IBM Watson at your service: New Watson breakthrough transforms how brands engage today’s connected consumers — from IBM.com
Delivered from the cloud and into the hands of mobile consumers, Watson provides faster, personalized service for smarter commerce; top brands tap Watson’s ability to crunch big data and provide fast, personalized advice for empowered consumers

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WatsonGoesToWorkForYouMay2013

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Also see:

 

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CognitiveSystems-IBMResearch-May2013

 

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Watson-MOOCs-NewTypesCollaboration-DChristian-2-14-13

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IBM’s Watson tries to learn…everything — from spectrum.ieee.org by Steven Cherry
What happens when Watson learns a million databases? RPI students and faculty hope to find out.


The Internet of Things: In action — from thenextweb.com by Lauren Fisher

Excerpt:

The internet has well and truly left the computer and is running amok in ‘things’, showing us how previously inanimate, everyday objects can be bought to life through being connected . The internet of things was first coined as a term in 1999 and it is now well and truly established ; no longer a vision of a future concept but an accessible reality. If you own a Nike fuelband, then you’re already enjoying the internet of things. The potential for the internet of things to challenge our concepts of what objects can do for us and how they can function in a connected network has been turned on its head.

AnIoT-April2013

 

Also I just saw/missed this:

…and:

  • Internet of Everything Economy HD — video by Cisco
    Published on Feb 28, 2013
    Discover the value of connections when people, process, data and things converge on the Internet of Everything. It’s estimated those connections will yield $14.4 trillion for businesses over the next decade in the Internet of Everything economy. Learn more: http://cs.co/jlbYTioee.  It’s hard to put a value on increased connectedness, but when it comes to business, we’ve done exactly that. Read the report: http://cs.co/jlbYThg5.

 

Dual screen: The evolution of the second screen — from blog.brightcove.com by Albert Lai

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Educational Gamification
In a previous post, we asked readers to suggest their ideas for dual screen applications. One of the more intriguing responses was the suggestion to create companion educational games to accompany associated video content.

In a dual screen experience, as video content is displayed on the television, the application can engage the viewer with relevant and education activities, from content reinforcement to spelling to trivia to memory “games.” One can imagine an interactive amalgamation of Dora the Explorer, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, and Schoolhouse Rock!

 

 

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

 

 

Addendum on 4/8/13:

The Internet of Things: When GE sees a $ trillion opportunity, you might want to take it seriously. — from thebln.com by Mark Littlewood
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— The link/posting above is from March 12, 2013
— The item below is from November 26, 2012

Some sample images:

IndustrialInternet-Nov2012

 

My thoughts on the future of higher education -- March 2013 by Daniel Christian

 

Also, the PDF file of this article is here.

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From DSC:
Though the title of this article I wrote says 10 years, it may be more or less (and given the pace of change, I would lean towards sooner rather than later).  

If you haven’t read Christensen’s/Horn’s/Johnson’s work re: disruption — such as Disrupting Class and/or The Innovator’s Dilemma — it would be worth your time to do so. They are right on the mark. What they have been asserting is happening within higher education.  The article briefly addresses face-to-face learning and hybrid learning as well.  Readers of this blog will know that I have been pressing for higher ed to reinvent itself in order to stay relevant. There is danger in the status quo, especially when the conversation continues to move away from traditional higher education.

See other perspectives out at evoLLLution.com as well.

 

 

A history of media streaming and the future of connected TV — from guardian.co.uk by Alex Zambelli
We’re close to broadly available HD streaming which could trigger mass adoption of connected TV. 

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internet streaming real shockwave flash netflix

 

 

A precursor to…

 

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

Extremely powerful ideas for new types of face-to-face & web-based collaboration [Tidebreak; Christian]

From DSC:
As a team of us have been charged with putting together a new collaborative workspace/conference room, I’ve been thinking about some ideas for a new type of interface as well as some new types of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) to be used in group collaboration/web-based collaboration.  I was thinking it would be good to not only display files from various devices but also to be able to share files/URLs/other resources with each other.  (Some type of storage device that processes files — and scans them for viruses would be needed in addition to a large display or an interactive multitouch surface/wall.)

People within the same room could contribute files/items to a variety of “areas” — and so could others who joined in via the Internet.  Here’s what I had wanted to be able to do and I had pictured in my mind:

 

New-types-of-collaboration--DChristian-2-1-13

 

ADDITIONAL NOTES:
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  • People could select which files/URLs/resources that they wanted to contribute
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  • People could select which files/URLs/resources that they wanted to download to their own devices (during and after the meeting)
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  • Could be powerful in the next generation of our Smart Classrooms as well as in corporate training/learning spaces
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  • Could be powerful in the what I’m envisioning in “Learning from the Living [Class] Room”
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  • Could be powerful in conference room situations
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 It’s very similar to what Tidebreak has created/envisioned in their product lines.
Check out their innovative work/products/concepts!

 


Transforming learning spaces: 3 big ideas — from Tidebreak


 

 

Also see:

 

Tidebreak-Jan2013

 

 

The coming automatic, freaky, contextual world and why we’re writing a book about it — from scobleizer.comby Robert Scoble

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

First, the short version of today’s news. Shel Israel and I are collaborating on a book, titled, The Age of Context: How it Will Change Your Life and Work.

The long version:

A new world is coming. It’s scary. Freaky. Over the freaky line, if you will. But it is coming. Investors like Ron Conway and Marc Andreessen are investing in it. Companies from Google to startups you’ve never heard of, like Wovyn or Highlight, are building it. With more than a couple of new ones already on the way that you’ll hear about over the next six months.

First, the trends. We’re seeing something new happen because of:

  1. Proliferation of always-connected sensors.
  2. New kinds of cloud-based databases.
  3. New kinds of contextual SDKs.
  4. A maturing in social data that nearly everyone is participating in.
  5. Wearable computers and sensors like the Nike FuelBand, FitBit, and soon the Google Glasses.

 

Also see:

0117_InternetofThings_Feat

 

Also see:

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EnteringTheShiftAge-Houle-Jan2013

 

Book Description
Release date: January 18, 2013

The Information Age? Think again.

Change is everywhere: how we communicate, what we do for a living, the values we hold, the way we raise our children, even the way we access information. Thanks to a global economy, the force of the Internet, and the explosion of mobile technology, we have—almost imperceptibly—been ushered into a new era, the Shift Age, in which change happens so quickly that it’s become the norm.

Man-made developments—such as tools, machines, and technology—defined previous ages, but the Shift Age will be defined by our own power of choice. In Entering the Shift Age, leading futurist David Houle argues that we are going through a major collapse of legacy thinking, eroding many of the thought structures that have defined the last two hundred years of humanity. Houle identifies and explains the new forces that will shape our lives—including remote workplaces, the cloud, “24/7” culture, speed-of-light connectivity, creativity, and the influence of Millenials and Digital Natives—for the next twenty years.

In this eye-opening book, Houle navigates this pivotal point in human history with clarity and anticipation, focusing on the power of human consciousness and the direct influence we can impart on everything from healthcare to media to education. According to Houle, we are more independent than ever before. We are in control.

There’s no “going back” to the way things were. Reality is changing ever faster, and ENTERING THE SHIFT AGE is your guide to keeping up.

 

From DSC:
Though I haven’t read the book, I would probably take a different angle/perspective on some things here.  Yet, this work seems important in that it addresses the constant change — and pace of change — that we find ourselves and our world in.

 

From DSC:
In this series of periodic postings re: experimentation (see here and here), this week’s Consumers Electronics Show prompts me to think about different types of experiments, prompting such questions as:
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  • When will we see more educationally-related second screen apps?
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  • How might this type of setup dovetail with MOOCs provided by institutions of higher education? With MOOCs offered by the corporate world?
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  • What sorts of technologies will weave their way into what could be offered here?
    (The following possibilities come to my mind: Artificial Intelligence (AI), learning agents, recommendation engines, course or topic playlists, web-based learner profiles, data mining/analytics, videoconferencing, educational gaming, virtual tutoring, BYOD, and/or cloud-based computing. Other…?)
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  • Will Internet-enabled marketplaces and exchanges — between learners and teachers — become commonplace?
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  • Will technologies involved with endeavors like IBM’s Watson or with Knewton be deployed in this kind of convergent environment? If so, what sorts of doors/job opportunities/new skillsets would that open up or require?
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The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

 

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Some relevant items on this include:

Flingo reveals Samba, a first of its kind dual interactive TV and second screen platform — from pandodaily.com byasdf

Excerpt:

This week at CES in Las Vegas (the Consumer Electronics Show), San Francisco-based Flingo will release the latest version of its platform, dubbed Samba, aimed at changing this. Samba will make four-year-old Flingo one of the first to offer a combined Interactive TV and Second Screen experience.

“We saw a surge of Smart TV and tablet adoption in 2012, but realized that a seamless TV experience across all screens was missing,” says Flingo co-founder and CEO Ashwin Navin, formerly of BitTorrent. “Samba will blur the lines between linear television and the Web.”

Flingo is unique in that it uses video, not audio to identify what content is being viewed…

Samba offers viewers the ability to actively engage with programming in real-time through their primary screen. This can take the form of polls, social conversations, recommendations, or consumption of related media. In the case of Second Screens, aka internet-connected laptops, tablets, and smartphones used simultaneously while watching TV, the company can offer an even wider array of complementary content and engagement, such as aggregated social feeds relating to live programming or an ability to watch past episodes of a live show. This can all be delivered across multiple screens, in concert.

 

Also see:

Smart TV Alliance adds Panasonic and IBM to its fold, lays bare new SDK features -- Sean Buckley

 

Also see:

 

samsung smart tv ces 2013

 

Kevin Smith/Business Insider

 

More tangentially, but still relevant:

  • McGraw-Hill to debut adaptive e-book for students — from blogs.wsj.com by Shalini Ramachandran
    Excerpt:

    The SmartBook…works like this: All readers essentially see the same textbook as they read for the first five minutes. But as a reader answers review questions placed throughout the chapter, different passages become highlighted to point the reader to where he or she should focus attention.

 

From DSC:
The other day, I mentioned how important it will be for institutions of higher education to increase the priority of experimentation. Clicking on the graphic below will give you an example of the kind of vision/experiment that I’m talking about.

(Though, more practically speaking, to operationalize this type of vision would actually require a series of much smaller experiments; I just wanted to present the overall vision of how these pieces might fit together).

 

DanielChristian--Jan2013-Experiment-with-Apples-Ecosystem

NOTE:
This 11″x17″ image is a 10MB PDF file, so it may take some time to appear.
Feel free to right-click on the graphic in order to download/save/print the file as well.

 

Also relevant is this upcoming event from educause:

 

1/8/13 addendum resulting from a Tweet from a great colleague, Mr. Travis LaFleur (@travislafleur), UX Designer at BiggsGilmore

 

 

Book says ‘Big Data’ becoming a global nervous system — from USA TODAY by Chuck Raasch — with thanks to Ray Schroeder for the resource
Explosion of “Big Data” collection and analysis is hopeful, yet worrisome, trend

Excerpt:

Smolan, a former National Geographic photographer, built the book around a simple premise: That “big data” are becoming a “planetary nervous system,” the potential and consequences of which few have even started to contemplate.

It’s “an extraordinary knowledge revolution that’s sweeping, almost invisibly, through business, academia, government, health care and everyday life,” he says.

That revolution, he says, is being built on “a set of technologies coming together at just the right time, brought about by widespread and low-cost sensors that can now communicate with each other, the plummeting cost of computing power, the ubiquitous everywhere and always-on aspect of the Internet, the rapidly proliferating spread of smart devices.”

Also see:

 

“Mom! Check out what I did at school today!”

If you’re a parent, don’t you love to hear the excitement in your son’s or daughter’s voice when they bring home something from school that really peaked their interest? Their passions?

I woke up last night with several ideas and thoughts on how technology could help students become — and stay — engaged, while passing over more control and choice to the students in order for them to pursue their own interests and passions. The idea would enable students to efficiently gain some exposure to a variety of things to see if those things were interesting to them — perhaps opening a way for a future internship or, eventually, a career.

The device I pictured in my mind was the sort of device that I saw a while back out at Double Robotics and/or at Suitable Technologies:

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doublerobotics dot com -- wheels for your iPad

 

 

Remote presence system called Beam -- from Suitable Technologies - September 2012

 

The thoughts centered on implementing a growing network of such remote-controlled, mobile, videoconferencing-based sorts of devices, that were hooked up to voice translation engines.  Students could control such devices to pursue things that they wanted to know more about, such as:

  • Touring the Louvre in Paris
  • Being backstage at a Broadway musical or checking out a live performance of Macbeth
  • Watching a filming of a National Geographic Special in the Fiji Islands
  • Attending an IEEE International Conference in Taiwan
  • Attending an Educause Conference or a Sloan C event to get further knowledge about how to maximize your time studying online or within a hybrid environment
  • Touring The Exploratorium in San Francisco
  • Touring the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago
  • Being a fly on the wall during a Senate hearing/debate
  • Seeing how changes are made in the assembly lines at a Ford plant
  • Or perhaps, when a student wheels their device to a particular area — such as the front row of a conference, the signal automatically switches to the main speaker/event (keynote speakers, panel, etc. via machine-to-machine communications)
  • Inviting guest speakers into a class: pastors, authors, poets, composers, etc.
  • Work with local/virtual teams on how to heighten public awareness re: a project that deals with sustainability
  • Virtually head to another country to immerse themselves in another country’s language — and, vice versa, help them learn the students’ native languages

For accountability — as well as for setting aside intentional time to process the information — students would update their own blogs about what they experienced, heard, and saw.  They would need to include at least one image, along with the text they write about their experience.  Or perhaps a brief/edited piece of digital video or audio of some of the statements that they heard that really resonated with them, or that they had further questions on.  The default setting on such postings would be to be kept private, but if the teacher and the student felt that a posting could/should be made public, a quick setting could be checked to publish it out there for others to see/experience.

Real world. Engaging. Passing over more choice and control to the students so that they can pursue what they are passionate about.

 

 

 


From DSC:

I’ve been trying to figure out the best ways to incorporate a BYOD/BYOT into the Smart Classroom.  That is, how can students’ devices seamlessly communicate with the main displays around the classroom? How can they quickly display a blog posting or a Google doc for example…or play a song they wrote, etc.  So I was excited to wake up this morning with the following concept/idea:


 

The Internet of Things Ceiling -- A concept for our future Smart Classrooms by Daniel Christian in December 2012

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The Internet of Things Ceiling -- concept by Daniel Christian -  December 2012

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Other features/thoughts:

  • Line of sight communications — students must be in the room to display something up on the main displays
  • Information travels many ways:  From large multitouch displays/walls to students’ devices and vice versa; so a professor could hit “Save” in order to send his/her annotations to all of the students’ devices (allowing them to be more cognitively present — vs madly writing down what the professor is writing)
  • The Smart Classroom’s infrastructure becomes like a multi-thredded processor — instantaneously and simultaneously handling a far greater amount of data — going in multiple directions
  • What’s an interesting idea here is for discipline-specific, cloud-based storage mechanisms for students who want to contribute their pieces of content to their schools repositories of content
  • This topic reminds me of a graphic I created a while back, re: The “Chalkboard” of the Future:

 

 

 

So…what if the 4 screen’s on Julong’s Ultra-IPBOARD were coming from 4 different sources? Perhaps:

  1. One from a publisher’s cloud-based content repository
  2. Another from a stream of content originating from a student’s iPad
  3. Another from a stream of content originating from the Smart Classroom’s PC or Mac
  4. …and the last source originating from a student’s smartphone?

 

Demo for Ultra-IPBOARD

 

Also see:

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China looks to lead the Internet of Things — from cnn.com by Kevin Voigt.

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The $5,000 Cybertecture Mirror monitors health statistics and real-time social media updates.

The $5,000 Cybertecture Mirror monitors health statistics and real-time social media updates.
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

  • The Internet of Things market in China is expected to hit $80.3 billion in 2015
  • Beijing has earmarked $800 million for IoT investment by 2015
  • China has created state-funded zones like Chengdu Internet of Things Technology Institute
  • Beijing aims to become a global leader in setting IoT global standards

 

© 2024 | Daniel Christian