Fasten your seatbelts An accelerated ride through some

Fasten your seatbelts!!! An accelerated ride through some ed-tech landscapes Daniel Christian Calvin College Fall Conference | 8/25/11

Goals of this ride! Not meant to overwhelm, rather to: • Help you connect with others • Take a pulse check of what’s going on both now and in the near future • Present a variety of ideas, options, possibilities, and resources • Focus on the ones you think might help you and/or your students – and discard the rest

The ride begins as we zoom down… Connections Avenue

Some tools for connecting w/ others • Blogs powerful! • • Campus Pack here at Calvin Blogs, wikis, podcasts, journals • Online-based communities • Web collaboration tools • Such as Wimba Classroom, Skype, Web. Ex… • Twitter, Facebook, Google + types of tools

Connecting with others: Yammer

Connecting with others: Blogs • • • A blend of the term web log Often individuals posting w/ invites for comments Key pt: You’re subscribing to streams of content If outside of Calvin, to create your own: Word. Press To gather/read postings Google Reader To get started: • See RSS in Plain English and/or this resource • Then get Google Reader or another “feed” aggregator

Connecting with others: Blogs

Connecting with others: Blogs • • • Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies Disrupting Class Educause e. Learning Faculty Focus George Siemens Inside. Higher. Ed. com Joshua Kim Mashable. com Moodle. org

Connecting with others: Blogs • • • New Media Consortium (NMC) NITLE November Learning Read. Write. Web. com Smashing Magazine Stephen Downes The Masie Center The World Future Society The Xplanation

Tapping into streams of content: Example from corporate / L&D world Jane Hart | C 4 LPT | August 2011

Tapping into streams of content

Connecting with others: Skype

Coming up to an intersection… … we now need to take a right on Trends Blvd.

Trends: The pace of change has changed Choose your metaphor…

Trends: The pace of change has changed

Trends: Changes in “Textbooks” • Books e-Books Apps • Increasing levels of interactivity, engagement, functionality • Multitouch • Multimedia-based (UDL) • Highly-accessible (UDL) • Digital learning that’s constantly updated over the web • Helpful in illustrating abstract concepts • 24 x 7 x 365

Trends: Some innovative startups/publishers • • • Touch Press Flat World Knowledge Moonbot Studios Walrus Books (France) Inkling

Trends: Changes in “Textbooks” http: //morrislessmore. com -- Moonbot Studios

Trends: “Textbooks” of the future

Trends: “Books” morphing into apps Video from Walrus Books Game-like interface Uses upcoming e. Pub 3 standard, esp. HTML 5, CSS 3, Java. Script • Digital collaboration project w/ French publisher MNEMOS • •

Trends: Cloud-based computing Basically refers to things coming from or being stored out on the Internet, such as: • Applications • Content • Data

Trends: Quick Response (QR) Codes • Somewhat like a bar code, but has information embedded into it • Connects the physical world w/ the virtual world • QR readers can be downloaded to smart phones (Red. Laser, Neoreader, etc. ) • QR generators (Sparq. Code, Maestro, etc. )

Trends: Near Field Communications (NFC) • A short-range wireless standard that allows devices to communicate securely and perform transactions • Some believe NFC will be much more prevalent and popular than QR codes • Heavily transactions-based; retail, banking, etc.

Trends: Augmented Reality Definition: • Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real world and computer generated data. • Often used in entertainment, military training, engineering design, robotics, manufacturing and other industries.

Trends: Augmented Reality

Trends: Augmented Reality From t-immersion. com

Trends: Augmented Reality From K 12 Mobile. Learning. com – by Johnny Kisko

Trends: Augmented Reality

Trends: Mobile

Trends: Convergence Growth of digital video

Trends: Convergence/Multiple Devices Growth of digital video

Trends: Transmedia Storytelling • Telling stories across multiple platforms and formats • Commercial & entertainmentoriented for now; but educational applications may soon follow

Trends: Convergence • asdfsdaf Growth of digital video

Trends: Convergence

Trends: Growth of digital video

Trends: Growth of digital video • Video traffic surpassed global peer-to-peer traffic in 2010 • Internet video is 40% of consumer Internet traffic; 62% by the end of 2015 Growth of digital video • Internet video to TV tripled in 2010 • Video-on-demand traffic will triple by 2015 • 5+ years to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks every second in 2015

Trends: Continued growth of online learning

Trends: Troubling U. S. debt (with global ramifications) (No time to address this, but I need to mention it as an important trend…as this will have global ramifications and will most certainly be affecting those of us working within higher education. )

Trends: Robotics & artificial intelligence • Consider 3 items in this month’s The Futurist: • The coming robot evolution race • Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto • The accelerating techno-human future • IBM’s Watson

Merging… … onto Resources Street

Resources: New Media Consortium (NMC) Time-to-Adoption: One Year or Less • Electronic Books • Mobiles Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years • Augmented Reality • Game-Based Learning Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years • Gesture-Based Computing • Learning Analytics

Resources: New Media Consortium (K-12) Time-to-Adoption: One Year or Less • Cloud Computing • Mobiles Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years • Game-Based Learning • Open Content Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years • Learning Analytics • Personal Learning Environments

Resources: Khan Academy • K-12 math, science (biology, chemistry, physics) • K-12 humanities (finance, history) • ~ 10 minutes long videos • Best viewed on a computer • Free of charge • 2400 video tutorials • 67+ million views

Resources: Make Khan Academy-style videos • If using a PC: • A Wacom Bamboo Tablet with Smooth Draw to create the doodles on the computer screen and Camtasia Studio (or similar) to record those doodles • If using an i. Pad: • Tech. Smith’s Screen. Chomp application • Also see i. Pad Stylus roundup From Digital Inspiration blog

Resources: Communities of Practice (COP) … a self-governed learning partnership among people, who: • share challenges, passion or interest • interact regularly • learn from and with each other • improve their ability to do what they care about -- Etienne Wenger | April 5, 2011

Resources: Communities of Practice (COP) Also see: • Etienne Wenger: Learning in and across landscapes of practice (April 2011) • Jenny Mackness’ notes on Etienne’s presentation (above) • Communities of Practice (from Informal Education)

Resources: Communities of Practice (COP) • Dr. David Smith -- Calvin College • Director, Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching & Learning • Recently gave a workshop entitled Teaching as a Christian Practice that featured Wenger’s work

Resources: Extensive list of top learning tools

Potential roadblocks ahead…

Potential challenges: Gaining and keeping students’ attentions

Potential challenges: Student expectations

Potential solution…

Digital Storytelling: The power of story • The Master Teacher, Jesus Christ, constantly used parables to teach • Stories: • • • Gain our attention Stay with us – esp. with repetition Have power to illicit emotion Can help us make meaning Have universal appeal Encourage imagination, participation, interaction, and creativity

Digital Storytelling: Example of student creativity

Digital Storytelling: Many ways to contribute! • Creating multimedia presents opportunities for crossdisciplinary assignments • • Digital video /editing Digital audio /editing Art / illustration / graphic design Music / singing Writing /scripting Acting / drama / set design Programming / coding …and more

Digital Storytelling: Resource

Example for cross-disciplinary assignment

We’ve reached the end of our journey

Periodic but constant pulse checks

Some of the items I’m keeping an eye on… • • • Educational gaming / serious games Learning agents Personalized, customized learning Robotics The need to be lifelong learners The increasing need to find/tap into streams of content • Continued growth of – and offerings from – online learning

Thanks for your time! Daniel Christian danielschristian. com/learning-ecosystems