Technology360

The Future of Integration, Personalization, and ePortfolio Technologies

Susan LaCour writes:  "Most educators accept the premise that, in an ideal world, learning would be delivered in the manner and environment that best suit the needs and learning styles of individual learners. In the future, technologies like personalization, integration, and electronic portfolios will progress toward this ideal by broadening the learning universe. ...¶... In the future, the adoption of personalization technologies and electronic portfolios will extend well beyond higher education to businesses, state governments, K-12 educational institutions, and others in the broader community."  Innovate.  Free registration required. --Dennis

University launches semantic web interface

The University of Southampton has launched a new semantic web interface, called mSpace, that it says will make searching for information online, and learning about a subject, much easier. ¶ mSPace is a framework that gathers information sources and presents them to the user in a single window. It can potentially be applied to any subject, provided the basic information is available. The researchers say this means users will no longer have to wade through lists of undifferentiated data when researching a subject.The University of Southampton has launched a new semantic web interface, called mSpace, that it says will make searching for information online, and learning about a subject, much easier. ¶ Dr monica schraefel (sic) headed the research project, and put together a demonstration based on a search for information about classical music. ... Link: The Register via Slashdot.

Is Instructional Video Game an Oxymoron?

... Some Web sites, like that of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have had instructional games since the late 1990's. But according to Kurt D. Squire, an assistant professor of educational communication and technology at the University of Wisconsin, the use of such games is growing exponentially as more organizations see interactive games as a way to capture and hold the attention of people bombarded with numerous competing messages. ... Link: The New York Times.

Educational Potential Of Video Games: Futurelab Finds Out - Robin Good's Latest News

According to researchers at Futurelab, a British nonprofit investigating how technology can be used for innovative learning, videogames have the potential to be highly effective tools for holding students' attention and teaching them about a variety of topics. ... Link: Robin Good's Latest News.

The Future of Gaming

Gens Johnson copied me on a report she wrote up on sessions she attended at the IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference in Las Vegas, Jan. 3-6.  I thought that her description of the Future of Gaming panel was particularly interesting and she's kindly permitted me to quote it here. --Dennis

"The Future of Gaming panel was one of the most intriguing. First, make note that gaming (not gambling! Despite being discussed at a conference in Vegas) is forecast to increase by 3300% from 2001 to 2006. It will be driven by the subscription model, rather than buying games for your box. One-half of the U.S. population (age 6 and above) play.  40% are female. The average age is 29 years. And it is regarded as a family activity with parents playing with a child. The spontaneous network of video gamers function as an “innovation network” of (unpaid) people who test, provide QA feedback, product improvement suggestions, and self-educate themselves as the game development workforce of the future (often by hacking).  See virtual-u.org and whyville.net.

A large growth area for games is learning and training. Games provide an immersive experience. Useful skill improvements and learning are measurable results of games as learning media. Emerging applications include health education (e.g., “Glucoboy” that rewards diabetic kids for managing their insulin) and location-based (LBS) applications.  LBS combines GPS info and real-life place/events to create an “augmented reality.”  Examples are the back-seat car game for kids that references things they see out the window, or multi-user games that bring people to meet face-to-face using wireless data/PDAs/GPS portable devices. The military is funding a lot of applied research and development in games.

Creating a mixed reality requires location awareness, seamless roaming, micro-payments, and a persistent VR. The virtual world infrastructure needs the same components as the real world in terms of “location, identity, collaboration, content, and commerce.” I was interested to hear augmented reality defined in terms of three dimensions (hey! matching up with the three dimensions that I identified in my Ph.D. research in ’94): a presence metaphor (I called it “here & now”), reproduction fidelity (I called it “degree of mediation”) and involvement or reflexivity (I called it “readiness-to-hand”).

70% of the networked bandwidth is currently consumed with peer-to-peer (P2P) communications. People-to-people are generally 1:1. People-to-things are 1:8.  Things-to-things are 1:50. Client-server P2P communication increases networking demand enormously. The core network tends towards indexing and directory functions to route and find P2P resources. There were clearly two camps on whether gaming was going to push broadband connectivity to the home up into the 100Mbps range, or not. One camp maintains that you only need to send command and control information; the other side says that the immersive and detailed video will be sent P2P in the multi-user game environment."

Learning Objects, Metadata, Blogs and RSS: The Future Of Online Education According to Stephen Downes

Robin good has made available an audio interview he did with Canadian ed tech guru Stephen Downes.  Worth listening to. --Dennis

Wikis as educational tools

Robin Good's weblog has an interesting article, Double-U-Eye-Kay-Eye WIKI Radio: Who's Calling, that reports on a multimedia Wiki "radio station" set up using Macromedia Breeze by the University of British Columbia's Brian Lamb (not to be confused with the American head of C-SPAN of the same name).  The point of WIKI Radio is to illustrate the use of Wikis as educational tools.  Interesting work. --Dennis

Higher Learning in the Digital Age: An Update on a National Academies Study

James Duderstadt is one of the most tech-savvy people ever to occupy a university president's chair.  He's now President Emeritus of the University of Michigan and their University Professor of Science and Engineering.  His address to the EDUCAUSE 2004 meeting with the above title is available here. --Dennis

Google Plans New Service for Scientists and Scholars

Google Inc. plans to announce on Thursday that it is adding a new search service aimed at scientists and academic researchers. ¶ Google Scholar, which was scheduled to go online Wednesday evening at scholar.google.com, is a result of the company's collaboration with a number of scientific and academic publishers and is intended as a first stop for researchers looking for scholarly literature like peer-reviewed papers, books, abstracts and technical reports. ... Link: New York Times.

No Child Left in the Cold

... Internet videoconferencing is helping to bridge the tremendous distances between students and the expert educators who are in short supply throughout Alaska. ¶ Nearly all of Alaska's 54 school districts have received broadband connections in the last few years, and nine of the most rural ones are using the technology to conduct online videoconferences. Students in secluded villages can take virtual field trips on dog sleds. Administrators can train teachers in far-flung locations. ... Link: LA Times. Thanks to Ralph Hogan for the tip.