Airbnb’s design for employees to live and work anywhere — from news.airbnb.com; with thanks to Tom Barrett for this resource

Excerpt:

Airbnb is in the business of human connection above all else, and we believe that the most meaningful connections happen in person. Zoom is great for maintaining relationships, but it’s not the best way to deepen them. Additionally, some creative work and collaboration is best done when you’re in the same room. I’d like working at Airbnb to feel like you’re working at one of the most creative places on Earth, and this will only happen with some in-person collaboration time.

The right solution should combine the best of the digital world and the best of the physical world. It should have the efficiency of Zoom, while providing the meaningful human connection that only happens when people come together. We have a solution that we think combines the best of both worlds.

We’ve designed a way for you to live and work anywhere—while collaborating in a highly coordinated way, and experiencing the in-person connection that makes Airbnb special. Our design has five key features…

Now, a thought exercise on that item from Tom Barrett:

While you are there, extend the thought experiment and imagine the new policy for a school, college or university.

  1. You can work from home or the office
  2. You can move anywhere in the country you work in, and your compensation won’t change
  3. You have the flexibility to travel and work around the world
  4. We’ll meet up regularly for team gatherings, off-sites, and social events
  5. We’ll continue to work in a highly coordinated way

From DSC:
As a reflection on this thought experiment, this graphic comes to my mind again. Teachers, professors, trainers, staff, and students can be anywhere in the world:

Learning from the living class room

 

 

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.

 

Remote court transcription technology enables virtual court appearances — from abajournal.com by Nicole Black

Excerpts:

That’s why it’s imperative to make certain remote options are available for all aspects of legal work since doing so is the only way to guarantee the justice system doesn’t come to a grinding halt. One way to prevent that is to take advantage of the virtual deposition transcription tools I discussed in last month’s column. In that article, I provided an overview of virtual deposition transcription products and services that rely on videoconferencing tools and software platforms to facilitate remote depositions.

Another way business continuity has been maintained since March 2020 is via virtual court proceedings. Remote court appearances are now more common since courts periodically shifted to partial or fully remote operations throughout the pandemic. Many judges have become accustomed to and appreciate the convenience of virtual court proceedings, and many expect them to continue even after the pandemic ends.

Because all signs point to the continuation of virtual court proceedings, I promised in last month’s article that I would focus on remote court proceeding options in this column. These include software platforms and artificial intelligence language-processing tools that facilitate remote court proceedings.

Nicole’s article mentioned the following vendor/product:

Live Litigation -- Remote Solutions for Attending and Participating in Depositions, Trials, Hearings, Arbitrations, Mediations, Witness Prep, and more.

 

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…)

 

Zoom Announces New Education Features, Enhancing Hybrid [Hyflex] Learning Experience for Educators & Students — from edtechreview.in by Stephen Soulunii

Excerpt:

According to a news release, the features span Zoom’s Chat and Meeting offerings and are designed to support teachers who need to engage and manage students joining class remotely or submitting homework assignments.

Breakout Rooms Enhancements
Breakout rooms, a popular education feature, also received enhancements in this latest release. Program Audio allows meeting hosts to share content with audio to breakout rooms, adding the ability to share videos with audio. With the LTI Pro integration enhancement, educators can populate breakout rooms from the course roster. This can be used to assign breakout rooms in advance, and then automatically sort students into breakout rooms.

Anywhere Polls
Anywhere Polls will allow polling content to live in a central repository that can be accessed from any meeting on an account, instead of being associated with a particular meeting. This will make it easier for instructors to reuse polls and will also be beneficial for grading. This feature will be available this year.

 

Teaching: Fresh Approaches to Faculty Development — from chronicle.com by Beckie Supiano

Excerpt:

Baranovic can’t imagine returning to the old model: He’s sticking to panels in Zoom. Among the benefits, he says: “This arrangement breaks institutional silos, allows faculty to talk more about their experiences, shares effective practices from sources faculty trust (their peers), creates a stronger sense of community, makes it easy for panelists (they receive the questions ahead of time if they want to prepare, but because they’re speaking to experience, they don’t really have to prepare), and creates a form of support that works like therapy but doesn’t feel like therapy.”

Next, Baranovic hopes to turn the panels into a podcast format for professors unable to attend in real time.

From DSC:
As someone who had been involved with Teaching & Learning Centers for years, I can tell you that it’s very disheartening to put together a training session for faculty members and have very few — if any — people show up for it. It’s a waste of time and it leaves the T&L staff and/or IT staff members feeling discouraged and unvalued.

Over the years, I developed a preference for putting things into an asynchronous digital format for faculty members and adjunct faculty members to access per their own schedules. The institutions that I was working for got a greater ROI from those sessions and they were able to visit an internal “course” or website to reference those materials on-demand.

I also like the idea of podcasting here, but that takes a lot of time and effort — and isn’t always possible when you are one person trying to assist hundreds of faculty members (from a technical support and an LMS admin standpoint).

As an Instructional Designer, I also want to comment that it’s hard to help steer a car if you can’t even get into the car. Those institutions that are using team-based approaches will be far more successful in designing and developing more polished, effective, accessible learning experiences. Very few people can do it all.

 

Subject: Race on Campus: Pronouncing Students’ Names Correctly Is Important. Here’s How. — from chronicle.com by Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez

Excerpt:

When the pandemic moved classes online, Kohli said, platforms like Zoom helped the name-pronunciation process. On Zoom, users can change the way their name is displayed and include a phonetic spelling, making it simpler for everyone to get names right.

If the class is in person, Kohli says modeling behavior after the Zoom interface and asking students how their names are pronounced and how they’d like to be addressed.

For in-person classes, look at your roster ahead of time, Baker-Brown said. If you see a name you don’t recognize, break up the syllables and sound it out.

Then, practice. Repeat it until you get it right, and saying the name becomes second nature.

From DSC:
One other idea that I’m sure is out there, but it needs to be more commonly implemented:

  • Each learner should be able to record their name in the CMS/LMS for others to hear how their name is pronounced

#Canvas #Moodle #Blackboard #D2L #edtech #corporatetraining #L&D #vocationalprograms #K12 #HigherEducation

 

The Future Trends Forum Topics page — from forum.futureofeducation.us by Bryan Alexander

Excerpt:

The Future Trends Forum has explored higher education in depth and breadth. Over six years of regular live conversations we have addressed many aspects of academia.

On this page you’ll find a list of our topics.  Consider it a kind of table of contents, or, better yet, an index to the Forum’s themes.

Also see:

Since we launched in early February, 2016, the Forum has successfully published three hundred videos to YouTube.  Week after week, month by month, over more than six years we’ve held great conversations, then shared them with the world, free of charge.

 

The Pandemic Transitioned the Legal Industry Into the Digital Age — from by Yuri Vanetik
Covid-19 forced businesses and social interactions to rely on technology because of social distancing rules exacerbated by fear. The legal industry, being no exception, was forced to embrace technology, shedding unnecessary ritual and processes. The result became a more efficient industry, where client interests trump anachronistic conventions.

Excerpt:

Much has changed in the world of commerce since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. The legal industry, a notorious stalwart, made a substantial leap, foregoing antiquated ritual-driven practices for technology-driven efficiency.

Technology and focus on the client, rather than wasteful processes, has become the new benchmark for lawyers who understand their business clients’ result-oriented expectations. The vast implementation of technology is the driving force in this pandemic paradigm. This modernization isn’t a mere facelift, but a restructuring of legal practice, including a major shift from a lawyer-centric to client-centric business dynamic.

Also relevant/see:

 

Ontario Bar Association backs proposed guidelines for remote court hearings — from lawtimesnews.com by Katrina Eñano

Excerpt:

According to the OBA, resorting to remote hearings can promote efficiency and cost-effectiveness and ensure the appropriate allocation of judicial resources.

In addition, the OBA provided a list of matters that should presumptively proceed remotely. These matters include:

    • Procedural matters, chambers appointments, and scheduling appearances;
    • Pre-trials;
    • Short motions or applications;
    • Motions that do not require witness attendance and are comprised of argument by counsel only;
    • Summary trials.

Also relevant/see:

Lawyers increasingly concerned about interplay between virtual and in-person court operations — from lawtimesnews.com by Annabel Oromoni

Excerpt:

As civil proceedings prepare to return to in-person hearings for discoveries, mandatory mediations, and trials, litigation lawyer Eric Sherkin says lawyers are wondering about the interplay of online and in-person arguments.

Certain hearings like pre-trials and case conferences will remain remote but how it works in practice beyond that is still unknown, Sherkin says.

All parties can agree to a virtual hearing, but “how often will all counsel say, ‘let’s agree to do this on Zoom,’ or will there be fights where five lawyers want to proceed on Zoom, and one insists on doing it in person?”

 

Now we just need a “Likewise TV” for learning-related resources! [Christian]

Likewise TV Brings Curation to Streaming — from lifewire.com by Cesar Aroldo-Cadenas
And it’s available on iOS, Android, and some smart TVs

All your streaming services in one place. One search. One watchlist. Socially powered recommendations.

Entertainment startup Likewise has launched a new recommendations hub that pulls from all the different streaming platforms to give you personalized picks.

Likewise TV is a streaming hub powered by machine learning, people from the Likewise community, and other streaming services. The service aims to do away with mindlessly scrolling through a menu, looking for something to watch, or jumping from one app to another by providing a single location for recommendations.

Note that Likewise TV is purely an aggregator.


Also see:

Likewise TV -- All your streaming services in one place. One search. One watchlist. Socially powered recommendations.

 


From DSC:
Now we need this type of AI-based recommendation engine, aggregator, and service for learning-related resources!

I realize that we have a long ways to go here — as a friend/former colleague of mine just reminded me that these recommendation engines often miss the mark. I’m just hoping that a recommendation engine like this could ingest our cloud-based learner profiles and our current goals and then present some promising learning-related possibilities for us. Especially if the following graphic is or will be the case in the future:


Learning from the living class room


Also relevant/see:

From DSC:
Some interesting/noteworthy features:

  • “The 32- inch display has Wi-Fi capabilities to supports multiple streaming services, can stream smartphone content, and comes with a removable SlimFit Cam.”
  • The M8 has Wi-Fi connectivity for its native streaming apps so you won’t have to connect to a computer to watch something on Netflix. And its Far Field Voice mic can be used w/ the Always On feature to control devices like Amazon Alexa with your voice, even if the monitor is off.
  • “You can also connect devices to the monitor via the SmartThings Hub, which can be tracked with the official SmartThings app.”

I wonder how what we call the TV (or television) will continue to morph in the future.


Addendum on 3/31/22 from DSC:
Perhaps people will co-create their learning playlists…as is now possible with Spotify’s “Blend” feature:

Today’s Blend update allows you to share your personal Spotify playlists with your entire group chat—up to 10 users. You can manually invite these friends and family members to join you from in the app, then Spotify will create a playlist for you all to listen to using a mixture of everyone’s music preferences. Spotify will also create a special share card that everyone in the group can use to save and share the created playlist in the future.


 

Picturesof learning spaces at KU Leuven, Imperial College London, University of Amsterdam, Oulu University of Applied Sciences, Finland

Clockwise from top left (KU Leuven, Imperial College London, University of Amsterdam,
Oulu University of Applied Sciences, Finland

.

A virtual tour of four advanced hybrid learning spaces — from zacwoolfitt.blogspot.com by Zac Woolfitt

Excerpt:

What are the next developments in the Hybrid Virtual Classroom? What kind of spaces might we be teaching in soon?

On March 16th we glimpsed the future. Colleagues from 4 higher education institutes gave virtual tours of their technology rich learning spaces in Belgium, England, Finland and the Netherlands. Media and Learning arranged the session [i]. (Disclosure: Zac is on their advisory panel of Media and Learning).

From DSC:
Here in the U.S., some would promote the use of the word “Hyflex” here instead of hybrid or blended learning — as it sounds like they are simultaneously teaching students in a physical classroom along with online-based learners.

 

Revisiting Camera Use in Live Remote Teaching: Considerations for Learning and Equity — from er.educause.edu by Patricia Turner

Excerpts:

Given the need to balance equity concerns with effective teaching practices, the following suggestions might be helpful in articulating an approach to using cameras in live remote teaching sessions. This list is not exhaustive; these suggestions are offered as a starting point from which to begin thinking about this issue.


Given what we know from research about interaction, active learning, equity, and inclusion, one possible philosophy is this: if we believe that some students are not using a camera because of privacy issues, because they lack a quiet space in which to learn, or because of inequitable circumstances, we can let our students know that we are available if they need help and that, although we can’t solve all problems, we may be able to help students get the support and resources they need.

 

Math worksheets for the learning process — from intelligenthq.com

Excerpt:

If you want to master the subject of mathematics, constant practice of various topics is a must. To ensure that you have the proper grasp of all the topics of the subject, solving worksheets for math is one of the best techniques. Worksheets for math facilitate the stepwise mechanism which enhances the learning process and helps students identify their mistakes. Once they can recognize what their mistakes are, they can work on improving them. Worksheets for math also have visual problems that help in the visualization process of students and make their analyzing and strategic capability high. Take worksheets for math from Cuemath and excel in math.

Also see:

Master Math with Cuemath's live, online-based classes


Also relevant/see:

In New Math Proofs, Artificial Intelligence Plays to Win — from quantamagazine.org; with thanks to Alec Lazarescu on Twitter for this resource
A new computer program fashioned after artificial intelligence systems like AlphaGo has solved several open problems in combinatorics and graph theory.

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian