Apple Starts Connecting the Dots for Its Next Big Thing — from nytimes.com by Tripp Mickle and Brian X. Chen
The company has enlisted Hollywood directors like Jon Favreau to help its effort to create products that blend the physical and virtual worlds.

Excerpt:

Nearly 15 years after the iPhone set off the smartphone revolution, Apple is assembling the pieces for what it hopes will become its next business-altering device: a headset that blends the digital world with the real one.

The company has enlisted Hollywood directors such as Jon Favreau to develop video content for a headset that it is expected to ship next year, according to three people familiar with that work. Mr. Favreau, an executive producer of “Prehistoric Planet” on Apple TV+, is working to bring that show’s dinosaurs to life on the headset, which looks like a pair of ski goggles and aims to offer virtual- and augmented-reality experiences, these people said.

Speaking of the future, here’s another item regarding what’s coming down the pike:

 

Technology for HyFlex Classrooms: Major Considerations — from hyflexlearning.org by Brian Beatty

Excerpts:

This post describes four aspects of classroom technology that are very important to address when developing a HyFlex approach that can be effective at scale.

The classroom technology needs can be organized into four areas:

  1. two-way audio stream (connection),
  2. incoming video presentation of remote learners
  3. outgoing video presentation of classroom and learners
  4. interactive technology to support interaction, engagement, and formative assessment

Also re: hyflex teaching — where some students are physically present and some are coming into the class remotely– see:

Part I – Motivating Learners by Building Efficacy (Confidence) through Scaffolding and Support— from hyflexlearning.org by Jeanne Samuel

Excerpts:

HyFlex delivery may be new to many learners. Therefore, it is important to provide them with the supports they need to be successful. Regardless of the delivery mode, learners are motivated by success and by instructor presence. In part one of this topic post, we will write about how instructor support and feedback (a form of guidance) can motivate learners and build learner confidence.

PART II- Feedback for Improving Student Success and Satisfaction — from hyflexlearning.org by Jeanne Samuel

Excerpt:

In part 1 of this post, we focused on how feedback and support promote learner confidence. Learner confidence can lead to improved learner retention, progression, and success regardless of the class delivery mode. In part 2, we focus on feedback strategies.

 

Homework hotline gives K-12 students support for tricky assignments — from k12dive.com by Kara Arundel
College students offer free, on-demand help as younger students recover from pandemic-related setbacks or aim to get ahead.

Excerpt:

The college student-run resource saw an uptick in demand during the pandemic, and even though nearly all K-12 schools are now back to full-time, in-person learning, the calls to the hotline keep coming, said Gabriela Gamiz, founding Homework Hotline staff member and the college’s director of community engagement.

 

From DSC:
There are many things that are not right here — especially historically speaking. But this is one WE who are currently living can work on resolving.

*******

The Cost of Connection — from chronicle.com by Katherine Mangan
The internet is a lifeline for students on far-flung tribal campuses. Too often, they’re priced out of learning.

Excerpt:

Affordable and reliable broadband access can be a lifeline for tribal colleges, usually located on or near Native American reservations, often in remote, rural areas across the Southwest and Midwest. Chartered by their respective tribal governments, the country’s 35 accredited tribal colleges operate in more than 75 campus sites across 16 states, serving more than 160,000 American Indians and Alaska Natives each year. They emphasize and help sustain the culture, languages, and traditions of their tribal communities and are often the only higher-education option available for Native students in some of the nation’s poorest rural regions.

Also relevant/see:

Tribal Colleges Will Continue Online, Despite Challenges — from chronicle.com by Taylor Swaak
Other institutions could learn from their calculus.

Excerpt:

Two years after tribal colleges shuttered alongside institutions nationwide, many remain largely, if not fully, online, catering to students who’ve historically faced barriers to attending in person. Adult learners — especially single mothers who may struggle to find child care, or those helping to support multigenerational households — make up the majority of students at more than half of the 32 federally recognized institutions in the Tribal Colleges and Universities Program. These colleges are also often located in low-income, rural areas, where hours of daily commute time (and the cost of gas) can prove untenable for students simultaneously working part- or full-time jobs.

Also relevant/see:

Why Tribal Colleges Struggle to Get Reliable Internet Service — from chronicle.com by Katherine Mangan and Jacquelyn Elias
For tribal colleges across the country, the pandemic magnified internet-access inequities. Often located on far-flung tribal lands, their campuses are overwhelmingly in areas with few broadband service providers, sometimes leaving them with slow speeds and spotty coverage.

“You can be driving from a nearby town, and as soon as you hit the reservation, the internet and cellphone signals drop off,” said Cheryl Crazy Bull, president of the American Indian College Fund and a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation. “Students would be in the middle of class and their Wi-Fi access dropped off.”

Worsening matters, many students have been limited by outdated equipment. “We had students who were trying to take classes on their flip phones,” Crazy Bull said. Such stories were cropping up throughout Indian territory.

 

We need to use more tools — that go beyond screen sharing — where we can collaborate regardless of where we’re at. [Christian]

From DSC:
Seeing the functionality in Freehand — it makes me once again think that we need to use more tools where faculty/staff/students can collaborate with each other REGARDLESS of where they’re coming in to partake in a learning experience (i.e., remotely or physically/locally). This is also true for trainers and employees, teachers and students, as well as in virtual tutoring types of situations. We need tools that offer functionalities that go beyond screen sharing in order to collaborate, design, present, discuss, and create things.  (more…)

 

Bridging the digital divide in online learning — from tonybates.ca by Tony Bates

Excerpt:

The problem
At the start of the pandemic, in Oakland, California, 40 miles north of Silicon Valley, only 12 percent of low-income students, and 25 percent of all students, in Oakland’s public schools had devices at home and a strong internet connection.

The outcome
Two years into the pandemic, Oakland has been able to connect 98 percent of the students in the district. As of February, the city had provided nearly 36,000 laptops and more than 11,500 hot spots to low-income public school students.

Also from Tony, see:

Getting into the online learning industry

Three years ago, I wrote a blog post called ‘So you want to be an educational technologist…’ in which gave some advice on how to get into and develop a career as an educational technologist. In that article, I noted that I didn’t have much experience to guide people going into the corporate training area, and this article by Matthew Lynch does exactly that. This article complements nicely what I wrote earlier.

 
 

Exploring Virtual Reality [VR] learning experiences in the classroom — from blog.neolms.com by Rachelle Dene Poth

Excerpt:

With the start of a new year, it is always a great time to explore new ideas or try some new methods that may be a bit different from what we have traditionally done. I always think it is a great opportunity to stretch ourselves professionally, especially after a break or during the spring months.

Finding ways to boost student engagement is important, and what I have found is that by using tools like Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), we can immerse students in unique and personalized learning experiences. The use of augmented and virtual reality has increased in K-12 and Higher Ed, especially during the past two years, as educators have sought new ways to facilitate learning and give students the chance to connect more with the content. The use of these technologies is increasing in the workplace, as well.

With all of these technologies, we now have endless opportunities to take learning beyond what has been a confined classroom “space” and access the entire world with the right devices.

 

Visions of the Internet in 2035 — from pewresearch.org

Excerpt:

This report is the second of two analyzing the insights of hundreds of technology experts who responded in the summer of 2021 to a canvassing of their predictions about the evolution of online public spaces and their role in democracy in the coming years. In response to the primary research question, many said they expect that these forums will be significantly improved by 2035 if reformers, big technology firms, governments and activists tackle the problems created by misinformation, disinformation and toxic discourse. At the same time, they expressed ongoing concerns about the destructive forces in culture and technology that could continue to plague online life and disrupt beneficial change in the coming years.

Visions of the Internet in 2035

 

22 Augmented Reality Trends to Keep an Eye on for 2022 — from linkedin.com by Tom Emrich

Excerpts:

#1 Metaverse remains at peak hype as the next iteration of the Internet feels so close but is actually much further away

#2 The smartphone continues to become an even more powerful augmented reality machine with advancements in chips, displays and connectivity

#3 Early consumer smartglasses reinforce the need for smartphones rather than attempt to replace them

The metaverse is defined differently by different people but for me, the metaverse is an aha moment. It is a realization by industry that the next wave of computing is comprised of a stack of emerging technologies (including blockchain, AI, IoT, AR and VR) that will all work together to create a fundamental shift in our relationship with technology. 

 



Also see:

 
 

From DSC:
An interesting approach.


Gaimin has developed an innovative solution to a modern computing problem — from innotechtoday.com by Corey Noles

Excerpt:

Rather than spending billions of dollars on building dedicated resource farms, Gaimin.io are accessing the worldwide gaming community, and utilizing and rewarding this global network of untapped, globally distributed resources of 1.5 billion processing power providers, connected by high-speed internet connections, which can be aggregated, consolidated and then utilized to satisfy any of the myriad of profitable current, and future, needs for processing power.

The Gaimin.io project connects the world’s largest supply of GPU processing power, which belongs to the 1.5 billion gaming PCs in the global gaming community, with the rapidly growing, worldwide demand for massive processing power.

 

Why AWS’s move into private 5G networking is game-changing — from zdnet.com by Zeus Kerravala
As the cost of SIM-connected devices decreases and eSIMs become more common, the industry could see a big move from Wi-Fi to 5G.

Excerpt:

One of the notable announcements at Amazon Web Services’ re:Invent 2021 conference [on 11/30/21] was the unveiling of AWS Private 5G, a fully-managed service enabling businesses to deploy their own high-capacity mobile networks. The service is designed to be used inside buildings as an augmentation of — and eventual replacement for — Wi-Fi.

 

Also see Matthew Ball’s Metaverse Primer (excerpt below from this page) — with thanks to Annie Zhang for this resource:


“The Metaverse is a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments.”


Jacob Navok: Computing and Network Needs of the Metaverse — from hellometaverse.fm by Annie Zhang

Excerpt:

to progress towards this vision of the metaverse, jacob is focused on tackling the hard problem of improving concurrency. how do you get millions of people to concurrently be participating and interacting in one live experience with no lag? 

he breaks this down the problem into two components:

  1. limitations of the traditional network to handle multiplayer experiences: coordinating, say, positional data of where you and all the other players in a game, gets very complicated, especially when latency needs to be low. meaning, if you want to see everything that everyone is doing at all times, coordinating the traffic of that data is very difficult

  2. with more connection, internet speed slows: the internet was not built for true real time communication, but rather optimized for cost and routing efficiency. when you load a fb page, it’s okay if it takes 10 milliseconds, but when you are in a shooting game, a delay of 10 milliseconds is a matter of life or death


Everything You Need To Know About The Metaverse — from protocol.com by Janko Roettgers

Excerpt:

Silicon Valley has a new favorite buzzword: Ever since Mark Zuckerberg announced earlier this year that Facebook’s future would be in the metaverse, everyone has been rushing to figure out what a metaverse even is. And when Facebook rebranded as Meta in October, metaverse fever swept the tech industry. From Microsoft to Nvidia, every company is suddenly in the metaverse business, and seemingly overnight, countless people became metaverse experts.

But what actually is the metaverse? Why does it matter, and who needs to worry about it? If the metaverse is truly “the next chapter for the internet,” as Zuckerberg put it, it’s important to understand and define it so as not to be caught flat-footed when (or if) the metaverse wave catches on.

 

BlueJeans Video Conferencing Giant to Launch Native Google Glass App for Remote Assistance — from next.reality.news by Adario Strange

Excerpt:

Starting in 2022, Glass Enterprise Edition 2 users will have the option of using a native version of the BlueJeans meeting software.

Like other enterprise AR wearables on the market, the primary use case for the dynamic will be in the realm of remote assistance, in which an expert in a faraway location can see what a Google Glass wearer sees and advise that team member accordingly.

From DSC:
Remote support is also occurring in healthcare. What might “telehealth” morph into?

Remote support is also occurring in healthcare. What might telehealth morph into?

 
© 2022 | Daniel Christian