Click on the image to get a larger image in a PDF file format.
From DSC: So regardless of what was being displayed up on any given screen at the time, once a learner was invited to use their devices to share information, a graphical layer would appear on the learner’s mobile device — as well as up on the image of the screens (but the actual images being projected on the screens would be shown in the background in a muted/pulled back/25% opacity layer so the code would “pop” visually-speaking) — letting him or her know what code to enter in order to wirelessly share their content up to a particular screen. This could be extra helpful when you have multiple screens in a room.
For folks at Microsoft: I could have said Mixed Reality here as well.
What online teachers have learned from teaching online — from insidehighered.com by Mark Lieberman Online instructors offer wisdom they’ve gathered — what to do and what not to do — from years of experience teaching in the modality.
Excerpts:
When I first began teaching online, I noticed a disconnect between students and the course content. While I worked to make it relevant to their lives, I often saw students doing the work simply for the grade. Clearly something was not translating. In the last year, I’ve become more focused on helping students connect their passions to the course content. My courses still have objectives. However, I ask students when the semester starts to identify one to three goals and create a short video about what they want to achieve in the course. They reflect on these goals and can modify them at the midpoint and the end. During the semester, I ask students to consider what they are doing during the week to help them meet their goals. They don’t always need to share this information, but having this as a thread in the course helps them stay connected to the content and each other. Students are aware of what their colleagues’ goals are and often reach out and share ideas and resources in support. [Hall]
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I also began to see that teaching online could support learner variability better than teaching in a classroom. I observed one student with dyslexia express herself eloquently in video, while her written expressions were fragmented. These experiences illuminated the value of Universal Design for Learning, opening a new world of opportunities for teaching online. [Brock]
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I’ve been teaching online since 2008 and entirely online since 2013. When I first started teaching online, I was afraid to create new content or change the course in any way once the course launched. I thought the course curriculum and online environment had to stay “frozen” and intact or I would risk confusing students. Now, I create additional tutorials as needed, using screen-casting tools, videos and podcasts to add additional content to assist students. I have also since learned that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to online teaching and learning. Some students prefer basic content and straightforward assignments. Other students like to interact with the instructor through instant messaging, email and discussion boards. I started doing optional webinars for students who wanted more interaction and personalized learning, but I don’t require them. I find that the same group of online students in each course (who enjoy interaction) usually attend the webinars. The webinars are recorded for students who couldn’t attend or prefer the recording format.
Over all, I’ve learned to be more laid-back, multimodal (e.g., webinars, podcasts, etc.), proactive and flexible for my students.
Semingson
There need to be more active learning activities in an online course.
Greenlaw
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In a typical class, students talk only to the instructor and each other. Resources, questions and information that are created and shared rarely transition to the next course. In true community, all students and instructors within a program could regularly access information and ideas in a shared space regardless of the content they are currently learning. [Hall]
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There are numerous tools and strategies for interacting with students, like web-conferencing platforms, course audio and video tools, and collaborative tools that allow for synchronous or asynchronous interaction. There are simply more ways to communicate, to collaborate and to create. [Hobgood]
Insert from DSC: Re: this last quote from Hobgood, I love this idea of creating an online-based community of practice — or community of inquiry — that spans across classes and semesters. Great call!
Efforts to improve student access to online courses are key, but we also know that equity gaps get worse when minority students learn online. We must not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Relationships are at the core of meaningful college experiences and they’re particularly important to underserved students who are more likely to doubt their academic abilities. Underserved online students need the presence of an engaged instructor. If you teach online, your human presence matters. This has been my greatest takeaway from 15 years of teaching online and, perhaps, more striking is that this point still seems revolutionary to so many.
Provide suggestions for a strong classroom climate. At the start of the semester, I offer ways for students to stay engaged in an online classroom environment, and I explain the importance of remaining on camera and on audio. Without a proper explanation, students mistakenly think that they can multitask during live class sessions. Among the tips I offer them:
Refrain from opening email, texting, or browsing the web.
Choose a space where you don’t encounter distractions, which could include family members, laundry, dirty dishes, or a busy street outside your window.
Avoid sitting on a comfortable couch or bed.
Pay close attention to peers’ comments and ask yourself if you agree or disagree, and why. Add to the dialogue by sharing your thoughts.
Avoid taking class from coffee shops or other public spaces. The background noise can create a distraction both for you and for the entire class. Also, internet connections may be inconsistent in public spaces.
Don’t use the chat box when you can speak instead. On my university’s platform, there’s a chat box in which students can type messages in real time. This could be a useful tool if used properly. But I often find it difficult to simultaneously read the chat box while listening to a student who’s speaking. The same goes for when I am speaking and someone is typing comments or questions in the chat box. If there’s a robust dialogue happening among a few of the students and others want to interject, they can place their comments in the chat box. Otherwise, I ask that they take advantage of the face-to-face online time by verbalizing their questions or comments.
From DSC: Esther’s point on how difficult it is to both read/respond to the chat area while also trying to listen to someone else speaking is a great example of cognitive load — and it being overwhelmed with too much information to process at one time.
1. Hook your learners in
2. Use radio techniques to engage with sound
3. Illuminate your ideas with imagery
4. Put your ideas into context using demonstrations, examples, cases and stories
5. Take advantage of the fact you’re live – get interactive
If you’re not going to interact with your audience, there’s absolutely no point in running a live session. If you want to present a large body of content, why not do this in advance in text, as a video or a podcast? Reserve a live session for things you cannot do any other way. Virtual classrooms provide lots of possibilities for interactivity, so use them constantly.
2018 TECH TRENDS REPORT— from the Future Today Institute Emerging technology trends that will influence business, government, education, media and society in the coming year.
Description:
The Future Today Institute’s 11th annual Tech Trends Report identifies 235 tantalizing advancements in emerging technologies—artificial intelligence, biotech, autonomous robots, green energy and space travel—that will begin to enter the mainstream and fundamentally disrupt business, geopolitics and everyday life around the world. Our annual report has garnered more than six million cumulative views, and this edition is our largest to date.
Helping organizations see change early and calculate the impact of new trends is why we publish our annual Emerging Tech Trends Report, which focuses on mid- to late-stage emerging technologies that are on a growth trajectory.
a calendar of events that will shape technology this year
detailed near-future scenarios for several of the technologies
a new framework to help organizations decide when to take action on trends
an interactive table of contents, which will allow you to more easily navigate the report from the bookmarks bar in your PDF reader
01 How does this trend impact our industry and all of its parts?
02 How might global events — politics, climate change, economic shifts – impact this trend, and as a result, our organization?
03 What are the second, third, fourth, and fifth-order implications of this trend as it evolves, both in our organization and our industry?
04 What are the consequences if our organization fails to take action on this trend?
05 Does this trend signal emerging disruption to our traditional business practices and cherished beliefs?
06 Does this trend indicate a future disruption to the established roles and responsibilities within our organization? If so, how do we reverse-engineer that disruption and deal with it in the present day?
07 How are the organizations in adjacent spaces addressing this trend? What can we learn from their failures and best practices?
08 How will the wants, needs and expectations of our consumers/ constituents change as a result of this trend?
09 Where does this trend create potential new partners or collaborators for us?
10 How does this trend inspire us to think about the future of our organization?
A Microlearning Framework — from jvsp.io and Pablo Navarro This infographic is based on the experience of different clients from different industries in different training programs.
From DSC: I thought this was a solid infographic and should prove to be useful for Instructional Designers, Faculty Members, and/or for Corporate Trainers as well.
I might also consider adding a “Gotcha!” piece first — even before the welcome piece — in order to get the learner’s attention and to immediately answer the WHY question. WHY is this topic important and relevant to me? When topics are relevant to people, they care and engage a whole lot more with the content that’s about to be presented to them. Ideally, such a piece would stir some curiosity as well.
From DSC: Why aren’t we further along with lecture recording within K-12 classrooms?
That is, I as a parent — or much better yet, our kids themselves who are still in K-12 — should be able to go online and access whatever talks/lectures/presentations were given on a particular day. When our daughter is sick and misses several days, wouldn’t it be great for her to be able to go out and see what she missed? Even if we had the time and/or the energy to do so (which we don’t), my wife and I can’t present this content to her very well. We would likely explain things differently — and perhaps incorrectly — thus, potentially muddying the waters and causing more confusion for our daughter.
There should be entry level recording studios — such asthe One Button Studio from Penn State University— in each K-12 school for teachers to record their presentations. At the end of each day, the teacher could put a checkbox next to what he/she was able to cover that day. (No rushing intended here — as education is enough of a run-away train often times!) That material would then be made visible/available on that day as links on an online-based calendar. Administrators should pay teachers extra money in the summer times to record these presentations.
Also, students could use these studios to practice their presentation and communication skills. The process is quick and easy:
I’d like to see an option — ideally via a brief voice-driven Q&A at the start of each session — that would ask the person where they wanted to put the recording when it was done: To a thumb drive, to a previously assigned storage area out on the cloud/Internet, or to both destinations?
Providing automatically generated close captioning would be a great feature here as well, especially for English as a Second Language (ESL) students.
It’s not hard to imagine a world in which social media is awash with doctored videos targeting ordinary people to exact revenge, extort or to simply troll.
In that scenario, where Twitter and Facebook are algorithmically flooded with hoaxes, no one could fully believe what they see. Truth, already diminished by Russia’s misinformation campaign and President Trump’s proclivity to label uncomplimentary journalism “fake news,” would be more subjective than ever.
The danger there is not just believing hoaxes, but also dismissing what’s real.
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The consequences could be devastating for the notion of evidentiary video, long considered the paradigm of proof given the sophistication required to manipulate it.
“This goes far beyond ‘fake news’ because you are dealing with a medium, video, that we traditionally put a tremendous amount of weight on and trust in,” said David Ryan Polgar, a writer and self-described tech ethicist.
From DSC: Though I’m typically pro-technology, this is truly disturbing. There are certainly downsides to technology as well as upsides — but it’s how we use a technology that can make the real difference. Again, this is truly disturbing.
From DSC: While I haven’t gone through all of these videos/modules/practice problems, I find the idea of using music to teach math very intriguing. So I wanted to pass this information along in case it helps some students (and teachers) out there!
You might find some (or all) of this a bit corny, but some kids out there might find this style much more interesting and engaging. It might better help get and maintain their attentions. It might help them better remember some of these concepts.
I’m posting these resources/links on my blog here because of such students. If such an approach helps them connect with the material, I say, “Good deal!” Such an approach might suit their preferences quite well.
In fact, perhaps teachers could have their students design and produce these sorts of videos themselves! Talk about active learning/project based learning! Such a cross-disciplinary, team-based approach would involve students with interests and developing skills involving:
Digital video editing
Digital audio editing
Music
Drama/acting
Script writing
Instructional design
Per Matt Wolf, Managing Director at Tylerbarnettpr.com:
Singing math tutor, Huzefa Kapedia, has launched a new musically-based SAT Math Video Course that is sure to bring a smile to faces.
From crooning about the quadratic formula to rapping about slope intercept form, Huzefa introduces the only math SAT course to teach difficult concepts through the power of song.
Additionally, he provides 700 practice problems (all frequency-based), each with its own video explanation.
And…it actually works. Huzefa is not only helping kids score big on their SATs; he is also making the whole math studying thing pretty darn enjoyable.
Problem Solved: Scalar Learning Proves Any Person Can Be a Math Person Online and In-Person Tutoring Platform Introduces Modern Mathematics for Today’s Student
Scalar Learning introduces an innovative online and in-person tutoring platform that enables individuals of all ages and backgrounds with the skills and confidence needed to master mathematics. Founded by software engineer and former patent attorney Huzefa Kapadia, Scalar Learning offers a variety of online courses, private tutoring sessions with specialized educators, and entertaining (and effective) math music videos geared at breathing new life into the outdated tutoring model.
“With Scalar Learning, I wanted to reinvent the tutoring concept for the modern world,” said Kapadia. “Everything I have designed and built is a product of my experience tutoring over 2,500 hours and teaching classrooms of both sixth and second grade math students. By blending vibrant and engaging video tutorials, high quality music videos to convey difficult formulas and concepts, and highly personalized and energetic one-on-one environments, we are able to engage our students on multiple levels. Too many people label themselves as ‘not a math person;’ my goal is to prove to them and the world that there is no such thing. Any person can become a math whiz with the right encouragement and training.”
Scalar Learning offers students a multi-tiered approach to mathematics, designed to engage at every level:
Online video courses, in subjects ranging from multiplication mastery to SAT prep, impart vital math concepts in an easy-to-digest and entertaining format.
One-on-one tutoring sessions with passionate educators can be arranged in-person, via Skype, or as a combination of the two, offering a welcomed flexibility to the traditional tutoring model.
A library of fun and highly entertaining free math music videos help reinforce important mathematical concepts through song, making it easier for students to remember complex formulas and explanations.
“Mathematics has always been my passion, which is why after years as an attorney, I made the career shift to education,” says Kapadia. “Having worked as a teacher and tutor at both private and public schools, I soon noticed how many students had a mental block when it came to math. They would admit defeat far too early simply because they were intimidated. Scalar Learning was born as a means to dismantle that premature defeat. Our system is proof that there is no such thing as being ‘bad at math.’ With the proper tools, practice, and guidance, any person can not only ‘get it,’ but they can also enjoy it.”
Television. TV. There’s an app for that. Finally! TV — that is, live shows such as the news, specials, documentaries (and reality shows, if you must) — is now just like Candy Crunch and Facebook. TV apps (e.g., DirecTV Now) are available on all devices — smartphones, tablets, laptops, Chromebooks. Accessing streams upon streams of videos is, literally, now just a tap away.
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Plain and simple: readily accessible video can be a really valuable resource for learners and learning.
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Not everything that needs to be learned is on video. Instruction will need to balance the use of video with the use of printed materials. That balance, of course, needs to take in cost and accessibility.
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Now for the 800 pound gorilla in the room: Of course, that TV app could be a huge distraction in the classroom. The TV app has just piled yet another classroom management challenge onto a teacher’s back.
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That said, it is early days for TV as an app. For example, HD (High Definition) TV demands high bandwidth — and we can experience stuttering/skipping at times. But, when 5G comes around in 2020, just two years from now, POOF, that stuttering/skipping will disappear. “5G will be as much as 1,000 times faster than 4G.” Yes, POOF!
From DSC: Learning via apps is here to stay. “TV” as apps is here to stay. But what’s being described here is but one piece of the learning ecosystem that will be built over the next 5-15 years and will likely be revolutionary in its global impact on how people learn and grow. There will be opportunities for social-based learning, project-based learning, and more — with digital video being a component of the ecosystem, but is and will be insufficient to completely move someone through all of the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
I will continue to track this developing learning ecosystem, but voice-driven personal assistants are already here. Algorithm-based recommendations are already here. Real-time language translation is already here. The convergence of the telephone/computer/television continues to move forward. AI-based bots will only get better in the future. Tapping into streams of up-to-date content will continue to move forward. Blockchain will likely bring us into the age of cloud-based learner profiles. And on and on it goes.
We’ll still need teachers, professors, and trainers. But this vision WILL occur. It IS where things are heading. It’s only a matter of time.
The beginning of a year is a great time to take stock of the year gone by and plan for the year ahead. In this blog post, we will have a quick glimpse of what we believe would be some of the key trends in workplace learning this year.
A few years after John Boyer began teaching world geography at Virginia Tech, a survey revealed that 58 percent of college-aged Americans could not locate Japan on a map. Sixty-nine percent could not find the United Kingdom.
Boyer raced ahead undaunted. He loved the scope and implications of his subject. “The great thing about geography is . . . everything happens somewhere,” he explains. “Geography is the somewhere.”
Boyer is now a senior instructor and researcher at Virginia Tech. He took over World Regions, an entry-level geography class, while he was working on a master’s degree nearly 20 years ago. The class then had 50 students. Now the course is offered each semester and a whopping 3,000 students take it in any given school year.
What has made it so popular? Innovative pedagogy, for starters. Boyer uses a “flipped syllabus” in which students’ final grades are based on the points they’ve earned—not lost—throughout the semester. His legendary assignments range from reviewing films to tweeting on behalf of world leaders (more on that below). Mostly, Boyer himself has made the class a rite of passage for undergraduates, who typically find him funny, passionate, and consummately engaging. Boyer even created a comic alter ego called the Plaid Avenger, who has narrated textbooks and podcasts but is now largely retired—though Boyer still sports his famous plaid jackets and drives a plaid Scion.
Given the disparity in knowledge levels as well as the disparity in what they like to do in terms of work, whether that be watching international film or writing papers, I wanted to increase the flexibility of what the students could do to achieve a grade in this class.
Tell us about the Twitter World Leaders.
You can choose to be a true, real world leader. Of course, they’re fake accounts and we make sure everyone knows you’re the fake Donald Trump or the fake Angela Merkel of Germany. Once you take on that role, you will tweet as the world leader for the entire semester, and you have to tweet two to three times a day. And it’s not silly stuff. What is the chancellor of Germany working on right now? What other world leaders is Angela Merkel meeting with? What’s going on in Germany or the EEU?
This three-part lab can be experienced all at once or separately. At the beginning of each part, Beatriz’s brain acts as an omniscient narrator, helping learners understand how changes to the brain affect daily life and interactions.
Pre and post assessments, along with a facilitation guide, allow learners and instructors to see progression towards outcomes that are addressed through the story and content in the three parts, including:
1) increased knowledge of Alzheimer’s disease and the brain
2) enhanced confidence to care for people with Alzheimer’s disease
3) improvement in care practice
Why a lab about Alzheimer’s Disease?
The Beatriz Lab is very important to us at Embodied Labs. It is the experience that inspired the start of our company. We believe VR is more than a way to evoke feelings of empathy; rather, it is a powerful behavior change tool. By taking the perspective of Beatriz, healthcare professionals and trainees are empowered to better care for people with Alzheimer’s disease, leading to more effective care practices and better quality of life. Through embodying Beatriz, you will gain insight into life with Alzheimer’s and be able to better connect with and care for your loved ones, patients, clients, or others in this communities who live with the disease every day. In our embodied VR experience, we hope to portray both the difficult and joyful moments — the disease surely is a mix of both.
As part of the experience, you will take a 360 degree trip into Beatriz’s brain,
and visit a neuron “forest” that is being affected by amyloid beta plaques and tau proteins.
From DSC: I love the work that Carrie Shaw and @embodiedLabs are doing! Thanks Carrie & Company!
As VR continues to grow and improve, the experiences will feel more real. But for now, here are the best business conference applications in virtual reality.
A sign of how Apple is supporting VR in parts of its ecosystem, Final Cut Pro X (along with Motion and Compressor), now has a complete toolset that lets you import, edit, and deliver 360° video in both monoscopic and stereoscopic formats.
Final Cut Pro X 10.4 comes with a handful of slick new features that we tested, such as advanced color grading and support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) workflows. All useful features for creators, not just VR editors, especially since Final Cut Pro is used so heavily in industries like video editing and production. But up until today, VR post-production options have been minimal, with no support from major VR headsets. We’ve had options with Adobe Premiere plus plugins, but not everyone wants to be pigeon-holed into a single software option. And Final Cut Pro X runs butter smooth on the new iMac, so there’s that.
Now with the ability to create immersive 360° films right in Final Cut Pro, an entirely new group of creators have the ability to dive into the world of 360 VR video. Its simple and intuitive, something we expect from an Apple product. The 360 VR toolset just works.
HWAM’s first exhibition is a unique collection of Star Wars production pieces, including the very first drawings made for the film franchise and never-before-seen production art from the original trilogy by Lucasfilm alum Joe Johnston, Ralph McQuarrie, Phil Tippett, Drew Struzan, Colin Cantwell, and more.
Will virtual reality help you learn a language more quickly? Or will it simply replace your memory?
VR is the ultimate medium for delivering what is known as “experiential learning.” This education theory is based on the idea that we learn and remember things much better when doing something ourselves than by merely watching someone else do it or being told about it.
The immersive nature of VR means users remember content they interact with in virtual scenarios much more vividly than with any other medium. (According to experiments carried out by professor Ann Schlosser at the University of Washington, VR even has the capacity to prompt the development of false memories.)
How to be an ed tech futurist— from campustechnology.com by Bryan Alexander While no one can predict the future, these forecasting methods will help you anticipate trends and spur more collaborative thinking.
Excerpts:
Some of the forecasting methods Bryan mentions are:
Trend analysis
Environmental scanning
Scenarios
Science fiction
From DSC: I greatly appreciate the work that Bryan does — the topics that he chooses to write about, his analyses, comments, and questions are often thought-provoking. I couldn’t agree more with Bryan’s assertion that forecasting needs to become more realized/practiced within higher education. This is especially true given the exponential rate of change that many societies throughout the globe are now experiencing.
We need to be pulse-checking a variety of landscapes out there, to identify and put significant trends, forces, and emerging technologies on our radars. The strategy of identifying potential scenarios – and then developing responses to those potential scenarios — is very wise.
Until this month, it seemed that GAN-generated images [where GAN stands for “generative adversarial networks”] that could fool a human viewer were years off. But last week research released by Nvidia, a manufacturer of graphics processing units that has cornered the market on deep learning hardware, shows that this method can now be used to generate high-resolution, believable images of celebrities, scenery, and objects.GAN-created images are also already being sold as replacements for fashion photographers—a startup called Mad Street Den told Quartz earlier this month it’s working with North American retailers to replace clothing images on websites with generated images.
From DSC: So AI can now generate realistic photos (i.e., image creation/manipulation). And then there’s Adobe’s VoCo Project, a sort of a Photoshop for audio manipulation plus other related technologies out there:
The era of easily-faked photos is quickly emerging—much as it did when Photoshop became widely prevalent—so it’s a good time to remember we shouldn’t trust everything we see.
…and perhaps we’ll need to add, “we shouldn’t trust everything we hear either.” But how will the average person with average tools know the real deal? The concept of watermarking visuals/audio may be increasingly involved. From the ending of bbc.com article:
For its part, Adobe has talked of its customers using Voco to fix podcast and audio book recordings without having to rebook presenters or voiceover artists.
But a spokeswoman stressed that this did not mean its release was imminent.
“[It] may or may not be released as a product or product feature,” she told the BBC.
“No ship date has been announced.”
In the meantime, Adobe said it was researching ways to detect use of its software.
“Think about watermarking detection,” Mr Jin said at the demo, referring to a method used to hide identifiers in images and other media.
But again, we see that technology often races ahead. “Look at what we can do!” But then the rest of society — such as developing laws, policies, questions about whether we should roll out such technologies, etc. — needs time to catch up. Morals and ethics do come into play here — as trust levels are most assuredly at stake.
Another relevant article/topic/example of this is listed below. (Though I’m not trying to say that we shouldn’t pursue self-driving cars. Rather, the topic serves as another example of technologies racing ahead while it takes a while for the rest of us/society to catch up with them).
Nvidia CEO: Expect autonomous vehicles to hit the streets by 2021 — from bizjournals.com by Gina Hall More than 40 companies, including Intel, Nvidia, Waymo, Tesla, Uber Technologies and Samsung, have secured permits from the California DMV to test self-driving cars on public roads.
![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)
