Nvidia expands its GeForce Now game streaming ecosystem — from techcrunch.com by Frederic Lardinois
Excerpt:
At CES, Nvidia today put a strong emphasis on its GeForce Now game streaming service, its competitor to the likes of Google’s Stadia (that’s still around, right?), Amazon’s Luna and Microsoft’s increasingly popular Xbox Cloud Gaming service. All of these use a different business model, with GeForce Now making it easy for players to bring games they bought elsewhere to the service, with Nvidia offering a restricted free tier and then charging a membership fee for access to its servers, starting…
Nvidia launches the $249 GeForce RTX 3050 — from techcrunch.com by Frederic Lardinois
Excerpt:
You can now add another set of Nvidia-based graphics cards to the graphics cards you probably won’t be able to buy anytime soon, as the company today launched the GeForce RTX 3050 for desktops. Starting at $249, the budget-friendly card — assuming Nvidia and its partners can produce enough to keep prices from escalating — will feature 8GB of GDDR6 memory and promises to be able to run the latest games at over 60 frames in a 1440p resolution with ray-tracing enabled. Like its more powerful …
Nvidia expands its Omniverse — from techcrunch.com by Frederic Lardinois
Excerpt:
Omniverse is Nvidia’s platform for allowing creators, designers and engineers to collaboratively build virtual worlds. Until now, Omniverse and the various Nvidia tools that support it were in beta, but at CES today, the company took off the beta label and made Omniverse generally available to creators. The company says Omniverse has already been downloaded by almost 100,000 creators and with today’s update, it is bringing a number of new features to the platform, too.
Nvidia embraces the metaverse with new software, marketplace deals — from reuters.com by Stephen Nellis
Excerpt:
Jan 3 (Reuters) – Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) on Tuesday said that it would give away software for free to artists and other creators building virtual worlds for the metaverse and that it has made technology deals with several marketplaces where artists sell the three-dimensional content they create.
AnimatingKids.com — with thanks to Mrs. Julie Bender (an excellent art teacher within the K-12 space) for this resource
Free examples:
The next age of the internet could suck power away from Big Tech while living on the same backbone as cryptocurrencies. Here’s what to know about Web3. — from businessinsider.com by Katie Canales
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
…
One aspect of the metaverse is that users will hopefully be able to go virtually from platform to platform with one single account — just like we will in Web3.
And NFTs, one-of-a-kind tokens representing your ownership of a virtual good, could be more easily bought and sold with cryptocurrencies within a space like Web3.
From DSC:
How might “Web3” translate into the future of lifelong learning? Here’s one vision/possibility:
Each person would have a learner profile/account that could seamlessly log into multiple education/training providers’ platforms and services. The results of that learning could be stored in one’s cloud-based learner profile. This type of next-generation learning platform would still need subject matter experts, instructional designers, programmers, and other team members. But the focus would be on building skills — skills that an artificial intelligence-backed interface would demonstrate are currently being requested by the modern workplace. This constantly-being-updated list of skills could then link to the learning-related experiences and resources that people could choose from in order to develop those skills.
The following vision/graphic also comes to my mind:
The Humanities May Be Declining at Universities — But They’re Thriving on Zoom — from edsurge.com by Rebecca Koenig
Excerpt:
Throughout the pandemic, versions of this close-reading conversation have taken place week after week. Organized through new nonprofits and small startups including the Catherine Project, Night School Bar and Premise, they bring together adults who want to spend their free time talking to strangers about literature and philosophy.
It sounds at first like an ambitious book club—except for the fact that many of these seminars are organized and led by college professors, some so eager to participate that they do it for free.
“Mostly it’s a way for them to do a kind of teaching they can’t do at their regular jobs,” explains Zena Hitz, founder of the Catherine Project and a tutor (faculty member) at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.
From DSC:
I’ve often thought that online-based learning may be the thing that saves the liberal arts (i.e., available throughout one’s lifetime and would be far less expensive). It would be ironic though, as many liberal arts institutions have not been proponents of online-based learning.
Cisco and Google join forces to transform the future of hybrid work — from blog.webex.com by Kedar Ganta
Excerpts:
Webex [on 12/7/21] announced the public preview of its native meeting experience for Glass Enterprise Edition 2 (Glass), a lightweight eye wearable device with a transparent display developed by Google. Webex Expert on Demand on Glass provides an immersive collaboration experience that supports natural voice commands, gestures on touchpad, and head movements to accomplish routine tasks.
Teaching in the ‘Metaverse’? Roblox Looks to Make It a Reality — from edweek.org by Benjamin Herold
With millions in new grants to STEM organizations like Project Lead the Way, the gaming platform is moving into K-12 education.
Excerpts:
Hoping to expand its presence in K-12 schools, gaming company Roblox announced this month a new $10 million fund to support the creation of online learning experiences that take advantage of its platform’s unique way of letting users play, explore, and socialize in an endlessly evolving virtual world.
…
Roblox aims to play a major role in the emerging metaverse. Expanding into classroom education is a key vehicle for making that happen, Kantar told investors at a November conference. The company’s stated goal is to reach 100 million students worldwide by the end of the decade.
Making such inroads with K-12 schools, however, is no sure bet.
Also see:
The VRJAM metaverse platform is coming to transform the world of live entertainment
VRJAM, the UK’s leading creator of live music experiences in virtual reality, today teased the launch of the VRJAM platform, a revolutionary new metaverse events platform and NFT creation solution.
To bring the VRJAM metaverse platform to life, VRJAM has partnered with market leading NFT software developer Enjin.io to launch a rich virtual reality world that offers a host of new solutions for artists to render and monetize their music and live shows in amazing new ways using NFT’s, blockchain and immersive technology.
The VRJAM platform promises to open up completely new ways for both fans and artist to experience live music events and represents the next step in the evolution of live music.
Ownership of this virtual world will be shared by a guild of globally recognised artists and record labels who will cooperate to create value and define new possibilities for music inside the metaverse.
VRJAM’s metaverse platform offers solutions for true live performance using technology that is years ahead of other similar platforms. It provides unsurpassed user experience and offers fans, artists and labels an array of unique features:
At the heart of the VRJAM metaverse platform is a blockchain based trading and finance system, VRJAM Coin. This revolutionary new cryptocurrency will create ways for both artists and fans to earn money inside the metaverse and promises to create entirely new business models for artists, venues and labels at a time when their traditional ways of making money have been turned upside down by the Covid 19 pandemic.
The VRJAM cryptocurrency is backed by investment from 5 of the world’s leading blockchain specialist investment and venture capital firms, demonstrating the exciting potential of VRJAM’s tech.
The VRJAM platform is scheduled to go live in early 2022, follow on social media to stay up to date.
From DSC:
Hmmmmm….might this type of thing spill over into the worlds of teaching and learning? More direct-to-consumer (learner) types of offerings? Will this open up the doors for new methods of earning a living or for those interested in building a teaching & learning-based brand?
Alternatively, will this impact what actors, actresses, and comedians will be able to do?
Addendum on 12/2/21:
50 digital team-building games (for students of all ages)
Excerpt:
At TeachThought, we believe that learning is inherently social, and we see a virtual or online learning structure as an opportunity to stretch ourselves and try new strategies. We’ve curated 50 of the most fun, engaging, and easy-to-implement digital team-building games for students of all ages, arranged by category.
NVIDIA OMNIVERSE: Creating and Connecting Virtual Worlds
A NEW ERA OF 3D DESIGN COLLABORATION AND SIMULATION
NVIDIA Omniverse™ is an easily extensible, open platform built for virtual collaboration and real-time physically accurate simulation. Creators, designers, researchers, and engineers can connect major design tools, assets, and projects to collaborate and iterate in a shared virtual space. Developers and software providers can also easily build and sell Extensions, Apps, Connectors, and Microservices on Omniverse’s modular platform to expand its functionality.
Also see:
