In the future, the whole world will be a classroom — from fastcoexist.com by Marina Gorbis

 

TheFutureOfEducation-Gorbis-6-28-13

. TheFutureOfEducation3-Gorbis-6-28-13.

From DSC:
What Marina is asserting is what I’m seeing as well. That is, we are between two massive but different means of obtaining an education/learning (throughout our lifetimes I might add).  What she’s saying is also captured in the following graphic:

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streams-of-content-blue-overlay

 

Also see:

 

AmplifyMOOC-July2013

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Also see:

Helping MOOC students navigate open educational resources — from ecampusnews.com by Jake New

Excerpt:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has partnered with Fujitsu Laboratories of America, Inc., to begin addressing the problem with a new platform they call Guided Learning Pathways. The project’s team is currently exploring ways to introduce the platform into the MOOC systems of edX.

Announced June 17 at the Sixth Conference of MIT’s Learning International Networks Consortium but in the works since 2010, the platform allows students to access and organize free, high quality learning materials from all over the internet based on the student’s interest and level of understanding.

From DSC:

  • What if you want to allow some remote students to come on into your face-to-face classroom?
    .
  • What if you want to allow those remote students to be seen and communicated with at eye level?
    .
  • What if you want Remote Student A to join Group 1, and Remote Student B to join Group 2?
    .

Well…how about using one of these devices  in order to do so!


 

New video collaboration robot: TelePresence gets moving — from cisco.com by Dave Evans

Excerpt:

That is why Cisco’s new joint effort with iRobot—demonstrated publicly this week for the first time—is so exciting: We’ve created a mobile Cisco TelePresence unit that brings collaboration to you—or, conversely, brings you to wherever you need to collaborate. Called iRobot Ava 500, this high-definition video collaboration robot combines Cisco TelePresence with iRobot’s mobility and self-navigation capabilities, enabling freedom of movement and spontaneous interactions with people thousands of miles away.

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irobot-june-10-2013
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iRobot Ava™ 500 Video Collaboration Robot — published on Jun 10, 2013
iRobot and Cisco have teamed to bring the Ava 500 video collaboration robot to market. The robot blends iRobot’s autonomous navigation with Cisco’s TelePresence to enable people working off-site to participate in meetings and presentations where movement and location spontaneity are important. The new robot is also designed to enable mobile visual access to manufacturing facilities, laboratories, customer experience centers and other remote facilities.

 

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Double Robotics Double

http://www.doublerobotics.com/img/use-office.jpg

 

 

MantaroBot™ TeleMe

 

 

 

From Attack of the Telepresence Robots! — from BYTE  by Rick Lehrbaum

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Kubi

http://twimgs.com/informationweek/byte/reviews/2013-Jan/robotic-telepresence/kubi.jpg

 

 

MantaroBot “TeleMe” VGo Communications “VGo” Anybots “QB” Suitable Technologies “Beam”

 

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RP-7i ROBOT

RP-7i Remote Presence Robot

 

Also see:

 

Ten things you should know about WebRTC — from cioinsight.com by Dennis McCafferty

Excerpt:

Don’t you think it would be great if you could engage with customers, employees, and partners accessing voice, video and data-sharing apps on a Web browser without any plug-ins? Thanks to developments with WebRTC technology, this is becoming a reality. To lend greater insight into this topic, Constellation Research Inc. has come out with a recent report, Ten Things CIOs Should Know about WebRTC. In it, author E. Brent Kelly reveals that WebRTC has the potential to take concepts pioneered by programs such as Skype to the next level. Ordinary Web developers will be able to, for example, use basic JavaScript application programming interfaces (APIs) to craft fully functioning voice, video and data-collaboration apps, or embed these capabilities with other apps with just a few lines of code. As a result, CIOs can lead their organizations to greater levels of employee productivity and customer engagement. “WebRTC may prove to be as disruptive to communications and collaboration as the World Wide Web was for information,” says Kelly, a vice president and principal analyst at Constellation.

KPCB Internet Trends 2013by Mary Meeker and Liang Wu on May 29, 2013

Description:

The latest edition of the annual Internet Trends report finds continued robust online growth. There are now 2.4 billion Internet users around the world, and the total continues to grow apace. Mobile usage is expanding rapidly, while the mobile advertising opportunity remains largely untapped. The report reviews the shifting online landscape, which has become more social and content rich, with expanded use of photos, video and audio. Looking ahead, the report finds early signs of growth for wearable computing devices, like glasses, connected wrist bands and watches – and the emergence of connected cars, drones and other new platforms.

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Excerpts:
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Meeker-Wu-InternetTrends-5-29-13

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Meeker-Wu-2-InternetTrends-5-29-13

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Meeker-Wu-3-InternetTrends-5-29-13

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Meeker-Wu-4-InternetTrends-5-29-13

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Meeker-Wu-5-InternetTrends-5-29-13

openSAP-May2013

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SAP launches MOOC style online courseware — from technorati.com by Adi Gaskell

Excerpt:

Last year I looked at the impact of Massive Online Open Courses and other forms of online learning were having on learning in the workplace.

So it’s interesting to read that software giant SAP are to launch their own MOOC style platform.

The site, called Open.SAP.com, aims to offer employees and other people interested in the SAP environment, a range of courses on topics that the company believe are key to success in the SAP world.

For instance, the first module available is an introduction to software development on SAP HANA.  SAP recommend that people spend around 5 hours per week for six weeks on the course, which has thus far attracted around 20,000 students.

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Mapping with Google

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Discover new ways to navigate the world around you with Google Maps and Google Earth.

Improve your use of new and existing features of Google’s mapping tools.

Choose your own path. Complete a project using Google Maps, Google Earth, or both, and earn a certificate of completion.

Open learning pioneer heads west  — from insidehighered.com by Doug Lederman

Excerpt:

Since long before the advent of massive open online courses, Candace Thille’s project to fuse learning science with open educational delivery, developed at Carnegie Mellon University, has been heralded as one of higher education’s most significant and promising developments.

Friday, Thille essentially launched stage two of her research-based effort to expand the reach and improve the quality of technology-enabled education, with word that she (and at least part of her Open Learning Initiative) would move to Stanford University.

Thille and Stanford officials alike believe that by merging her experience in building high-quality, data-driven, open online courses with Stanford’s expertise in research on teaching and learning – notably its focus on how different types of students learn in differing environments – the university can become a center of research and practice in the efficacy of digital education.

Higher Ed in 2018 — from InsideHigherEd.com by Jeb Bush and Randy Best

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Half a decade from now, almost all universities will offer their students the option of undertaking their coursework in high-demand degree programs online. However, online offerings will no longer be the competitive advantage they are today.

This unprecedented competition and the availability of many high-quality, low-priced options will have caused the tuition bubble to burst and the cost of attending college to tumble, putting even greater pressure on institutional budgets.

While the relative cost of instruction will have declined due to increased scale, the incomes of many professors providing online instruction will have risen sharply.  Some of these professors will have become the free agents of academe, with their courses widely accepted at both public and private universities around the world.

 

 

EdX Expands xConsortium to Asia and doubles in size with addition of 15 new global institutions — from prnewswire.com

From MOOC platform edX announces 15 new university partners (from educationdive.com)

These are the new partner institutions:

  • The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (HKUx)
  • Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Hong Kong (HKUSTx)
  • Kyoto University, Japan (KyotoUx)
  • Peking University, Beijing, China (PekingX)
  • Seoul National University, South Korea (SNUx)
  • Tsinghua University, Beijing, China (TsinghuaX)
  • The University of Queensland in Australia (UQx)
  • Karolinska Institutet, Sweden (KIx)
  • Universite catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium (LouvainX)
  • Technische Universitat Munchen, Germany (TUMx)
  • Berklee College of Music, Boston, Mass. (BerkleeX)
  • Boston University, Boston, Mass. (BUx)
  • Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. (CornellX)
  • Davidson College, Davidson, N.C. (DavidsonX)
  • University of Washington, Seattle (UWashingtonX)

Mezzanine-from-Oblong-May2013

 

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Mezzanine2-from-Oblong-May2013

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From the Oblong.com website:

Mezzanine™ is a collaborative conference room solution that introduces multi-user, multi-screen, multi-device collaboration. This is next-generation communication: share any content from any device with anyone, anywhere.

Mezzanine transforms creative teamwork, executive meetings, and sales presentations into real-time, collaborative work sessions. Mezzanine expands on existing telepresence technology by providing what we call InfoPresence™—the incorporation of multiple users, multiple devices, and multiple streams of information in the collaboration environment. The future of conference room collaboration is here.

A Mezzanine workspace lets any person on a network bring their own device and share content and applications with any colleague, anywhere in the world, interactively. Mezzanine is a collaborative conference room solution combining presentation design and delivery, application sharing, whiteboard capture, and video conferencing, all within a framework of multi-participant control.

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Also see:

  • Oblong Technovates with LA High School
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  • Oblong at OME
    Oblong Industries recently participated at OME, a summit hosted by UC San Francisco.  The two-day summit focused on charting the future of precision medicine—an emerging field combining big data with clinical research and patient care to deliver insights and advances in treatment that is more targeted and enables improved patient outcomes.

 

Michigan district fires all teachers, closes every school — from takepart.com by Suzi Parker
A funding crisis caused the Buena Vista School District to close its schools for the rest of the year—and perhaps permanently.

 

From DSC:
This is not right.

If the State of Michigan can’t resolve this…
I hope that a corporation or two — or a major philanthropist or two — steps in here to insure that all these students have Internet access. Then provide/allow these students to go online.  Let these students take any class that they want to — and help them enjoy learning as much as possible. They will learn things along the way — without even knowing that they are learning (along the lines of what Sugata Mitra has been saying).

Are there issues with this idea? You bet. I can think of several off the top of my head:

  • Parents out at work, kids at home…
  • Online learning works best with disciplined students…
  • The students may take courses that are not STEM-related
    (However, if they are interested in another discipline or topic, these things could be brought into their learning along the way.)
  • The students may not take courses related to the Common Core standards
    (However, this is not a big concern for me; as pounding everyone into a similar “mold” goes against the reality that each of us is different.  We each have different gifts, skills, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, passions, interests, and preferences.)

But we’ve let these kids down — and make no mistake, we will all pay the price for this type of thing — one way or another. We need to help these kids discover the joy of learning…before it’s too late. 

  

 

 

 

 

 

The do’s and don’ts of synchronous online learning — from campustechnology.com by Bridget McCrea

Excerpt:

Creating videos, presentations, and lessons that college students access and interact with on their own time and terms is one thing, but developing learning content that requires both students and instructor to be online at the same time presents a whole different set of challenges for college professors and instructional technologists.

Online education for the pros: Udemy launches corporate training tools — from venturebeat.com by Christina Farr

Excerpt:

Online course providers typically target students, but Udemy is going after an underserved group: professionals.

 


Also, from Learning TRENDS by Elliott Masie – April 18, 2013
#768 – Updates on Learning, Business & Technology
55,949 Readers – www.masie.com – twitter: emasie – The MASIE Center.
Host: TeleWork 2013 – A National Forum – www.telework2013.com

1. MOOC’s & Corporate Learning?
There is a great media interest in MOOC’s – the innovations for Massive Open Online Courses – where one instructor runs a course for thousands or tens of thousands of learners.  I have been a student in three MOOC’s and a teacher/facilitator in three.  Now, we are hearing from many learning colleagues about the applicability of the MOOC to workplace learning.

I would urge TRENDS readers to approach MOOC’s as important beta/lab experiments – where important and cool innovations are emerging in the construction, delivery and economics of educational “packages”.  My experience as a MOOC learner has been exciting and mixed.  While there were over 70,000 learners in one program – very few made it to the end of the program – and fewer were fully successful from a competency point of view.  It was exciting to see how learners could be co-designers of the program and many resources were developed and disseminated from the learners.  Finally, there were mixed models of how well the social/collaborative side of the MOOC’s worked.

As a teacher – I struggled with the format shifts reflected by MOOC’s. Were the assignments suggestions or could I predict a level of engagement of the learners.  Was the content that was posted by learners legal – some added video that wasn’t within their IP ownership.  And, the issue of fees were also interesting. A free MOOC will get high starts but perhaps high drop offs.  When fees were added, did that take away the “open” label.  It is also interesting to see colleges and universities that have never made a profit on classroom offerings think they will generate good margins by adding MOOC’s to their offerings.

It is early and really too early to predict how MOOC’s might evolve within the corporate world.  I have been advocating that we take each of the letters as distinct areas for innovation:

– M: Massive dissemination of content
– O: Open content and content reuse along with curation by learners.
– O: Online resources added to both 1 mode and mixed/blended mode delivery.
– C: Course? Perhaps the MOOC might become a MOOP (Program) or MOOA (Assets)

And, is there a Competency check assumed in a MOOC – as well as certification or even college credit?

MOOC’s are important innovations.  Now, we need to label them as Lab or Beta tests – and gather evidence as we experiment with the use of all or some of MOOC’s elements in corporate settings.  We will be experimenting with the MOOC as a corporate model in an upcoming Learning LAB of our Learning CONSORTIUM.  Interested in hearing from TRENDS readers exploring MOOC’s in our world.

 


The College of 2020
If #HigherEd stays way it is, w/ 19th century style lectures, w/in 10 years Google U. and Walt Disney U. to take it over – Wim Westera


 

Addendum on 4/19/13:

Bridging the Skills Gap — from trainingmag.com by Lorri Freifeld
Employers want certain skills. Employees don’t have them. Why? And what can organizations and Training, employees, and the educational system do to eliminate the disconnect?

Excerpt:

With the U.S. unemployment rate hovering around 8 percent and millions of people desperately looking for jobs, why are many employers claiming they can’t fill their vacant positions?

The answer: A skills gap that threatens the sustainability of businesses around the world. And while a big part of the skills gap is a shortage of people skilled in the STEM (science, technology, education, and math) industries, there also is a gap in soft skills such as communication and advanced leadership skills.

What is causing these skills gaps? What can—and should—employers and their Training departments, employees, and the education system be doing differently? This first article in a five-part series will address these questions. Subsequent articles will explore how corporate partnerships with colleges and universities can help bridge the divide (May/June), how to motivate employees to take advantage of skills gap training and eliminate any sense of promotion entitlement (July/August), how technology can help (September/October), and additional potential solutions and strategies for success (November/December).

 

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From DSC:
We had better start talking STEAM not STEM from here on out (i.e. add the ARTS!).  You can’t get creative thinkers without fostering some creativity.

 

Harvard researchers: frequent tests increase retention in online learning — from elearningindustry.com by Andrew Winner

Excerpt:

A pair of researchers at Harvard University think they’ve got part of the answer. In a study run by Daniel Schacter, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology, and Karl Szpunar, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology, they found that interspersing short quizzes into online learning course can dramatically increase student retention of material.

 

© 2024 | Daniel Christian