A new learning “channel” is developing

Posted on April 30, 2011 by Daniel Christian

In the near future, as the computer, the television, the telephone (and more) continues to converge, we will most likely enjoy even more powerful capabilities to conveniently create and share our content as well as participate in a global learning ecosystem — whether that be from within our homes and/or from within our schools, colleges, universities, businesses, and teaching “facilities” throughout the world.

Perhaps we will be teachers and students at the same time — even within the same hour — with online-based learning exchanges taking place all over the virtual and physical world.  Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) — in the form of online-based tutors, instructors, teachers, professors, trainers, and other experts in the field — will be available on demand. Even more powerful/accurate/helpful learning engines will be involved behind the scenes in delivering up personalized, customized learning — available 24x7x365.  Cloud-based learner profiles may enter the equation as well.

The chances for creativity,  innovation, and entrepreneurship that are coming will be mind-blowing! What employers will be looking for — and where they can look for it — may change as well.

What we know today as the “television” will most likely play a significant role in this learning ecosystem of the future. But it won’t be like the TV we’ve come to know. It will be much more interactive and will be aware of who is using it — and what that person is interested in learning about. Technologies/applications like Apple’s AirPlay will become more standard, allowing a person to move from device to device without missing a  beat. Transmedia storytellers will thrive in this environment!

Below are some graphics and recent articles that begin to capture what I’m referring to here:

Here are some recent articles that speak to this convergence/trend:

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Pearson acquisitions

Posted on April 27, 2011 by gsiemens

Pearson continues its acquisition habits by purchasing Schoolnet for $230 million. Schoolnet “offers a system for allowing teachers to deliver personalised learning for students and serves more than 5 million US pupils through partnerships with states and districts.”

Pearson is a diversified information and publishing company (Financial Times, Penguin, K-12 and higher education textbook publishing). Recently, they have started to fashion themselves as a “learning company”. Learning is a suitably vague – and noble – word to guide organizations through complex transitory periods. It gives a rough shape to what the corporation aspires to achieve, but doesn’t confine it significantly.

Education is on a path to globalization, roughly where businesses were in the 1970s. No clear leader exists, conglomerates haven’t made a huge impact yet, technology is marginally used for conducting business, and acquisitions to expand market capacity are rare. That’s changing. Pearson is rapidly pursuing acquisitions. The education sector, from the stance of corporations, is ripe for innovation. For startups this is a great opportunity. The Silicon Valley effect (create a startup with the intention of being purchased by Google, Microsoft, Facebook) is starting to gain traction in the education sector.

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Skillshare: Democratizing Education

Posted on April 27, 2011 by viplavbaxi

The concept of Skillshare is to connect teachers and learners within a local community context. It is Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Skillshare CEO/Co-Founder, who makes a clarion call for democratizing education. The backdrop is spiralling student debt, the perception of college as the pinnacle of education, and the de-focusing from learning per se.

Michael, in his presentation, Let’s Start a Learning Revolution, makes these points and the case for a marketplace where people who want to learn can do so from people who want to teach (commercially or otherwise). The context is local and personalized, with the starting chapter based out of NYC. The basic idea is to leverage the community as it is the world’s largest university, simultaneously debunking the myth that college leads to success.

Skillshare (tagline: learn anything from anyone) allows people to teach informally and provides them resources (pick a venue, design your class) to make it an enjoyable and effective experience.  I am assuming at some point they will also provide additional tools for pure online experiences or tools for structuring/managing/sourcing content.

Michael also incites and provokes in his presentation by saying things like higher education has shifted from learning to profit, colleges act as corporations, college degree does not lead to success, there is an inevitable loan crisis coming, and, not everyone needs to go to college.

While recognizing that institutions and certifications are part of the existing system, informal community-based learning pure-plays like Skillshare can play an important part, and will reach their maturity when their systems get aligned to official marketplaces and industrial needs. I daresay they will gain much from looking at local guilds and ensuring their participation, as well as creating a direct linkage between jobs and students; but it will be good if this behaviour is allowed to emerge and self-organize rather than being imposed as part of an upfront commercial/partner arrangement.

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Stream Catcher: A new concept for the user interface/learning experience of the future

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Daniel Christian

Stream Catcher -- A new user interface and learning experience of the future

Addendum:

My hope with this sort of interface would be that with a swish of my wrist (i.e. Minority Report; or perhaps a less flashy example — the person giving us the weather report), I could move one of those sources/streams of content to be the main source of content. The other streams of content could be easily accessible but would not have to be visible (and hence potentially tipping things in the wrong direction in terms of cognitive load).

For example, perhaps I could “hide” everything but a Captivate or Camtasia-Studio-like piece of content on how to do some problem in Physics. I could elect to hear the professor’s audio or not. What is exciting to me about this concept is trying to figure out a way for people to quickly and easily tap into curated, highly-recommended sources of content on a particular subject/discipline.

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Arizona State University: Education Innovation Summit

Posted on April 12, 2011 by gsiemens

Last week, Arizona State University hosted the Education Innovation Summit. After seeing the event from 2010, I had planned to attend this year’s event. Unfortunately, schedule/travel didn’t align. As far as I’m aware of, this is the only major academic initiative focused on fostering entrepreneurial innovation in education (I’m happy to be corrected in the comments). The scope of challenges confronted the education system would suggest that it would be the object of innovation and entrepreneurship. After all, the systems most ripe for new ideas are those that are facing anomalies, challenges, and change. Despite government and societal concerns about the effectiveness of traditional education, new ideas are surprisingly confined to rhetoric, not action. Part of our goal with FutureLearn is to raise the profile of those who are experimenting at the intersection of technology, teaching/learning, and entrepreneurship.

The conference blog from EI Summit captures the content of several sessions and provides numerous interviews. Unfortunately, the sessions weren’t streamed. Recording aren’t available either – an oversight for any conference, especially one focused on innovation in education…

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Some helpful resources regarding innovation

Posted on April 8, 2011 by Daniel Christian

I just wanted to pass along some helpful resources to those interested in innovation:

I would like to thank Mr. Brian Christian for many of these resources, even if indirectly.

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Augmented reality+QR codes+mobile learning devices: Perhaps a potent combination for learning!

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Daniel Christian

Earlier today, I was reflecting upon Kirsten Winkler’s blog posting at bigthink.com, entitled “Augmented Learning.” Here is an excerpt from Kirsten’s posting:

A technology that keeps me excited for a while now is augmented reality in combination with QR codes and geo tagging. One start-up that caught my attention early on was Stickybits.

As I thought further about QR codes, augmented reality, and mobile devices, I thought about a related application of these technologies involving geology courses. That is, what if the rocks or other types of materials (that students were trying to learn about) were assigned their own QR codes? Then the students could walk around the room, scan in the QR codes, and the relevant information about that rock/material would appear immediately on their devices.

For that matter, what about biology courses — with QR codes next to a variety of organs in a dissection exercise?

Or in courses on agriculture/forestry — how about using QR codes next to a variety of foliage and/or types of seeds?

The point is…suddenly, the physical world gets connected to the virtual world, with instant information at our fingertips. Hmmm…potentially very interesting indeed.

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Now you’re talking! A concept that relates to “Smart Classrooms” of the future.

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Daniel Christian

I’ve been hoping that Steelcase would move towards implementing their puck-like devices — from their  MediaScape product line — on tables throughout a classroom…whereby these pucks would be wireless and whereby students could plug in whatever device they brought to class with them, and then hit the puck to begin “playing their media for the classroom.” No pauses, no interruptions to the flow of the class.

Along these lines, I found the following concept out at fubiz.net very interesting:

polyply1

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The incredible potential of location-aware educational materials

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Daniel Christian

Theme of post:
The incredible potential of location-aware educational materials, which could greatly enable a student to pursue their passions.

The other day, I was talking to my son after he had just finished playing a Wii-based football game. As we were talking, the situation made me reflect upon the power* that could come into play when a game/resource knows your (general) location. For example, in this NFL-based game, the system might ask if my son wants the Detroit Lions involved in the game (we live in Michigan, USA). If he said yes, then the system might ask if my son were interested in knowing more about the Detroit Lines upcoming schedule. Again, if he answers in the affirmative, the system could provide a link to instantly take him to that information.

Now…take that same concept into the world of education, as a student attempts to pursue her passions, interests, and gifts. If, for example, she’s using a device that is teaching her how to draw, the educational resource might present a list of art shows and exhibits in her area, along with information on how to get into these events for free. In this manner, she could feed her passion. Such applications could open up a network of opportunities — in real-time — and present to a student what’s currently happening around them that could further involve them in the very thing that they are working with at that time (be it music, art, math, physics, or whatever discipline that’s involved). This is especially powerful if one were traveling or on a field trip.

Museums and educational institutions could tag their events so that such software goes out looking for such information and would bring such information back to the “game”/educational resource.

It seems to me that such technologies could assist in pursuing one’s passion; and if so, then the student has a higher chance of developing a love of learning. If a student develops a love for learning, then the chances are higher that that person will become a lifelong learner.

My bet? Some pretty cool teaching and learning times are ahead…

* I realize there are reflections going on in my mind — and others’ minds as well — that such power needs to be taken seriously, responsibly…and not abused from a commercial standpoint nor from a security standpoint. Perhaps options/preferences will be needed within the software to block such inquiries and communications (but I hope not).

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Q. Will Q&A sites find their niche in education? A. I hope so

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Richard Olsen

Q&A for educationDid you get caught up in the Quora hype over Christmas? I wasted quite a few hours desperately trying to get into it, scouring for questions I could add some value to, looking for answers that would blow my mind.  I followed people, questions and topics but a couple of months later my account lies dormant, basically unused.

So what is Quora?

Quora is a Question and Answer community, a cross between a blog, a wiki, with Digg style voting and a splash of game mechanics (points and badges) thrown in. Unlike traditional forums and Q&A sites, other users can suggest edits to improve questions or answers. With the best answers being voted up and poor answers being voted down.

Not that Quora was the first, or will be the last, to do this. Stack Overflow, is an immensely popular and effective programming Q& A site that boasts an amazing array of highly quality questions and answers across all facets of programming. Thanks to the number and commitment of their users, a new question takes an average of seven minutes to be answered. Not too bad if you’re stuck?

The real trick with the Q&A sites is how the use the wiki features and voting to increase the quality of the content. Unclear questions and answers can be queried or improved by others with good answers promoted and poor answer demoted. As users gain reputation points through quality contributions they gain more roles in the site again ensuring greater quality.

While Stack Overflow is just for programming, they also have spun off 44 other Q&A sites using the same engine with communities ranging from Bicycles to Mathematics to Guitars.

In 2009 the Stack Engine was offered a white label service but unfortunately it was no the success they had hoped for and is no longer available. Merspi an Australian company took advantage of this and started a Q&A for Australian students studying for their Victorian Certificate of Education.  Merspi has over 1500 questions and boasts a fairly active community with students and teachers working together to build knowledge around the final year of high school.

Stack Overflow and Quora show how Q&A can be done right to produce high quality and collaboratively authored content. Hopefully Merspi is the first of many education startups that leverage these ideas.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/horiavarlan/4273168957

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