DC: In the future…will there be a “JustWatch” or a “Suppose” for learning-related content?

DC: In the future...will there be a JustWatch or a Suppose for learning-related content?

 

Per Jane Hart on LinkedIn:

Top 200 Tools for Learning 2019 is now published, together with:

PLUS analysis of how these tools are being used in different context, new graphics, and updated comments on the tools’ pages that show how people are using the tools.

 

 

 

Is virtual reality the future of online learning? — from builtin.com by Stephen Gossett; with thanks to Dane Lancaster for his tweet on this (see below)
Education is driving the future of VR more than any other industry outside of gaming. Here’s why virtual reality gets such high marks for tutoring, STEM development, field trips and distance education.

 

 

 

Screen Mirroring, Screencasting and Screen Sharing in Higher Education — from edtechmagazine.com by Derek Rice
Digital learning platforms let students and professors interact through shared videos and documents.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Active learning, collaboration, personalization, flexibility and two-way communication are the main factors driving today’s modern classroom design.

Among the technologies being brought to bear in academic settings are those that enable screen mirroring, screencasting and screen sharing, often collectively referred to as wireless presentation solutions.

These technologies are often supported by a device and app that allow users, both students and professors, to easily share content on a larger screen in a classroom.

“The next best thing to a one-to-one conversation is to be able to share what the students create, as part of the homework or class activity, or communicate using media to provide video evidence of class activities and enhance and build out reading, writing, speaking, listening, language and other skills,” says Michael Volpe, marketing manager for IOGEAR.

 

What to expect at IFA 2019, Europe’s colossal tech show — from digitaltrends.com by Josh Levenson

Excerpt:

This week, the world’s leading manufacturers will take to the stage at IFA 2019 in Berlin, Germany, to showcase their latest innovations. Here’s what you need to know about this year’s show, including when it’s set to start, how long it will run for, where it’s held, the schedule, and all the devices we’re expecting to see unveiled by the likes of LG, Sony, Samsung, and more.

 

Disrupting Education. The Rise Of K-12 Online And The Entrepreneurial Opportunities — from forbes.com by Bernhard Schroeder

Excerpt:

Online learning, once reserved for higher education, is now a growing trend among K-12 students nationwide. Over 2.7 million students across the United States are taking part in digital learning, and many students in grades K-12 are getting a high-quality education online through a full-time online public school.

 

Also related/see:

 

Online learning has the potential to be both high quality and significantly less expensive than its residential counterpart.

 

 

DC: Holy smokes!!! How might this be applied to education/learning/training in the 21st century!?!

 

“What if neither distance nor language mattered? What if technology could help you be anywhere you need to be and speak any language? Using AI technology and holographic experiences this is possible, and it is revolutionary.”

 

 

Also see:

Microsoft has a wild hologram that translates HoloLens keynotes into Japanese — from theverge.com by
Azure and HoloLens combine for a hint at the future

Excerpt:

Microsoft has created a hologram that will transform someone into a digital speaker of another language. The software giant unveiled the technology during a keynote at the Microsoft Inspire partner conference [on 7/17/19] in Las Vegas. Microsoft recently scanned Julia White, a company executive for Azure, at a Mixed Reality capture studio to transform her into an exact hologram replica.

The digital version appeared onstage to translate the keynote into Japanese. Microsoft has used its Azure AI technologies and neural text-to-speech to make this possible. It works by taking recordings of White’s voice, in order to create a personalized voice signature, to make it sound like she’s speaking Japanese.

 

 

 

Bigscreen TV launches with 50+ channels of video content — from vrscout.com by Allison Hollender

Excerpts:

Bigscreen, an immersive social platform that allows you to access your computer in VR, aims to continue revolutionizing the TV viewing experience with Bigscreen TV — a VR streaming experience that opens up access to over 50 major television providers.


“With Bigscreen, users can watch a Netflix show or a Twitch stream in an IMAX-like virtual movie theater,” Bigscreen reports. This means users from around the world can gather together to watch big championship games or their favorite shows with their friends as though they are together on the same couch.

 

How might immersive techs like those found in BigScreen TV impact teaching and learning related experiences?

 

From DSC:
Interesting…how might technologies and vendors like Bigscreen TV impact learning-related experiences? Hmmm….time will tell.

 

Reflections on “Clay Shirky on Mega-Universities and Scale” [Christian]

Clay Shirky on Mega-Universities and Scale — from philonedtech.com by Clay Shirky
[This was a guest post by Clay Shirky that grew out of a conversation that Clay and Phil had about IPEDS enrollment data. Most of the graphs are provided by Phil.]

Excerpts:

Were half a dozen institutions to dominate the online learning landscape with no end to their expansion, or shift what Americans seek in a college degree, that would indeed be one of the greatest transformations in the history of American higher education. The available data, however, casts doubt on that idea.

Though much of the conversation around mega-universities is speculative, we already know what a mega-university actually looks like, one much larger than any university today. It looks like the University of Phoenix, or rather it looked like Phoenix at the beginning of this decade, when it had 470,000 students, the majority of whom took some or all of their classes online. Phoenix back then was six times the size of the next-largest school, Kaplan, with 78,000 students, and nearly five times the size of any university operating today.

From that high-water mark, Phoenix has lost an average of 40,000 students every year of this decade.

 

From DSC:
First of all, I greatly appreciate both Clay’s and Phil’s thought leadership and their respective contributions to education and learning through the years. I value their perspectives and their work.  Clay and Phil offer up a great article here — one worth your time to read.  

The article made me reflect on what I’ve been building upon and tracking for the last decade — a next generation ***PLATFORM*** that I believe will represent a powerful piece of a global learning ecosystem. I call this vision, “Learning from the Living [Class] Room.” Though the artificial intelligence-backed platform that I’m envisioning doesn’t yet fully exist — this new era and type of learning-based platform ARE coming. The emerging signs, technologies, trends — and “fingerprints”of it, if you will — are beginning to develop all over the place.

Such a platform will:

  • Be aimed at the lifelong learner.
  • Offer up major opportunities to stay relevant and up-to-date with one’s skills.
  • Offer access to the program offerings from many organizations — including the mega-universities, but also, from many other organizations that are not nearly as large as the mega-universities.
  • Be reliant upon human teachers, professors, trainers, subject matter experts, but will be backed up by powerful AI-based technologies/tools. For example, AI-based tools will pulse-check the open job descriptions and the needs of business and present the top ___ areas to go into (how long those areas/jobs last is anyone’s guess, given the exponential pace of technological change).

Below are some quotes that I want to comment on:

Not nothing, but not the kind of environment that will produce an educational Amazon either, especially since the top 30 actually shrank by 0.2% a year.

 

Instead of an “Amazon vs. the rest” dynamic, online education is turning into something much more widely adopted, where the biggest schools are simply the upper end of a continuum, not so different from their competitors, and not worth treating as members of a separate category.

 

Since the founding of William and Mary, the country’s second college, higher education in the U.S. hasn’t been a winner-take-all market, and it isn’t one today. We are not entering a world where the largest university operates at outsized scale, we’re leaving that world; 

 

From DSC:
I don’t see us leaving that world at all…but that’s not my main reflection here. Instead, I’m not focusing on how large the mega-universities will become. When I speak of a forthcoming Walmart of Education or Amazon of Education, what I have in mind is a platform…not one particular organization.

Consider that the vast majority of Amazon’s revenues come from products that other organizations produce. They are a platform, if you will. And in the world of platforms (i.e., software), it IS a winner take all market. 

Bill Gates reflects on this as well in this recent article from The Verge:

“In the software world, particularly for platforms, these are winner-take-all markets.

So it’s all about a forthcoming platform — or platforms. (It could be more than one platform. Consider Apple. Consider Microsoft. Consider Google. Consider Facebook.)

But then the question becomes…would a large amount of universities (and other types of organizations) be willing to offer up their courses on a platform? Well, consider what’s ALREADY happening with FutureLearn:

Finally…one more excerpt from Clay’s article:

Eventually the new ideas lose their power to shock, and end up being widely copied. Institutional transformation starts as heresy and ends as a section in the faculty handbook. 

From DSC:
This is a great point. Reminds me of this tweet from Fred Steube (and I added a piece about Western Telegraph):

 

Some things to reflect upon…for sure.

 

Meet Anthony Johnson: Teacher of the Year. Rebel ‘Mayor.’ High School Dropout. — from edsurge.com by Kristin Leong

Excerpt:

Anthony’s classroom is as much an invitation to his students to take ownership of their learning as it is a rebellion against the education system that failed him when he was a student. In his book, “High School Dropout to Teacher of the Year,” Anthony’s complicated relationship to education comes through as the fuel behind his work. In explaining his motivations behind reinventing classroom learning, he says that his focus as a teacher is to provide students with learning experiences that are “radically different” from the ones he remembers.

 

From the description of his book:

What makes Anthony Johnson a gem is not the fact that he is an African American male, but that he cultivates and fosters a learning environment unlike any other seen in this country.

 

 

Cisco and American Well are teaming up to let you talk to your doctor from your TV — from cnbc.com by Christina Farr

Key points:

  • Cisco and American Well are working on bringing virtual medical visits to homes across the country.
  • Traditionally, virtual medical visits are conducted via laptops and smartphones.
  • But the television set might be more accessible, especially for older Americans.
 

 

 

 Also see:

Microsoft is building a virtual assistant for work. Google is building one for everything else — from qz.com by Dave Gershgorn

Excerpts:

In the early days of virtual personal assistants, the goal was to create a multipurpose digital buddy—always there, ready to take on any task. Now, tech companies are realizing that doing it all is too much, and instead doubling down on what they know best.

Since the company has a deep understanding of how organizations work, Microsoft is focusing on managing your workday with voice, rearranging meetings and turning the dials on the behemoth of bureaucracy in concert with your phone.

 

Voice is the next major platform, and being first to it is an opportunity to make the category as popular as Apple made touchscreens. To dominate even one aspect of voice technology is to tap into the next iteration of how humans use computers.

 

 

From DSC:
What affordances might these developments provide for our future learning spaces?

Will faculty members’ voices be recognized to:

  • Sign onto the LMS?
  • Dim the lights?
  • Turn on the projector(s) and/or display(s)?
  • Other?

Will students be able to send the contents of their mobile devices to particular displays via their voices?

Will voice be mixed in with augmented reality (i.e., the students and their devices can “see” which device to send their content to)?

Hmmm…time will tell.

 

 

Resources from Bluescape Brings Creatives Together to Ideate and Collaborate in New Ways at Cannes Lions 2019

  • Design with Greater Ease Using Bluescape on Wacom video <– From DSC: Very sharp!
  • Bluescape for Creatives – War Rooms video
  • Bluescape for Creatives – Review and Approve video
  • Bluescape for Creatives – Presentations and Storytelling video
  • Bluescape for Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe XD page
  • Bluescape Speeds up UX/UI Design Cycle with XD Plugin video
 

10 important Google Drive tips for teachers and educators — from educatorstechnology.com

Excerpt:

As the creator and owner of a folder, you have different sharing settings at your hand. You can share your folders with specific people via email and allow them to either view the folder or view and edit it. Drive also enables you to prevent collaborators  from changing access and adding new people by simply checking the box next to ‘prevent editors from changing access and adding new people’. Here is how to access sharing options of your folders…

 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian