Following up on yesterday’s posting, History Channel bringing online courses to higher ed, I wanted to thank Mr. Rob Kingyens, President at Qubed Education, for alerting me to some related work that Qubed Education is doing. Below is an example of that work:

The University of Southern California, Condé Nast and WIRED launch Master of Integrated Design, Business and Technology — from qubededucation.com
New Learning Model Combines Network and Access of WIRED with Academic Strength and Vision of the USC Roski School of Art and Design

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

MARIN, Calif., October 1, 2014 – The University of Southern California, Condé Nast and WIRED today announced a partnership to create a new online Master’s degree in Integrated Design, Business and Technology. The partnership creates an unprecedented learning experience, combining the expertise of the editors, writers, and designers at WIRED with the academic rigor of USC, a leading research university known for its pioneering interdisciplinary programs. The aim of the 18-24 month degree is to educate creative thinkers and technologists to better equip them to transform the world of industry and enterprise. The first cohort is scheduled to begin in the 2015-2016 academic year.

“The pace of technology development requires higher education to continue to respond with programs that are flexible and adaptable, and that meet the needs of future cultural and business leaders,” said Dean Muhl.

“We’ve been thinking for years about what a university curriculum with WIRED would look like, and now we have a chance to build it with a terrific partner,” said Dadich. “Taking the best from USC and WIRED, we can teach discipline and disruption, business fundamentals, and the very latest innovation models from Silicon Valley. This is going to be thrilling.”

USC’s program development and build out will be powered by higher education partners Synergis Education and Qubed Education.

 

From Qubed’s website:

Qubed is the gateway for world-class, global brands to enter the education market with top tier universities.

 

From DSC:
I’ve long wondered if institutions of higher education will need to pool resources and/or form more partnerships and collaborations — either with other universities/colleges or with organizations outside of higher education. This reflection grows stronger for me when I:

  • Think that team-based content creation and delivery is pulling ahead of the pack
  • Hear about the financial situations of many institutions of higher education today (example1; example2)
  • See the momentum building up behind Competency Based Education (CBE)
  • Witness the growth of alternatives like Ideo Futures, Yieldr Academy, Lessons Go Where, ClassDo, Udemy, C-Suite TV.com and others
  • Hear about the potential advantages of learning analytics
  • See the pace of change accelerating — challenging higher education to keep up

For some institution(s) of higher education out there with deep pockets and a strong reputation, I could see them partnering up with an IBM (Watson), Google (Deepmind), Apple (Siri), Amazon (Echo), or Microsoft (Cortana) to create some next generation learning platforms. In fact, this is one of the areas I see occurring as lifelong learning/self-directed learning opportunities hit our living rooms. The underlying technologies these companies are working on could be powerful allies in the way people learn in the future — doing some heavy lifting to build the foundations in a variety of disciplines, and leaving the higher-order learning and the addressing of gaps to professors, teachers, trainers, and others.

 

 

 

 

smart-creatives---google-presentation-from-oct-2014

 

From DSC:
Another slide mentioned the importance of asking:

  • What’s changed?
  • What assumptions are people making that are no longer true?
  • Why does everything feel like it’s speeding up?

People in higher ed would be wise to ask these questions.

 

Gartner: Top 10 Strategic IT Trends For 2015 — from forbes.com by Peter High

Summary:

  1. Computing Everywhere
  2. The Internet of Things (IoT)
  3. 3D Printing
  4. Advanced, Pervasive, Invisible Analytics
  5. Context-Rich Systems
  6. Smart Machines
  7. Cloud/Client Architecture
  8. Software-Defined Infrastructure and Applications
  9. Web-Scale IT
  10. Risk-Based Security and Self-Protection

 

Gartner2015TopTrends

 

From DSC:
I’m thinking out loud again…

What if were were to be able to take the “If This Then That (IFTTT)” concept/capabilities and combine it with sensor-based technologies?  It seems to me that we’re at the very embryonic stages of some very powerful learning scenarios, scenarios that are packed with learning potential, engagement, intrigue, interactivity, and opportunities for participation.

For example, what would happen if you went to one corner of the room, causing an app on your mobile device to launch and bring up a particular video to review?  Then, after the viewing of the video, a brief quiz appears after that to check your understanding of the video’s main points. Then, once you’ve submitted the quiz — and it’s been received by system ABC — this triggers an unexpected learning event for you.

Combining the physical with the digital…

Establishing IFTTT-based learning playlists…

Building learning channels…learning triggers…learning actions…

Setting a schedule of things to do for a set of iBeacons over a period of time (and being able to save that schedule of events for “next time”).

Hmmm…there’s a lot of potential here!

 

 

IfThisThenThat-Combined-With-iBeacons

 

 

IfThisThenThat

 

 

iBeaconsAndEducation-8-10-14

 

 

Now throw augmented reality, wearables, and intelligent tutoring into the equation! Whew!

We need to be watching out for how machine-to-machine (M2M) communications can be leveraged in the classrooms and training programs across the globe.

One last thought here…
How are we changing our curricula to prepare students to leverage the power of the Internet of Things (IoT)?

 

Beacons at the museum: Pacific Science Center to roll out location-based Mixby app next month — from geekwire.com by Todd Bishop

Excerpt:

Seattle’s Pacific Science Center has scheduled an Oct. 4 public launch for a new system that uses Bluetooth-enabled beacons and the Mixby smartphone app to offer new experiences to museum guests — presenting them with different features and content depending on where they’re standing at any given moment.

 

Also see:

 

From DSC:
The use of location-based apps & associated technologies (machine-to-machine (M2M) communications) should be part of all ed tech planning from here on out — and also applicable to the corporate world and training programs therein. 

Not only applicable to museums, but also to art galleries, classrooms, learning spaces, campus tours, and more.  Such apps could be used on plant floors in training-related programs as well.

Now mix augmented reality in with location-based technology.  Come up to a piece of artwork, and a variety of apps could be launched to really bring that piece to life! Some serious engagement.

Digital storytelling. The connection of the physical world with the digital world. Digital learning. Physical learning. A new form of blended/hybrid learning.  Active learning. Participation.

 

 

 

Addendum on 9/4/14 — also see:

Aerohive Networks Delivers World’s First iBeacon™ and AltBeacon™ – Enabled Enterprise Wi-Fi Access Points
New Partnership with Radius Networks Delivers IoT Solution to Provide Advanced Insights and Mobile Experience Personalization

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Aerohive Networks® (NYSE:HIVE), a leader in controller-less Wi-Fi and cloud-managed mobile networking for the enterprise market today announced that it is partnering with Radius Networks, a market leader in proximity services and proximity beacons with iBeacon™ and AltBeacon™ technology, to offer retailers, educators and healthcare providers a cloud-managed Wi-Fi infrastructure enabled with proximity beacons. Together, Aerohive and Radius Networks provide complementary cloud platforms for helping these organizations meet the demands of today’s increasingly connected customers who are seeking more personalized student education, patient care and shopper experiences.

 

Also:

 

 

 

HumansNeedNotApply-cpggrey

 

With thanks to George Veletsianos and @reddit,
& Audrey Watters
for posting this item on Twitter

 

From DSC:
I don’t know much about this video in terms of who created it or what their purpose was in developing it.  Though it paints an overly bleak picture IMHO, at least in some ways, I post it here because I think it outlines some solid topics to think about and to plan for — NOW!  Not later.

Automation, algorithms, robotics, and more are with us today, but will be even more prevalent tomorrow.  It doesn’t matter what the color is of the collar that we’re currently wearing (white, blue, other), more of our jobs are being replaced by such things.   As such, we need to think about what the ramifications are concerning these trends. Societies throughout the globe are most definitely  in a game-changing environment.

Along these lines, how do such trends affect what is taught? How it’s taught? In K-12? In higher ed? In the corporate world?

How do we stay relevant/employed?

How do we reinvent ourselves and to what?

Are our vocations affected by this? How so?

Also see:

  • our new robo-reader overlords — from text-patterns.thenewatlantis.com by Alan Jacobs
  • Teaching Machines: The Drive to Automate Education — from teachingmachin.es by Audrey Watters
  • AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs — from pewinternet.org by Aaron Smith and Janna Anderson
    Excerpt:
    The vast majority of respondents to the 2014 Future of the Internet canvassing anticipate that robotics and artificial intelligence will permeate wide segments of daily life by 2025, with huge implications for a range of industries such as health care, transport and logistics, customer service, and home maintenance. But even as they are largely consistent in their predictions for the evolution of technology itself, they are deeply divided on how advances in AI and robotics will impact the economic and employment picture over the next decade.
 

Mobile Megatrends 2014…uncovering major mobile trends in 2014 — from visionmobile.com

Excerpt:

This report examines five major trends that we expect to shape the future of mobile in the coming years:

  1. Apps: The Tip of the Iceberg
  2. Mobile Ecosystems: Don’t Come Late to the Game
  3. OTT Squared: Messaging Apps are the new Platforms
  4. Handset Business Reboot: Hardware is the new Distribution
  5. The Future of HTML5: Beyond the Browser

 

From DSC:
In looking at the below excerpted slide from this solid presentation, I have to ask…

“Does this same phenomenon also apply to educationally-related products/services?”

Yes, I think it does.

That is, the educationally-related products and services of an organization will compete not by size, but how well the experience roams across screens.  Lifelong learners (who are using well-designed learning experiences) will be able to tap into streams of content on multiple devices and never skip a beat.  The organizations who provide such solid learning experiences across multiple “channels” should do well in the future.  This is due to:

  • The affordances of cloud-based computing
  • The increasing power of mobile computing
  • The convergence of the television, the telephone, and the computer — which is opening up the door for powerful, interactive, multi-directional communications that involve smart/connected televisions
  • Generation Z’s extensive use of screens*

 

 

 

HowEcosystemsWillCompete-VisionMobile-June2014

 

 

 

The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

 

 

 

* From Here Comes Generation Z — bloombergview.com by Leonid Bershidsky

If Y-ers were the perfectly connected generation, Z-ers are overconnected. They multi-task across five screens: TV, phone, laptop, desktop and either a tablet or some handheld gaming device, spending 41 percent of their time outside of school with computers of some kind or another, compared to 22 percent 10 years ago.

 
 

Technology is leaving too many of us behind — from cnn.com by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson

Excerpts:

Technology is racing ahead so quickly, in fact, that it’s leaving a lot of our institutions, organizations, policies and practices behind. It’s in these latter areas where we must increase the pace of innovation. The solution is not to slow technology down but instead to speed up the invention of new jobs. That requires unleashing entrepreneurs’ creativity. It also requires a host of other conditions.

Will our primary education system decrease its current emphasis on rote learning and standardized testing and start teaching skills computers don’t have, such as creativity and problem-solving?

The greatest flaw with our current path is the fact that a large group is being left out in every important sense. Too many people aren’t getting the skills and support they need in order to participate in a rapidly changing economy and don’t feel that they have any stake in a society that’s being created around them and without them. As a result, many are dropping out — of education, of the work force, out of their communities and out of family life.

 

PewResearchIoTThriveBy2025

 

Also see:

Where the Internet of Things could take society by 2025 — from centerdigitaled.com by Tanya Roscorla

Excerpt:

The Pew Research Center Internet Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center released the report on Wednesday, May 14, as part of an ongoing future of the Internet series inspired by the Web’s 25th anniversary. Eighty-three percent of these experts, which included education leaders, agreed that the Internet of Things would have “widespread and beneficial effects on the everyday lives of the public by 2025.” The remaining 17 percent said it would not, and both camps elaborated on their answers in paragraph form.

Their explanations fall under six major points:
  1. The Internet of Things and wearable computing will take major steps forward in the next 11 years.
  2. Increased data from connected things will cause privacy concerns to come to the forefront and encourage the growth of profiling and targeting people, which will greatly inflame conflicts in various arenas.
  3. Despite advancement in information interfaces, most people won’t be connecting their brains to the network.
  4. Complicated, unintended consequences will arise.
  5. A digital divide could deepen and disenfranchise people who don’t choose to connect to the network.
  6. Relationships will change depending on people’s response to the Internet of Things.

 

 

From DSC:
As with most technologies, there will be positives and negatives about the Internet of Things.  To me, the technologies are tools — neutral, not value-laden — and it’s how we use them that adds moral, political, legal, ethical, or social perspectives/elements to them.  With that said, I’m quite sure that the IoT will have unintended consequences (#4 above).  Also, item #5 — “A digital divide could deepen and disenfranchise people who don’t choose to connect to the network” — is especially troublesome to me, along with the topic of privacy concerns as mentioned in #2.

 

 
 

Trends and breakthroughs likely to affect your work, your investments, and your family

Excerpts:

At the outset, let me say that futurists do not claim to predict precisely what will happen in the future. If we could know the future with certainty, it would mean that the future could not be changed. Yet this is the main purpose of studying the future: to look at what may happen if present trends continue, decide if this is desirable, and, if it’s not, work to change it.

The main goal of studying the future is to make it better. Trends, forecasts, and ideas about the future enable you to spot opportunities and threats early, and position yourself, your business, and your investments accordingly.

How you can succeed in the age of hyperchange
Look how quickly our world is transforming around us. Entire new industries and technologies unheard of 15 years ago are now regular parts of our lives. Technology, globalization, and the recent financial crisis have left many of us reeling. It’s increasingly difficult to keep up with new developments—much less to understand their implications.

And, if you think things are changing fast now, you haven’t seen anything yet.

 

In this era of accelerating change, knowledge alone is no longer the key to a prosperous life. The critical skill is foresight.

 

 

7 ways to spot tomorrow’s trends today

  1. Scan the media to identify trends
  2. Analyze and extrapolate trends
  3. Develop scenarios
  4. Ask groups of experts
  5. Use computer modeling
  6. Explore possibilities with simulations
  7. Create the vision

 

 

From DSC:
Last spring, I saw the following graphic from Sparks & Honey’s presentation entitled, “8 Exponential Trends That Will Shape Humanity“:

 

ExponentialNotLinearSparksNHoney-Spring2013

 

If today’s changes are truly exponential — and I agree with Sparks & Honey that they are, especially as they relate to technological changes — how soon will it be before each of us is interacting with a robot?

This is not an idle idea or question, nor is it a joke. It will be here sooner than most of us think!  The science fiction of the past is here (at least in part).  Some recent items I’ve run across come to my mind, such as:

 

Hitachi’s EMIEW Robot Learns to Navigate Around the Office — from spectrum.ieee.org by Jason Falconer

 

Photo: Hitachi

Excerpt:

Now EMIEW 2 still relies on maps of its surroundings, but its navigation software has a new feature: It uses designated zones that make the robot change its speed and direction.

 

 

iRpobot Ava 500 

iRobotAva-2014

 

Excerpt:

Ava 500 enables this new dimension in telepresence with:

  • autonomous navigation and mobility – remote users simply specify a destination and the robot automatically navigates to the desired location without any human intervention.
  • standards-based videoconferencing – built-in Cisco Telepresence® solutions deliver enterprise-class security and reliability.
  • an easy-to-use client application – an iPad mini™ tablet enables remote users to schedule and control the robot.
  • scheduling and management -seamlessly handled through an iRobot managed cloud service.

 

 

 

Also see:

 

 

 

HowToBeHumanInADigitalSociety-April2014

 

 Excerpt:

‘Intelligent machines’ are increasingly interconnecting. The Internet of Things is imminent, with sensor networks and mobile devices connecting everyone and everything everywhere in the near future., Singularity’ – the moment of when machines become as capable as humans – is quickly becoming a buzzword that rivals Social Media. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is certain to play a role everywhere, and robots are dropping in price dramatically while gaining quickly in functionality and skills. Exponential technological progress is evident everywhere – but how will we – as linear beings – cope with this increasing empowerment of software and machines, the tremendous gain in the flow of real-time information, and the far-reaching implications that these developments will have? How will we keep up with thousands of real-time datafeeds, the ever-increasing volume, variety and depth of input, the tsunami of incoming communications and the rapidly improving smartness – and increasingly deep intelligence – of software, devices and machines? Will humans need to be ‘augmented’, soon, in order to keep up, and if so, where will this take us? What will happen to our ethics in a world of ultra-smart intelligent agents, artificial intelligence and the coming ‘trans-humanism’?

 

 

InteractiveWall-April2014

 

With thanks to Marie Sanguinetti (@mariesanguinett)
for her posting this on a recent edition of her
Paper.li-based Always Learning resource

 

2.jpg

 

Excerpt:

Santa Monica-based architecture firm Belzberg Architects Group was tasked with renovating one of Occidental College’s buildings, and the finished project features a two-story “digital Post-it wall” to host students’ presentations and projects. The redesign focused on how students think, learn and interact with technology on such a vast scale.

 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian