve Schragis, who about a decade ago brought his daughter to Bard College as a freshman and thought that he wanted to stay.

One Day University now financially partners with dozens of newspapers — including The Washington Post — and a few other organizations to bring lectures to people around the country. The vast majority of the attendees are over the age 50 and interested in continuing education, and One Day University offers them only those professors identified by college students as fascinating. As Schragis says, it doesn’t matter if you are famous; you have to be a great teacher. For example, Schragis says that since Bill Gates has never shown to be one, he can’t teach at One Day University.

…

We bring together these professors, usually four at at a time, to cities across the country to create “The Perfect Day of College.” Of course we leave out the homework, exams, and studying! Best if there’s real variety, both male and female profs, four different schools, four different subjects, four different styles, etc. There’s no one single way to be a great professor. We like to show multiple ways to our students.

Most popular classes are history, psychology, music, politics, and film. Least favorite are math and science.

See also:

Addendum:

LinkedIn makes all Lynda.com courses available on Apple TV — from venturebeat.com

We know the shelf-life of skills are getting shorter and shorter. So whether it’s to brush up on new skills or it’s to stay on top of evolving ones, Lynda.com can help you stay ahead of the latest technologies.

‘Anyone who walks into these spaces wants to teach in them’ — from ucalgary.ca by Joni Miltenburg
Instructors can apply to teach in the Taylor Institute’s flexible learning space

Excerpt:

Leighton Wilks noticed a palpable difference when his class moved from a traditional lecture-style classroom to an active learning space. Not only did attendance increase, but students were more engaged and collaborative.

“I see a lot more team cohesion. They’re talking more to each other because they’re sitting with their teams. It’s nice to foster that teamwork throughout the semester.”

Wilks is an instructor in the Haskayne School of Business and teaches a second-year organizational behaviour course in the newly-renovated active learning classroom in Scurfield Hall. He found that the space breaks down the boundary between instructor and student.

“Instead of being up at the front, I’m walking around. I feel I get a lot more questions and get to know the students better, which is important.”

From DSC:
Also see my notes from this year’s Next Generation Learning Spaces Conference.

Creating Great Digital Spaces for Learning — from slideshare.net by Phil Vincent
Professor Andrew Harrison, Professor of Practice at University of Wales Trinity St David and Director, Spaces That Work Ltd., from Jisc DigiFest 2016

21st-century learning environments — from webcpm.com by Kenneth A. Gruskin, Michael Searson

Excerpts:

Pedagogy
Preparation for the 21st-century workforce demands that educators shift the authority for learning to the students. After all, today’s workers are expected to function in collaborative and horizontal environments, as opposed to the “factory” driven, top-down, solitary worker spaces of yesterday. Therefore, contemporary learning environments should lean heavily on collaborative spaces, supported through personalized learning technologies. Good pedagogy encourages student engagement through complex collaborative projects based on real-world problems.
…
Technology
Innovative learning should incorporate a true BYOD (bring your own device) environment that provides opportunities for student-centered learning, beginning with their own personalized technologies — from laptops and tablets to smartphones and wearable devices. This approach leverages student devices and reduces the need for institutionally provided equipment.
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Supporting Distance Learning
Strategies being used within Unified Communications and Collaboration solutions provide the means to support the involvement of remote participants, whether they are present on the WAN or solely connecting via Internet services. Since these solutions are moving to cloud-based topologies, they are mostly services that individuals subscribe to directly or have access to through campus-based subscription services. These features are also beginning to appear in social media environments, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, so the opportunity for use may become as easy as installing another app in the not-toodistant future.

Engaging students with interactive technologies — from webcpm.com by Bill Nattress

Excerpt:

Wireless presentation, lecture capture, online collaboration and active-learning methodologies all require the ability for any and all participants to engage the installed resources within the facility while they also access their personal content; whether local to their personal devices or within the cloud. With the video tools now available to the consumer, the use of conferencing apps will continue to rise. The environments that engage students and faculty will need to allow for any user to log in and access his or her content and presentation appliances without hurdles or roadblocks. Access to subject matter experts or other individuals will also need to be supported as well. With the deployment of video tools via social media, users will also rely more on their personal accounts for contact management instead of an address book. These changes in workflow are disruptors to the policies that many institutions have put in place as it relates to the BYOD usage surrounding their networks. Success of these communication and education solutions needs the networks to focus on and easily support three key technologies: wireless presentation, collaboration and participation by remote team members.

Cisco’s John Chambers on the digital era: “It’s the biggest technology transition in history.” [mckinsey.com]

On 03/18/2016, in 21st century, business, change, changing business models, corporate / business world, disruption, entrepreneurship, experimentation, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, internet, new business models, pace of change, technology (general), workplace, by Daniel Christian

Cisco’s John Chambers on the digital era — from mckinsey.com
How significant is the digital era? It’s the biggest technology transition in history, according to Cisco’s executive chairman—and requires a proportional response from companies.

Excerpts:

If you’re a leader in today’s world, whether you’re a government leader or a business leader, you have to focus on the fact that this is the biggest technology transition ever. This digital era will dwarf what’s occurred in the information era and the value of the Internet today. As leaders, if you don’t transform and use this technology differently—if you don’t reinvent yourself, change your organization structure; if you don’t talk about speed of innovation—you’re going to get disrupted. And it’ll be a brutal disruption, where the majority of companies will not exist in a meaningful way 10 to 15 years from now.
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This digital age is the connectivity of going from a thousand devices connected to the Internet to 500 billion. It will transform business.
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Business models will rise and fall at a tremendous speed. It will create huge opportunities—probably $19 trillion in economic value over the next decade, incremental above what we’re seeing today. That’s the size of the US economy, plus some.
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But it will also result in tremendous disruption. And this is where it’s so important…that you either disrupt or you get disrupted.
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It’s simple to describe, but it really means you’re dealing with intelligent networks—a next generation of the Internet, if you will. But connecting 500 billion devices doesn’t get the job done. It’s the process change behind it. So you’ve got technologies like cloud or mobility and cybersecurity and the Internet of Things that are very important. That’s actually the easy part. The hard part is how do you change your organization structure? How do you change your culture to be able to think in terms of outcomes for your customers? It’s all about speed of innovation and changing the way you do business. The majority of companies will be digital within five years, yet the majority of their digital efforts will fail, which speaks to what a CEO has to do differently.
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They have to reinvent themselves. They have to reinvent their company. Not stay doing the right thing too long, if you will.
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Not enabled by technology—technology will become the company.
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The first step is merely making it an independent group, because if you do it inside your organization, your existing culture will kill it.
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Companies fail to understand the implications of how quickly this technology will transform their business. And they underestimate what it really means to their economic growth or that of their competitors.

From DSC:
Some graphics come to my mind:

The pace has changed significantly and quickly

ExponentialNotLinearSparksNHoney-Spring2013

From DSC:
This is the world that our students are and will be graduating into. Are they ready to handle this kind of pace? Of exponential — not linear — change? How can we better prepare them to be successful in the future that they will inherit?

#DesignInTech Report 2016 [KPCB]

On 03/16/2016, in business, career development, change, changing business models, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, creativity, curriculum, design, engagement / engaging students, entrepreneurship, graphics, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, interaction design, interactivity, interface design, internet, K-12 related, MBA, microlearning, mobile learning, mobile technologies, multimedia, online learning, platforms, professional development, programming, real-world assignments, reinvent, staying relevant, strategy, technology (general), training / L&D, trends, usability, user experience (UX), user interface design, using teams, vendors, by Daniel Christian

#DesignInTech Report 2016 — from kpcb.com

Some excerpted slides:

What are the learning-related ramifications of technologies that provide virtual personal assistants? [Christian]

On 03/09/2016, in 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, collaboration, communications, computer science, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, digital storytelling, digital textbooks, disruption, distance education, e-books, e-publishing related items (EPUB and more), e-readers, education technology, educational games / serious games, elearning, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, interactivity, internet, K-12 related, learner profiles, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, lifelong learning, machine-to-machine communications, more voice more choice more control, multimedia, online learning, online media, online tutoring, participation, passions, personalized/customized learning, platforms, play, professional development, reinvent, second screen apps, social learning / networks, staying relevant, streams of content, student-related, surviving, tablets, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, technology (general), telecommunications, telepresence, television, tools, training / L&D, transmedia, trends, TVs, user experience (UX), videoconferencing, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Everything Siri can do for you and your Apple TV — from imore.com by Lory Gill

Excerpt:

When you ask Siri what it can search for, it will respond, “I can search by title, people (actor, director, character name, guest star, producer, or writer), ratings (like PG or TV-G), reviews (such as best or worst), dates (like 2012 or the 80s), age (like kid-friendly or teen), seasons, episodes, and studio. And of course, I can search by genre.”

But, what else can Siri do?
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Siri has a fairly robust search feature with multi-layer filtering.
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While you are watching a movie or TV show, or listening to music, you can get a little extra help from Siri. It’s like having a buddy sitting next to you — but they don’t shush you when you ask a question.
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You can search for content in the Music app on Apple TV by artist, album, or song title. With a little know-how, you can also turn Siri into your personal deejay.
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While you may normally look to your smartphone for your weather predictions, Siri can be just as helpful about the conditions around the world as your local weatherman or app. All you have to do is ask.

From DSC:
Following this trajectory out a bit into the future — and in light of significant developments that continue to occur with artificial intelligence, the development and use of algorithms, the potential use of web-based learner profiles (think LinkedIn.com/Lynda.com, MOOCs, the use of nanodegrees), second screen-based apps, and the like — one has to wonder:

“What are the ramifications of this for learning-related applications?!”

Internet of Things (IoT) predictions from Forrester, Machina Research, WEF, Gartner, IDC [Press]

On 02/23/2016, in 21st century, business, corporate / business world, data related items, emerging technologies, future, game-changing environment, human-computer interaction (HCI), internet, machine-to-machine communications, Near Field Communication (NFC), technology (general), telecommunications, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Internet of Things (IoT) predictions from Forrester, Machina Research, WEF, Gartner, IDC — from forbes.com by Gil Press

Excerpt:

So what’s the state-of-the-IoT and where is it going? Here’s a summary of data and predictions from Forrester, Machina Research, the World Economic Forum (WEF), Gartner, and IDC.

IoT_Forrester

Sources

Forrester

TechRadar™: Internet Of Things, Q1 2016
Predictions 2016: IoT’s Impact Inside Companies
Machina Research Predictions for IoT in 2016
WEF “Deep Shift: 21 Ways Software Will Transform Global Society” (PDF)

Gartner

IDC

Learning Ecosystems

Campus Technology Announces 2016 Innovators Award Honorees

Cisco’s John Chambers on the digital era: “It’s the biggest technology transition in history.” [mckinsey.com]

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