Welcome to the doctor’s office of the future: It’s a kiosk — from dvice.com by Alice Truong
“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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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:
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 Boardroom to Classroom — from insidehighered.com by Alexandra Tilsley
Excerpt:
By joining forces, the three universities hope to leverage the languages they don’t all have, affording students more options, and to deepen existing programs by, for example, facilitating collaboration between instructors of the same language at different institutions.
From DSC:
Higher-level courses at smaller colleges might want to look at this as well. If an economically-feasible minimum threshold can’t be reached on one campus, open it up to a consortium of institutions (similar to Semester Online).
From DSC:
I understand that Mr. George Lucas is going to express his generosity in donating the $4.05 billion from the sale of Lucasfilm to education.
Here’s a question/idea that I’d like to put forth to Mr. Lucas (or to the United States Department of Education, or to another interested/committed party):
Would you consider using the $4+ billion gift to build an “Online Learning Dream Team?”
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Original image credit (before purchased/edited by DSC)
yobro10 / 123RF Stock Photo
From DSC:
What do you think? What other “players” — technologies, vendors, skillsets, etc. — should be on this team?
Apple TV and the transformation of web apps into tablet and TV dual screen apps — from brightcove.com by Jeremy Allaire
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Excerpts:
Importantly, designers and developers need to shed the concept that “TVs” are for rendering video, and instead think about “TVs” as large monitors on which they can render applications, content and interactivity that is supported by a touch-based tablet application.
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The key concept here is that this pervasive adoption of TV monitors is the tip of the spear in creating a social computing surface in the real world.
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Specifically, Apple has provided the backbone for dual screen apps, enabling:
- Any iOS device (and OSX Mountain Lion-enabled PCs) to broadcast its screen onto a TV. Think of this as essentially a wireless HDMI output to a TV. If you haven’t played with AirPlay mirroring features in iOS and Apple TV, give it a spin, it’s a really exciting development.
- A set of APIs and an event model for enabling applications to become “dual screen aware” (e.g. to know when a device has a TV screen it can connect to, and to handle rendering information, data and content onto both the touch screen and the TV screen).
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[Jeremy listed several applications for these concepts: Buying a house, buying a car, doctor’s office, kids edutainment, the classroom, retail electronics store, consuming news, consuming video, sales reporting, board games.]
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Also see:
From DSC:
Graphically speaking — and approaching this from an educational/learning ecosystems standpoint — I call this, “Learning from the Living [Class] Room.
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![The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV](http://danielschristian.com/learning-ecosystems/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian-July-2012.jpg "The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian---July-2012")
Related item:
50 interesting ways to use Skype in your classroom — from edudemic.com by Jeff Dunn
Excerpt:
I’m a so-so fan of Skype. I’ve used it on an infrequent basis and have had more than a few dropped calls. Audio and video alike. However, it’s a cheap way to make long distance calls and seems to work better over wi-fi and the video quality is improving on a regular basis. So therefore it’s probably a great tool for the classroom. But how can you use Skype to do more than just make calls? Well, there’s a pantload of interesting ways! Check out these fun ideas:
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From DSC:
And for “Skype on steroids”, consider using Blackboard Collaborate:
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From DSC:
I created this graphic, so I ask for
mercy from you lawyers at
Microsoft and/or at Blackboard! 🙂
Also see:
iTunes U Course Manager hands on — from UCL – London’s Global University by Matt Jenner
Excerpt:
iTunes U is known as a wonderful platform for finding recorded lectures and podcasts from academics and institutions across the world. But recently it’s also become a location for entire courses, with students, multiple resources and some interaction all happening on devices such as the iPad. It’s all very Apple-based, which means anyone without this hardware can’t access it and thus it remains a little elitist. BUT there’s still some good reasons to look into it – and I hope this begins to explain why.
From DSC:
Thanks Matt for the helpful screenshots and overview of what iTunes U is offering these days!
If Apple were to devote more resources to create a fully-stocked CMS/LMS, they could add a significant piece to the overall ecosystem they continue to build. But this time, it would have significant benefits to those who want to learn and to reinvent themselves over time.
For example, what if:
Could be a potent learning setup as such cloud-based materials are available to everyone throughout the globe — at very attractive prices.
From DSC:
The ability for students to contribute content and instantly share that content would be great! Not just display it, but share it! These are the types of concepts, tools, and technologies that I enjoy pursuing as they facilitate learning and collaboration. They have applications not only in K-20, but in the corporate world as well. (I realize there are some issues to work through with virus detection and potential copyright infringement.)
Speaking of not only displaying files but sharing them as well, it seems like this may be possible with Steelcase’s upcoming FrameOne with media:scape — when combined with HD videoconferencing. But I’m not positive about that.
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Also see:
From DSC:
My thanks to Mr. Adam Tozer, in the A/V Department at Calvin College for this item. If you are looking at some mics for lecture capture or for doing some videoconferencing, this model is worth checking out.
Addendum on 7/2/12 — also see:
Cisco brings online collaboration solutions under WebEx name — from eWeek.com by Jeffrey Burt
The company is adding Office and greater email integration to its WebEx Social enterprise social networking solution, which previously was known as Quad.
Excerpt:
Cisco Systems executives are bringing their disparate Web collaboration solutions under the WebEx umbrella, and expanding the capabilities of its enterprise social networking offering formerly known as Cisco Quad.
Blackboard launches mobile beta program for Blackboard Collaborate — from Blackboard.com
Company plans to bring live classes and collaboration to mobile devices
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON, June 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Blackboard Inc. today announced the launch of a Beta program for an interactive mobile application for Blackboard Collaborate™, the leading Web conferencing platform built for education. The new app would let learners participate in live Web conferencing sessions from smartphone and tablet devices, significantly expanding access to sessions delivered through the platform.
The app, Blackboard Collaborate Mobile, would let users join a live Web conference through a learning management system (LMS) link, email link or calendar invite. After the session launches automatically, users would access a range of interactive tools enabling them to view content, communicate through chat and audio, respond to surveys, raise a hand, see the status of other participants, join breakout rooms and more.
From DSC:
As the massive convergence of the computer, the telephone, and the television continues, other trends are also taking place that may eventually impact how we interact with educationally-related content. That is, the main screen of our living rooms might be delivering a 5-10 minute “lecture”, but our tablets and smart phones may be in our laps as we interact around this content with others.
Along these lines, as transmedia storytelling develops, the use of multiple devices and methods to consume and contribute to content may be setting the stages for how things can get done with more educationally-related applications.
Consider this excerpt from Complex TV: Transmedia Storytelling — by Jason Mittell, Associate Professor of American Studies and Film & Media Culture at Middlebury College:
As television series have become more complex in their narrative strategies, television itself has expanded its scope across a number of screens and platforms, complicating notions of medium-specificity at the very same time that television seems to have a clearer sense of distinct narrative form. This chapter explores how television narratives are expanded and complicated through transmedia extensions, including video games, novelizations, websites, online video, and alternate reality games. With specific analyses of transmedia strategies for Lost and Breaking Bad, I consider how television’s transmedia storytelling is grappling with issues of canonicity and audience segmentation, how transmedia reframes viewer expectations for the core television serial, and what transmedia possibilities might look like going forward.
Also relevant/see:
Addendum on 6/2/12
