Coronavirus school cancellations lead to education tech surge –– from finance.yahoo.com by Reggie Wade
Excerpt:
Online learning tools like Zoom (ZM), Instructure’s (INST) Canvas, Cisco System’s (CSCO) WebEx and a host of other ed tech companies are coming to the aid of schools across the U.S. as they suspend or shift classes online due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Columbia University, Amherst College, the University of Washington, and Harvard University are among the growing list of universities that have announced that they will provide online classes, as campuses temporarily shut down in response to the contagion. More than 500 K-12 schools have also made the shift.
Jamie Candee, CEO of Edmentum, tells Yahoo Finance that since the outbreak of the coronavirus in the U.S. in January, the company has seen a surge in interest in its online educational tools. On March 9, the company had over 140 districts register for its online platform in under an hour.
Top Learning Tools when School is Closed — from cyber-kap.blogspot.com
Here is a list of suggested tools that can be used to keep the learning happening when schools are closed…
From DSC:
Some of these tools might also useful for some homeschooling situations I would think.
What Katrina Taught Us About Online Delivery — from insidehighered.com by Ray Schroeder
In 2005, more than 120 U.S. universities came to the aid of some 20 colleges and universities that had been impacted by Hurricane Katrina through shared online classes.
Cisco, Google Hangouts follow Zoom’s lead in offering free video conferencing features amid coronavirus outbreak — from bizjournals.com
Coronavirus causes work-from-home technology use to skyrocket — from foxbusiness.com
Microsoft usage in China increasing because more people are working remotely, company VP says
XRHealth launches first virtual reality telehealth clinic — from wearable-technologies.com by Sam Draper
Excerpt:
XRHealth (formerly VRHealth), a leading provider of extended reality and therapeutic applications, announced the first virtual reality (VR) telehealth clinic that will provide VR therapy to patients. VR telehealth clinicians providing care are currently certified in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, Washington D.C., Delaware, California, New York, and North Carolina and will be expanding their presence in additional states in the coming months. The XRHealth telehealth services are covered by Medicare and most major insurance providers.
From DSC — and with a shout out to Brad Sousa for this resource:
For those involved with creating/enhancing learning spaces as they relate to pedagogies:
How Has Technology Impacted Higher Education?
In part one of this three-part series, AVI Systems CTO Brad Sousa talks with Jeff Day, Founder of North of 10 Advisors, to discuss the key ways education and, specifically, pedagogy differs from 10, 5, even 3 years ago.
Discussion Topics
Media controller w/ intuitive interface to mimic the way someone teaches / way a classroom goes:
Also see this introductory posting re: the implications of active learning in the higher ed market.
From DSC:
If you are using a tool like Cisco Webex in your school, consider implementing the idea below. I’d like to thank Mr. Steve Grant and Mr. Nelson Miller from the WMU-Cooley Law School for their work in implementing/recommending this approach.
If you are using a tool like Cisco Webex, you can use it to share content to displays, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. If the professor starts a Cisco Webex Meeting Center session using their own personal room, the students can then join that meeting via their devices. (To eliminate noise and confusion — as well as to reduce bandwidth — the students should mute their microphones and choose not to send the video from their webcams.)
If you were doing a think-pair-share, for example, and you really liked what a certain pair of students had going on, one of the students could share their work with the rest of the class. By doing so, whatever was going on on that student’s device could be displayed by any projectors in the room, as well as on any other devices that were connected to the Cisco Webex Meeting Room.
“So you could project any student’s work as students proceed with in-class exercises. Projecting student work adds another level of accountability, excitement, and concentration to in-class exercises.”
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Also, using the Cisco Webex Meeting Center in your face-to-face classroom not only opens up that sort of collaboration channel, but, via the chat feature, it can also open up a running backchannel to draw out your more introverted students, or those students who have questions but don’t want to have the spotlight thrown on them.
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From DSC:
Though we aren’t quite there yet, the pieces continue to come together to build a next generation learning platform that will help people reinvent themselves quickly, efficiently, constantly, and cost-effectively.
From DSC:
Along these lines, we’ll likely see more bots and virtual legal assistants that we will be able to ask questions of.
#A2J #AccessToJustice #legal #lawyers #society #legaltech #bots #videoconferencing #AI #bots #VirtualAssistants
Along these lines, also see:
Innovative and inspired: How this US law school is improving access to justice — from studyinternational.com
Excerpt:
Though court and other government websites in the US provide legal information, knowing what to search for and understanding legal jargon can be difficult for lay people.
Spot, software that is being developed at the LIT Lab, aims to fix this.
“You know you have a housing problem. But very few people think about their housing problems in terms of something like constructive eviction,” explains David Colarusso, who heads the LIT Lab. “The idea is to have the tool be able to spot those issues based upon people’s own language.”
Developed by Colarusso and students, Spot uses a machine-based algorithm to understand legal queries posed by lay persons. With Spot, entering a question in plain English like “My apartment is so moldy I can’t stay there anymore. Is there anything I can do?” brings up search results that would direct users to the right legal issue. In this case, the query is highly likely to be related to a housing issue or, more specifically, to the legal term “constructive eviction.”
Lastly, here’s an excerpt from INSIGHT: What’s ‘Innovative’ in BigLaw? It’s More Than the Latest Tech Tools — from news.bloomberglaw.com by Ryan Steadman and Mark Brennan
Top Innovation Factors for Success
Before revving the engines in the innovation process, the safety check comes first. Successful innovation requires a deliberate, holistic approach that takes into consideration people, process, and technology. Firms and vendors that listen and learn before implementing significant change will stand apart from competitors—and help ensure long-term success.
Rants and rAVes — Episode 919: Gary Kayye’s Take on UCC Interoperability and the Future of Videoconferencing — from ravepubs.com by Gary Kayye
The recent news of video interoperability between Cisco, Zoom and Microsoft has generated a lot of industry buzz. If you’re interested, listen to rAVe Founder, Gary Kayye’s take on where he thinks all of this is headed and why we need to pay attention to the upcoming ISE show in Amsterdam in February 2020.
Also see:
As video conferencing solutions proliferate, remote working continues to rise and the number of inter-company video conferences increases, a lack of system interoperability has become a major pain point for many users.
…
All this frustration could soon become a thing of the past, as Microsoft and Ciscoannounced this week that video interoperability will be available between Microsoft Teams and Webex Meetings and devices. What’s more, Microsoft has also announced it will support interoperability with Zoom. For the end user, this means that all these platforms will work together seamlessly. It’s a move that makes strong business sense for both Microsoft and Cisco and safeguards against any potential new disruptors.
Also see:
I’m proud to be part of team that’s designing the “classroom of the future” at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:l (@UNC) #edtech #avtweeps @AVIXA Abd, YES, we will not only publish the AsBuilts but GIVE THEM AWAY for other colleges to copy! https://t.co/bhQgXXTmcT
— Gary Kayye (@gkayye) November 17, 2019
Think you could learn Mandarin? This Kansas kindergarten classroom is Chinese-only — from by Robert Smith
Excerpts:
In a Wolf Springs Elementary School classroom with “Chinese Only Zone” signs taped to the walls, kindergarteners are learning their core subjects in the primary language of a global economic superpower located across the world.
This language-immersion class of kindergarteners is part of a new Blue Valley School District initiative to graduate high school seniors fluent in a second language, an asset school officials believe will give students a leg up as they pursue academics and careers and prepare students to participate in a global workforce.
…
Chinese Mandarin, a group of dialects spoken by more than 800 million people, is a tonal language in which the meaning of words can be reflected by voice pitch. Though its grammar is similar to English, words or phrases are represented by Chinese characters.
Besides the usual educational stresses, parents who put their children in the program would need to be committed to the program. Because these kindergarteners are expected to remain together in a Mandarin-speaking classroom all the way through high school, new immersion students can only enter the program in kindergarten.
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While other elementary-aged students spend roughly 60 minutes studying Spanish per week, this group of kindergartens spends half of their school time each day with Pan learning math, science and social studies in Mandarin. The groups studies reading and literacy with teacher Haley Watkins in English.
“In under a minute we filled all of the slots. That afternoon we had hundreds of people on the waiting list.”
From DSC:
Wow! This is quite the K-12 cohort/immersion! Add to that type of setup tools like Cisco Webex, Blackboard Collaborate, Adobe Connect, etc. — and not to mention what happens with virtual reality in the next decade — and this type of cohort/immersion will likely be highly effective over time.
So what will the future classrooms of the world look like? My guess is that with 5G and virtual reality on the way, there will be a lot more “connections” being made in the future…with many nations/classrooms being involved.
[From my purchase of iStock #1154674846.]
