About me: My QR - An image worth one thousand words

 

ABout Me QR

My Contact Information QR

If you know QR, you know what to do. Let me know if it works.

Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Detect language Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Korean Latin Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish ⇄
Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Korean Latin Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

Detect language » Arabic

Learning: Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality is a new science that is emerging where technology act as an extended tool for our reality. Such tools allow us to recognize more facts about the physical reality that human faculties (like memory or 6th sense) does not recognize. One of the first layperson such tool was the MediaLab 6 sense I showed it an earlier post. With the sophistication of the mobile devices, augmented reality is becoming more popular than anticipated. I think this has a major impact on teaching and learning. Future education, if it survives, will find teaching facts to students is obsolete. The real focus will be developing basic faculty skills and train on methods of utilizing knowledge obtained from AR tools. An example:



As you can see from video, education is trying to get the AR into the classroom. But I think, real AR technology will take learning away from school into real life. Wait for more posts about the topic.

Mobile Learning: The 3 Challenges of Mobile Learning

Background information: The below argument is based on applying mobile learning at my work in a community college.I am sure I will face far more than 3 challenges when implementing mobile learning. I tried to group the challenges I will face under three big groups:

(1) Managing the Change: Introducing mobile learning in my organization follows the usual change resistance that poses multifaceted challenges. The first one, is the buy-in from top management to allocate resources to support the project. The second one, which is the most fundamental, is the required shift in the educational paradigm from "knowledge resides in the brain" to the notion that "brain knowledge is augmented with outside knowledge". The third one is the shift in assessment paradigm from "students should be assessed based on a norm that is determined by the curriculum" to a new paradigm that allows students to grow based on their own talent and abilities. The fourth paradigm shift is from "students should learn on their own" to "learning happens through social interaction".

(2) Training and Resources: Using mobile devices will require a lot of preparation work to ensure its success. Basically, it is a two legged race. The first leg-work is to train and/or educate the instructors on the usefulness of mobile devices in learning and the different approaches that could be applied. The second leg is to identify the right mobile tools and resources that are suitable for each program or course. Most of the available mobile resources did not reach its mass suitability for the learning process. They are still device and operating system dependent which poses technical challenges that most educators would like to avoid. At the moment, the only two effective educational tools are the eReaders and the social media tools. Unfortunately, most publications used in education does not promote a mobile-friendly format, and social media is not widely accepted as a learning tool.

(3) Study Habits: Another major challenge is the acceptable mode of study. The widely accepted and recognized approach to learning is that it requires organized, preplanned, dedicated study and in most cases, quiet time. It is still very difficult for many educators to comprehend studying in a different mode. Since mobile learning encourages studying during unplanned idle time, anywhere and on demand, addressing this shift at the teacher level, on the curriculum level and the assessment is a major hurdle that I hate to face.

References

• Anderson, Terry, (2011), “Three Generation of Distant Education“, presentation website, last accessed on 10 March 2011.


• Araya, Daniel (E), Peters Michael (E), (2010), “Education in the Creative Economy: Knowledge and Learning in the Age of Innovation” Published by Peter Lang Pub, ISBN 9781433107443


• Kukulska, Angel (Editor), Traxler, John, (2005), "Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Educators and Trainers (The Open and Flexible Learning Series)", Routledge, ISBN: 0415357403.


• Tapscott, Don (2009), “Grown up Digitally” Published by McGraw Hill, ISBN: 978007150863


• Weiten, Wayne (2010), "Psychology: Themes and Variations", 8th Edition, p. 28,  Cengage Learning, ISBN: 0495601977.

 

Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Detect language Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Korean Latin Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish ⇄

Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Korean Latin Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

Detect language » Arabic

Psychology: Themes and Variations, 8th Edition / Edition 8 by Wayne Weiten

Mobile Learning: The mobile nomad

Who do I consider a mobile nomad? First, let's agree that learning is converting the public information to personal knowledge.

The obvious answer is that the mobile nomads are the busy workers who seeks education anytime and anywhere. The one who spend so much time idling waiting for the next process of his work. Those who commute. Or those who work in modern corporate world where they have to spend 8 hours at work while their actual work load needs far less than that. Or those who live in locations that lack traditional cable internet connectivity.

The non-obvious answer is still unclear. I think the real mobile nomads are the  lifelong learners who can learn when new knowledge is needed. Information is exponentially changing and knowledge need to be created based on the most up to date information. This is a new breed of beings who are among us but not widely recognized by education. The wikipedians (i.e volunteer collaborators and open source developers) are very good example. They contribute to their knowledge and the global information anytime, anywhere and with any device.

Super WiFi

The FCC released the "white spaces" -  the unused spectrum between broadcast television channels — will lead to a so-called “Super Wi-Fi” or “Wi-Fi on steroids.” This means we will have "80 Mbps and above long-range wireless speeds and 400-800 Mbps short-range wireless networks. Perhaps this means that wireless Internet can now actually be “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound". Google chipped in to utilize the bandwidth.

Very soon we will access WiFi like we get radio signal: everywhere!

Adaptive Cruise Control

Due to an adventure that I might explain in another post, I experienced Adaptive Cruise Control in a refreshing way.

My wife and I were forced to drive separate cars for more than 700 Km in a very bad winter weather. She drove Luay's Ford Focus while I drove my brand new 2011 MKX (showing off!) from Calgary to Fort McMurray during the worst weather conditions Alberta has seen. We were able to get home in 16 hours for a trip that usually takes 8 hours. However, my wife drove for both of us.

I drove the MKX because I do not fit in my son's car. She drove in front of me to keep an eye on her for the Focus is not reliable to drive in the bad weather. So I set my cruise control on 120km/hr (yes, on the Lincol, you can specify the cruise speed digitally) then enabled the adaptive cruise control (that is, you tell the car to follow the speed of the car in front of yours.) In this way, my car followed the speed of my wife's car for the whole trip. I mean all I had to do is steer it... no decisions what so ever about breaking or accelerating... my left foot enjoyed the whole trip... the first time it drove 700 km without feeling tired!

An amazing experience! I am looking forward for the day that the car will do its own steering... Would it happen in my days?

AfrikaansAlbanianArabicBelarusianBulgarianCatalanChineseCroatianCzechDanishDetect languageDutchEnglishEstonianFilipinoFinnishFrenchGalicianGermanGreekHaitian Creole ALPHAHebrewHindiHungarianIcelandicIndonesianIrishItalianJapaneseKoreanLatvianLithuanianMacedonianMalayMalteseNorwegianPersianPolishPortugueseRomanianRussianSerbianSlovakSlovenianSpanishSwahiliSwedishThaiTurkishUkrainianVietnameseWelshYiddish⇄AfrikaansAlbanianArabicBelarusianBulgarianCatalanChineseCroatianCzechDanishDutchEnglishEstonianFilipinoFinnishFrenchGalicianGermanGreekHaitian Creole ALPHAHebrewHindiHungarianIcelandicIndonesianIrishItalianJapaneseKoreanLatvianLithuanianMacedonianMalayMalteseNorwegianPersianPolishPortugueseRomanianRussianSerbianSlovakSlovenianSpanishSwahiliSwedishThaiTurkishUkrainianVietnameseWelshYiddish

Detect language » Arabic

Technology and Prediction

Today I had an interesting question from a friend that made me think in some new lights. Below is my answer (try to figure out the question.)

Dave: Actually, I have read the book and met the Author in a conference where he was challenging another author called Tapscott who talks about Wikinomics (the 4^th wave.) Interesting read.

Your questions are more interesting.

1. The answer to the first part of the last one might answer the others: “wasn’t tech supposed to make life easier?” In my opinion, technology did: today, we work 8 hours a day, have a good income, have a good living standard, own a house, change our cars every few years, take a lot of vacation over a year and we can do more than what we would have done 40 years ago! We have better access to knowledge and we can communicate in real time with individuals that are far away... all of these advancement are caused by technology! Right? (Just try to imagine how your grand pa used to live when he was your age and compare it to today!) So, technology made our life better. Don’t you agree?
   
   
2. The market is controlling the technology development. Millions of technical gadgets are introduced every year... the market determine the winner... 2-3 years ago, the iPod was the market winner although other gadgets that were introduced... last year, the Wii took over the other similar products... the web over took over the Superhighway concept... the Internet destroyed the multi-billion “Satellite belt” project... I can numerate a lot... The fate of these technologies were determined by the market... In my opinion, the market and the global consciousness determine what technology should be developed. What do you think?
   
   
3. About the cellular phone example: you determine if you are important to use it. In my case, I preferred email over the phone... but that is because I am visual and not and auditory person. I am far more productive with an email than a phone. My wife is the opposite of me: she is extremely effective over the phone for she is an auditory person... A compromise: I use Blackberry to read my emails and my wife send me an email to pick up our grocery... we fight less... I buy the grocery just in time... can you see where I am heading?
   
   
4. About predicting future applications: we can predict to some extent. However, you need to know that you must add the human factor to the formula. To predict the wining technology, you must look for the users. For example: Du Chardin, predicted the creation of something like FaceBook in 1960’s... the world laughed at him... however, for his prediction to come true, the number of millennium individuals should have reached a critical mass and the right technology should have matured... this happened in 2006 and his prediction came true! Similarly, Drucker predicted something like the Wiki in 1980’s (he called it voluntary work in non-profit organizations) the corporate world could not understand him and figure out how people can work without being paid... Wikipedia fulfilled his prediction in 2004 when the people were ready! I can quote lots of such predictions likes this one... we just need to see them through the eyes of others and not our own!
   

Do I make sense?

I really enjoyed your email. It is the first time I prefer to answer an email than having my lunch... I hope we continue the discussion...