By Eve Debbage, Project Officer at Teacher Tapp

There is no shortage of education data on schools. It is gathered by a wide range of organisations and individuals to meet a variety of objectives. From government polls and online censuses, to mobile apps that deliver daily teacher surveys, technology has given us access to all the data we could want, both big and small.

Schools are increasingly taking advantage of technological advances to collect their own data. Information management software such as SIMS and MIS has been an established part of the classroom for many years. Once a tool used primarily for registration and storing student records, teachers now rely on these software packages to provide all the data they need for Ofsted inspections and to support their teaching and learning.

From government polls and online censuses to mobile apps that deliver daily teacher surveys, technology has given us access to all the data we could want, both big and small
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Many schools use innovative assessment tools and software applications to provide real-time data on students’ progress. But collecting data is a pointless exercise unless we do something useful with it.

there is a lot to be learned from reviewing data collected by surveys of the wider teaching profession
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How Can School Leaders Use Data from Teacher Surveys? 

When it comes to improving teaching and learning, there is a tendency to focus on student data, and data gathered internally. However, there is a lot to be learned from reviewing data collected by surveys of the wider teaching profession. As debates over the use of standardised testing rage on amidst record number of teachers leaving the profession, surveys of students and teachers are being used more frequently as a means of measuring the performance of a school.

Schools are increasingly taking advantage of technological advances to collect their own data
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Surveys provide immediate insights into teacher satisfaction levels — which can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of teaching and learning. So how can school leaders use data from teacher surveys to improve teaching and learning?

1. Make changes to retain high-quality staff. Staff retention in schools is a nation-wide problem. Teacher surveys provide valuable insight into their satisfaction levels. School leaders should review teachers’ perceptions on key issues and evaluate their school to determine if there might be issues. Often, addressing simple causes of dissatisfaction can significantly raise morale and performance.

2. Identify the teacher’s needs for specific resources and spend the budget wisely. Teachers are in the classroom every day so using their feedback on which resources work, which don’t and which they feel they are missing, is a logical way to determine where to spend the school budget and be rid of what isn’t working and replace it with something teachers feel will support effective teaching and learning.

3. Identify CPD needs. Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is crucial to the effectiveness of teaching and learning. The teaching profession is continually evolving as government expectations change, so teachers need ongoing training to ensure their teaching meets the standards set. Data from teacher surveys provides school leaders with an insight into potential areas for CPD, but also barriers to teachers’ participation in their development. If 80% of teachers feel their school does not support CPD or they cannot find the time for it, perhaps changes need to be made.

4. Update school policies. Teacher surveys can reveal teachers’ perceptions on everything from staff dress codes to salaries. If there is a common theme of dissatisfaction amongst teachers, a simple amendment to school policy could increase staff satisfaction. Even if changing policy is not appropriate, use the data to invite feedback and start a discussion with staff.

5. Gain new ideas for developing best practice. Data from teacher surveys can often inspire positive change in schools — or at least start useful discussions in the staffroom. Identify trends in data and consider these findings in terms of your school. If 90% of teachers polled feel they don’t have time for lunch, perhaps school leaders should consider making changes to provide teachers with a suitable break, so they return to the classroom ready to deliver their best teaching.

Advances in education technology make it relatively easy for schools to amass big data on their student population
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School leaders, government and other organisations which lead the way in shaping our schools, can learn a great deal from listening to teachers. If teachers feel their voices are heard and positive changes implemented, they are more likely to feel happy in their work and less likely to leave the profession.

Data from teacher surveys can often inspire positive change in schools — or at least start useful discussions in the staffroom
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Many schools use innovative assessment tools and software applications to provide real-time data on students’ progress
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Is an Obsession With Student Data Damaging Teaching and Learning?

The pressure of Ofsted and league tables has led to an obsession with pupil progress data. Advances in education technology make it relatively easy for schools to amass big data on their student population and many schools rely on this data to drive improvements in teaching and learning. But is this endless quest to collect more and more student data actually impeding teachers’ ability to teach? If there is no clear purpose for data collection it becomes a pointless exercise which consumes precious time in a teacher’s day and zaps their energy for doing their jobs and doing them well. While some data shines a light on progress which enables targeted interventions and differentiated teaching, focussing too much on it can result in significant losses in other areas.

Budgets are limited for the majority of schools, so ensuring that the most effective technology is in place is vital for maintaining effective teaching
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In a classroom where data is everything, high achievers will be constantly rewarded by graphs trending in the right direction and numbers which signify their success. But pupils who are not meeting expected performance targets will be continually reminded of their underperformance, down to the exact percentage. This could be extremely damaging for the morale and motivation of these students.

Student data can be a valuable resource in understanding progress, adapting teaching practice and improving student outcomes, but using it in isolation can be dangerous. Software can record and analyse quantifiable data but this can often be misleading or give an incomplete picture if it is not viewed in context. And there are certain types of qualitative data that technology is just not designed to gather. No algorithm will record how a nervous child who has always been too frightened to put their hand up in class does so for the first time. Yet this would be an important milestone in a child’s learning and a clear indicator for the teacher that they’re on the right track.

Gathering huge amounts of data simply because we have the technological capacity to do so is pointless and could reduce the resources available to achieve improvements
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Student data is often touted as the ultimate resource for demonstrating accountability. Not just to HMRC but to parents and carers. Parents are bombarded with statistics about how their child is performing in school, how they compare to the national average and how much they need to progress by the end of the year. Some schools even send text updates and photographs so that families can share in a child’s school day. Including parents in their child’s education is a valuable and important role of schools, but it can go too far. Access to endless pupil data can result in parents becoming excessively demanding of the school and the child. Parents should be involved in but not leading their child’s education. Equally, where a child perceives excessive pressure to perform, they may become anxious and depressed.

Schools should continually review the data collection software and hardware they use
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The technology available within schools and to external organisations has allowed access to a wealth of education data. Schools should continually review the software and hardware they use to collect this data. Budgets are limited for the majority of schools, so ensuring that the most effective technology is in place is vital for maintaining effective teaching and learning.

Both school leaders and teachers must carefully consider what data they need to collect and why. Gathering huge amounts of data simply because we have the technological capacity to do so is pointless and could reduce the resources available to achieve improvements. Education data — if used effectively — can significantly enhance teaching and learning, resulting in a more positive experience for pupils and their teachers.

The post Education Data Optimizing Learning appeared first on Tech Trends.

In a beautifully kitted out room in central Paris, Colin Fillaudeau is teaching a group of youngsters how to build in Mixed Reality.

Even though my French is far from perfect and I’m unfamiliar with the program he’s using, I’m able to follow along quite well, and the same is certainly true for the 14 year olds in the room, who have come here for the day from a deprived area on the outskirts of Paris.

This room – which resembles an open-plan tech start-up office with its multiple screens, robots, VR headsets and Minecraft plush toys and LEGO – and the 3D design concepts they are learning, literally represent a gateway into another world for these students.

This room represents a gateway into another world for these students #E2 #MicrosoftEDU
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It is often said that in order to address the world’s chronic digital skills problem we need to address an endemic gap in access and opportunity rather than talent or skills. The truth of that becomes abundantly clear when you observe the eagerness and engagement with which these students embrace the opportunity extended to them by such initiatives.

Microsoft's immersive classroom sits within the company’s French Headquarters in Paris #E2 #MicrosoftEDU
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Favreau is a Learning Consultant working with Microsoft, and this “immersive classroom” sits within the company’s French Headquarters. It is open for schools to experiment with incorporating digital tools in learning, and has facilitated the delivery of more than 60 free workshops for over 1000 students since opening in 2018.

These digital tools, they’re keen to emphasize, are not just the company’s own, as only about 20% of the tech in the room is Microsoft’s.

The class I was observing was called 3D conception & Mixed Reality, and it incorporates Paint 3D, HoloLens and other Mixed Reality headsets, and 3D printing. Other activities also explore coding and robotics using tools such as Minecraft and Artificial intelligence, where students get to build their own chatbot.

The immersive classroom is open for schools to experiment with incorporating digital tools in learning, and has facilitated the delivery of more than 60 free workshops for over 1000 students since opening in 2018 #E2 #MicrosoftEDU
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The class I was observing was called 3D conception & Mixed Reality #E2 #MicrosoftEDU
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As the market for immersive technology continues to grow in the coming years, the already existing issues around a shortage of creative and skilled tech talent is only going to be compounded unless we start building purposeful learning pipelines that start teaching students like the ones I met in Paris not only the relevant skills, but the right mindset.

What it comes down to is that it’s very much in the interest of companies like Microsoft to foster such initiatives, as they are reliant on building and expanding that talent pipeline for their future survival #E2 #MicrosoftEDU
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To create compelling content in a fast-evolving new medium such as Mixed Reality, you need what’s called a “growth mindset” that builds grit and a tolerance for failure. This does not mean ignoring your mistakes or being blind to shortcomings, but recognizing that success is incremental, and that iterating and improving your approach is an essential part of building a successful product. That means finding out what doesn’t work can be as (or more) valuable than finding out what does.

This broader trend is sometimes also referred to as Social Emotional Learning – an emphasis on the whole package of preparing a human being for work and society. Looking around at a room where young people who were handling these tools for the first time managed to produce interesting and workable content, it’s clear that the approach is one that is much more suitable for getting them ready to tackle the challenges of a modern workplace than traditional schooling.

To create compelling content in a fast-evolving new medium such as Mixed Reality, you need to cultivate a growth mindset #E2 #MicrosoftEDU
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What it comes down to is that it’s very much in the interest of companies like Microsoft to foster such initiatives, as they are reliant on building and expanding that talent pipeline for their future survival. But in doing so they can also help to address many of the issues around access and inequality that have long plagued the tech industry, even if it’s just because – as a CEO once told me at a conference – “there just aren’t enough white guys in the world to do all these jobs.”

This article originally appeared on The Next Web

Stepping into the immersive classroom https://t.co/j82tCZOPjF

— TNWRSS (@tnwrss) April 3, 2019

Tech Trends offers a broad range of Digital Consultancy services to guide companies, individuals and brands in effectively leveraging existing and emerging technologies in their business strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. You can follow @alicebonasio on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn or subscribe to her Inside VR/AR Newletter for all the latest curated immersive news.  

The post The Mixed Reality Classroom appeared first on Tech Trends.

We are getting to a tipping point where the convergence of Artificial Intelligence and Immersive Technologies will transform the way we teach and learn beyond recognition. What does this mean for educators, and the rest of us?

“It seems to me that it is through this machine that for the first time we will be able to have a one-to-one relationship between information source and information consumer.”

These are the eerily prophetic words of the late Science Fiction author and futurist visionary Isaac Asimov, long before Google became a part of our lexicon.

“In the old days people would hire a tutor for their children and they’d adapt their teaching to the tastes and abilities of their students. But how many people could afford to hire a pedagogue? Most children went uneducated, and the only way to educate the masses was to have one teacher for a great many students, and to organize this they followed a curriculum. So we either had a one-to-one relationship for the few or a one-to-many relationship for the many, but now, there’s a possibility of a one-to-one relationship for the many. Everyone can have a teacher in the form of the gathered knowledge of the human species.”

Asimov’s tantalizing promise of scaling one-to-one instruction would, quite literally, give students the best of all worlds.

Now let’s take this one step further, and imagine teaching a class with hundreds of students, yet being able to pay perfect attention to each one, detecting the slightest hint of confusion and projecting the appropriate reaction accordingly. This would give teachers super-powers they could not dream of leveraging in normal classroom environment.

Imagine teaching a class with hundreds of students, yet being able to pay perfect attention to each one, detecting the slightest hint of confusion and projecting the appropriate reaction accordingly
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That scenario might actually be much closer than we might think, with the advent of immersive technologies that integrate with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Since Virtual Reality (VR) relies on motion capture to work, it already has the inbuilt mechanisms capable of capturing and interpreting body language to create a “digital footprint” of each user.

The next step then is to use AI and machine learning to “teach” systems to filter, adapt and personalize interactions accordingly. It would be the ultimate fulfilment of Asimov’s vision, and something that leading academics in this space have long predicted.

“VR is the most psychologically powerful medium in history,” says Jeremy Bailenson, Communications Professor at Stanford University. In his recently published book Experience on Demand, Bailenson recounts how, although he’s been studying VR and its practical applications since the 1990’s, he is often taken aback by how much more impactful it is compared to other media, particularly where it is applied to learning, which led him to confidently assert that “almost any skill can be improved by virtual instruction.”

In his study of transformed social interaction Bailenson investigated how this could work in practice: “Unlike telephone conversations and video-conferences, interactants in virtual environments have the ability to systematically filter the physical appearance and behavioral actions of their avatars in the eyes of their conversational partners, amplifying or suppressing features and nonverbal signals in real time for strategic purposes. These transformations can have a drastic impact on interactants’ persuasive and instructional abilities.” In other words, the amount of engagement that a teacher’s avatar had with its virtual students had demonstrable impact on their engagement – and in their learning.

When VR becomes more accessible and affordable, distance learning could be the medium’s most important use case
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The reason which makes VR such an effective and impactful learning tool is that it allows learners to achieve what is known as psychological presence. This essentially means that when we enter a virtual environment, we believe we are present, in spite of our conscious brains telling us that this is indeed a simulation. An important element in achieving such psychological presence is the concept of embodied cognition, which tells us that people absorb information better when performing actions themselves – rather than watching others do so or hearing/reading about them.

“Embodied cognition acknowledges that the mind and body are agents working together to make meaning of our experiences. It’s the idea that our mind alone does not dictate our worldview but instead that our cognition is shaped by the relationship between our mind and our body to inform and navigate our world, make meaning from our environments, and ultimately to result in learning,” explains educational and developmental psychologist Lindsay Portnoy.

Emerging research on VR indicate that the environment is a powerful tool from which we can create meaningful experiences that can effect great changes in our ability to perceive and understand the world around us. One study demonstrated that immersive VR provides better learning of physical movements than a two-dimensional video, and researchers from the University of Chicago found that simple gesturing in elementary students could potentially change and improve their knowledge. Current research by Disney, on the other hand, shows how VR is fast becoming seamless enough to enable it to replicate and synchronize with physical world behaviours such as catching a ball.

The reason which makes VR such an effective and impactful learning tool is that it allows learners to achieve psychological presence
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The advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning technology will enable such datasets to be leveraged in a responsive and contextual way. This combination of AI and immersive capabilities means that future learning environments will become increasingly personalized, adapting to the individual needs of each user in real-time by analysing their “digital footprint” data.

“I’m reminded of an article I read about a father who felt “super human” while using his Amazon Echo. He and his kids loved interacting with the speaker and found the ability to call Ubers, order pizza and play music to be truly empowering and immersive – it really felt like they were interacting with an actual person,” says Ryan Andal, president and co-founder at Secret Location, who says he’s felt the same “super human” effect while using VR: “When I imagine how many jobs will be lost through automation and AI, I’m encouraged by how VR can combine with AR to allow us to be ‘super human’ and decrease knowledge gaps, learning curves and barriers for collaboration. VR will essentially allow declining markets to rejuvenate much faster than normal because of how powerful it can be as an educational and training tool.”

Andal believes that when VR becomes more accessible and affordable, distance learning could be the medium’s most important use case, opening the doors to spreading education – in its broadest possible sense – into areas typically shut out from it.

“We often think of education in the traditional sense – children in a classroom – but I believe VR is best used for training and learning new skills or trades. In that sense, VR is a complete overhaul of what’s possible! It eliminates the need for expensive materials to practice on and can put students in an array of situations that cannot normally be simulated for training purposes. VR means students will get that coveted “real-life work” experience sooner than usual.”

We are, in fact, already seeing such practical training applications emerging in a broad range of areas. The U.S. alpine team recently turned to VR to allow American racers to memorize the hill and take hundreds of virtual runs down a fast, tricky course in preparation for the 2018 Winter Olympics. They are the first known Olympic team in the world to utilize virtual reality in their training.

Troy Taylor, high performance director for U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, believes giving a racer the ability to experience the course in VR multiple times ahead of the games gives his team a crucial competitive advantage. STRIVR, the company which developed the simulation, has been working for many years with various sports outfits such as the NFL and NBA to improve athlete’s performance through virtual training. This has been so effective, in fact that some players reported having flashbacks to games they’d only experienced in VR.

Immersive Tech eliminates the need for expensive materials to practice on and can put students in an array of situations that cannot normally be simulated for training purposes
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Walmart is also leveraging this to train its employees following a successful pilot program last year. The company is also working with STRIVR to incorporate VR more widely in its training. The goal, STRIVR CEO Derek Belch told The Verge in a recent interview, is to put employees in scenarios that would be inconvenient to physically re-create — like dealing with spills, or preparing for a Black Friday shopping spree.

“We’re using computer vision to map scenes, so we literally know exactly where someone’s looking,” says Belch. “Wearers might look around an environment and find the spill, for example, then answer a multiple-choice question about what effect it could have on the store,” he explains.

The global EdTech industry is set to grow to an estimated $252 billion by 2020, and VR is expected to capture a large proportion of that booming market. The combination of ideological and commercial incentives will therefore likely lead to accelerated development of applications and capabilities that will empower teachers and learners like never before.

The Global Education and Skills Forum will be hosting an Immersive Learning Showcase and series of insightful discussions on the 17th and 18th March 2018
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Where the Internet has made great strides towards democratizing knowledge, VR will democratize experiences. Immersive technologies represent a revolution in the way we transmit knowledge and will shape how we learn and conduct business more collaboratively in a globalized, boundaryless world.

The global EdTech industry is set to grow to an estimated $252 billion by 2020, and VR is expected to capture a large proportion of that booming market
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The implications of this are profound according to Bailenson: “I firmly believe that for people who love to learn, the future is going to be filled with thrilling educational experiences,” he concludes.

For those interested in exploring the potential of Immersive Technologies in Learning, the Global Education and Skills Forum will be hosting an Immersive Learning Showcase and series of insightful discussions on the 17^th and 18^th March 2018. GESF 2018 is an initiative of the Varkey Foundation to improve standards of education for underprivileged children around the world.

Where the Internet has made great strides towards democratizing knowledge, VR will democratize experiences
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This article was originally published on ERP in News

Thanks for the mention! smartntx: RT @alicebonasio: Rise of the Virtual Super-Teacher https://t.co/kGj0kdX2At via @erpinnews

— ERPINNEWS (@erpinnews) March 12, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance and support on how best to incorporate these into your brand strategy.

 

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter

The post How VR and AI Will Supercharge Learning appeared first on Tech Trends.

EdTech startup Funzi and UNDP Syria have partnered to deliver mobile learning to vulnerable populations in conflict areas.

In a war zone, the sad truth is that education often becomes one of the first casualties, as it is – understandably – pushed back in favour of more urgent and immediate needs such as food and healthcare. The tragedy of it is, however, that this not only affects people’s ability to cope with their immediate situation, but also hampers their post-conflict chances of building a long-term future.

Education often becomes one of the casualties in a conflict situation
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Funzi and UNDP Syria are collaborating to deliver mobile learning to vulnerable populations
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Conflicts in Syria have resulted in shortage of jobs and infrastructure, as well as lack of security in certain parts of the country. This erodes livelihood prospects of Syrians and makes access to relevant information and quality learning evermore essential. Yet UNESCO policy guidelines for mobile learning affirm that mobile devices can help ensure the continuity of education during times of crisis.

Conflicts in Syria have resulted in shortage of jobs and infrastructure
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To help address this, and strengthen the resilience and socio-economic stability of individuals and communities in Syria, Funzi and UNDP Syria have started collaboration to deliver mobile learning, with training modules expected to be launched later this year.

“Mobile learning leverages technology people already own,” explains Tero Salonen, Funzi’s CEO and Founder. ”The cost of mobile teaching is only a fraction compared to traditional means of teaching, making mobile an efficient and effective channel for knowledge transfer, especially in areas of crisis.”

Since essential information and training content are available via mobile phones, he says, learning can happen in areas and at times that may not have been easy to reach

 

“With our service performing well in slower networks and on feature phones, training is easily accessible to vulnerable populations in areas with poor infrastructure. It is also a major step forward towards helping mitigate educational disruptions during times of crisis through mobile learning in order to support swift recoveries of these countries.”

This is a significant milestone for Funzi, a Finnish start-up we covered previously on Tech Trends which is an active member in the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan. When I met their founder Aape Pohjarvita in Helsinki, he was keen to emphasize how he believed mobile would be the most disruptive method of delivering effective learning globally, specially in conflict areas (at the time they had already deployed courses to over 40,000 people in Iraq).

“We at Funzi are committed to supporting the world in achieving peace, meaningful livelihoods, and happiness and health for all through quality education. Thus, this project is a significant milestone that takes us closer to achieving our vision,” agrees Salonen.

Funzi’s service – which is free to end users – delivers learning specifically designed for mobile and personalizes the user experience using similar mechanisms as those leveraged to make mobile games “sticky” such as behavioural and usage patterns.

Mobile learning leverages technology people already own
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Funzi founders Chief Evangelist Aape Pohjavirta, CEO Tero Salonen and co-founder CXO Miemo Penttinen

This is also an important as a test case for exporting Finnish education and for the viability of mobile learning as a delivery mechanism for learning opportunities to vulnerable populations in conflict areas around the world.

Funzi uses mobile gaming mechanisms to personalize learning for its users
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Tailored training modules for UNDP’s local partners and their beneficiaries will be launched as mobile learning on a dedicated site starting late 2017. The goal of the partnership is to promote long-term participation, sustainability, and self-sufficiency of UNDP local partners.

The first phase of learning will equip aid workers, while the second will help vulnerable populations
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Training will be delivered in two phases, with the first one developing essential program lifecycle management skills for UNDP and NGO field staff and the second offering training to vulnerable populations like the displaced, and women- and youth-headed households to support them in achieving social cohesion and sustainable livelihoods.

“Our participation and experience in developing and implementing mobile learning services for displaced populations allow us to create learning programs that are effective in knowledge transfer and skills development, while remaining cost-efficient and scalable,” Salonen concludes.

To find out how to leverage VR/AR/MR in your enterprise, Tech Trends offers bespoke Virtual Reality Consultancy support

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Bringing Mobile Learning to Syria appeared first on Tech Trends.

And technology can make it so. OK, I’m paraphrasing Isaac Asimov a bit here, but the key idea is that we should enjoy learning, and want to carry on doing it for as long as we’re able to.

His vision was for a world where knowledge was widely available and so people could personalise their own learning paths, and educate themselves on all the things they were interested in.

Technology is enabling the creation of open learning environments that will eventually replace the idea of a traditional classroom
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In this article I reflect on some of the ideas that came up in a recent EdTech panel I attended which was hosted by Dell. The principles that emerged – such as empowering students in order to up their engagement with the learning process – chime very much with Mr Asimov’s futurist insights.

Technology is enabling the creation of open learning environments that will eventually replace the idea of a traditional classroom, and this will be significantly enhanced as virtual and augmented reality become more pervasive. Educators are largely embracing these changes, which bring higher levels of engagement and richer learning experiences to students. Learning — including vital digital skills such as coding — should be regarded as an enjoyable pursuit that is expected to continue throughout adult life, not as something we’re “finished with” as soon as we leave school.

The flipside of having intuitive technologies and invisible digital infrastructure is that the next generation might be proficient in using it, yet lack the digital skills required to make it
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Those were some of the key takeaways from a recent Technology in Education round table hosted by Dell at the iconic Gherkin building in London. The event brought together technology and education experts and was moderated by Matt Britland, ICT Director at Lady Eleanor Holles School, who led the discussion around how we can best incorporate existing and emerging technologies into the curriculum, supporting teachers and preparing students for a world where having a dynamic digital skill set will become even more essential.

“It’s not just about using technology, but understanding the reason why you’re using a particular technology. Once you get buy-in from parents and teachers as well as students, that’s when you have a successful integration of technology in the learning process,” says Britland drawing from his own personal experience of rethinking the systems in his school to ensure they could cope with being “bombarded” with over 4000 devices connected to the network, for example.

It all boils down to building engagement, and in practice this translates into blurring the boundaries between work and play
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“This type of digital infrastructure needs to be robust, scalable, flexible, and, above all, invisible,” says John Bailey, an education expert from Dell. “You don’t think about the fact you have running water, electricity or heating. It’s ubiquitous, a part of life. In the same way, we shouldn’t’ need to think about the infrastructure we use to access digital resources.”

Universally implementing such infrastructure is, of course, an enormous challenge, as not all schools have the internal expertise and resources to devise and deploy a comprehensive digital strategy. So there is a role for commercial partners in supporting this transition, but also a need for governments to prioritize and enable investment in this area at a broader policy level, so that we don’t end up creating a two-tier system where some schools can afford to become much more digitally advanced than others.

The flipside of having intuitive technologies and invisible digital infrastructure is that the next generation might be proficient in using technology, yet lack the core digital skills required to understand what makes that technology work.

“We’re teaching HTML and Python and a website called Code Adventures where they earn points, badges, etc.” says Britland. “In parents’ evenings they want to know what technology the students are using, they want to know that their daughter is coding.”

There are also many successful start-ups coming up with creative hackable toys that teach children principles of electronics, robotics and coding through play and gaming such as Kitronik, Sphero, Raspberry Pi, Technology Will Save Us and many others. And the advent of Virtual Reality will only bring with it more opportunities for teachers and students to experience technology in new ways, and to “get their hands dirty,” so to speak.

“When we talk about VR, we talk about those experiences,” agrees Jaime Donally.

Instructional Technology Coordinator and founder of edcamp Global. “And I love that.” However, once you have a class set of cardboards in the classroom, there is a lot more that can be done with that: “The next step, of course, is our kids being the creators of those experiences”

Tools like CoSpaces promise to make that process of generating content in Virtual Reality easy by offering a 3D visualization tool that allows users to select environments from a library, adding and adjusting various elements to create a personalized experience.

Once you get buy-in from parents and teachers and students, you have a successful integration of technology in the learning process
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It all boils down to building engagement, and in practice this translates into blurring the boundaries between work and play, making full use of tolls such as gamification so that students are constantly empowered to take responsibility and pride in their own learning, and to see it as a continuous process that doesn’t necessarily begin or end at the school gates. As David Whelan recently said when unveiling his Engage VR Education platform, we are much more likely to retain information if we create an emotional connection with that learning experience.

“That’s sometimes a difficult shift for schools to make, because we’re used to looking at things a certain way,” says Matt Britland, “but we want to instill a passion for learning in our students, and that doesn’t just come from learning what we tell them to learn, it’s about them going out and exploring, finding out things for themselves.”

This is, in fact, the direction that futurist Isaac Asimov predicted we would take. I find it fascinating to listen to old interviews — dating from a time way before the internet, when the idea of having a computer in one’s home seemed as outlandish as the plot of one his science fiction books — as he accurately predicts trends such as personalized learning, and how the symbiosis between technology and education will develop and democratize learning for the masses.

We should enjoy learning, and want to carry on doing it for as long as we're able to
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“Nowadays what people call learning is forced on you and everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed, in class. For some it goes too fast, for some too slow, for some in the wrong direction. It seems to me that it’s through this machine that for the first time we’ll be able to have a 1:1 relationship between information source and information consumer.”

In the old days, he explains to his bewildered interviewer, you had tutors teaching children, and they would adapt their teaching to the tastes and abilities of each student. Few could afford this, however, so most children remained uneducated. When educating the masses later became a recognized necessity, the only way this could be achieved was through having one teacher for many students, and a curriculum to organize their learning. So you ended up with either a one-to-one relationship for the few, or a one-to-many relationship for the many. Through technology, however, we can finally enable a one-to-one relationship in the form of access to the gathered knowledge of the human species. And this, he emphasized, would not just benefit the young.

“People don’t stop what they enjoy doing just because they reach a certain age. They don’t stop having sex just because they turn 40, they keep it up as long as they can if they enjoy it. The trouble with learning is that most people don’t enjoy it because of the circumstances. Make it possible for people to enjoy learning and they’ll keep it up.”

I find that his outlook chimed with that of the panel, where the picture that emerges for the future of education is one where technology enables learning for everyone, regardless of their age, wealth, location, gender, race or any other factor. And one where everyone has quite a bit of fun in the process.

This article was originally published on IDG Connect

Imagining the Future of #EdTech https://t.co/oF2a3nJ62o @idgconnect @CIOonline @Dell @cospaces_io @GoogleForEdu #TechTrends #VR pic.twitter.com/2sueECrApA

— Alice Bonasio (@alicebonasio) October 10, 2016

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Learning Should Be as Fun as Sex appeared first on Tech Trends.

How this Finnish EdTech start-up is combining AI and Machine Learning with social media platform mechanics to deliver innovative learning.

Claned Co-founder Vesa Perala believes that instead of attempting to retrofit technology to out-dated educational systems, EdTech start-ups should be helping to write a new rulebook.

I think being radical is the only way of doing things, because slow iteration doesn’t really work.
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“Our pitch pretty much begins with education reform. The starting point is that the Finnish schooling system might be perceived as being the best in the world, but we’re still overhauling it,” he says.

For the past 3 years, Claned has been in what he describes as semi-stealth mode, focusing on developing a robust artificial intelligence system that uses machine-learning algorithms to map out what factors most impact individual learning.

Our pitch pretty much begins with education reform
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That knowledge, he says, was already out there, because it’s something universities routinely do. Over time, tutors build an understanding of how each student learns, yet that data is trapped in a system which simply isn’t scalable. Claned set out to solve this by combining these tried-and-tested academic evaluation metrics with machine learning algorithms and Artificial Intelligence.

“We created this personal social learning environment where we can track every single interaction a student has, whether it’s with a piece of content, with other students or with their teachers. We’re constantly gathering information about how a particular student is learning, and then feed that data back to the student in the form of recommendations of additional study materials, mentors, and anything else that can optimise their learning journey”

The next challenge was to present all these complex and evolving datasets through an intuitive interface. For that, Perala admits that they took inspiration from a broad variety of social networks and applications.

Claned uses familiar features from platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest and even Tinder
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“We replicated features from popular platforms that students would already be familiar with, everything from Facebook to Pinterest,” he says, showing me how they even incorporated a rather Tinder-esque swipe mechanism into the workflow.

“We call ourselves a start-up for old people,” laughs Perala, himself a youthful-looking 45-year old. “We have a couple of youngsters but everybody else has at least 15 to 20 years experience.”

That experience, he believes, is what helped the company build its unique proposition, which is founded on algorithm metrics based on years of rigorous academic research and analytics:

“Our CEO Mervi Palander has analysed over 3000 separate knowledge management systems during her career. She started organising Nokia’s E-learning activities back in the mid-90s.”

When they looked at what the next generation of learning systems needed to look like, however, they became convinced that it would need to be mobile. Which is why they’re now gearing up for the launch of their native iOS and Android apps.

“Education in the future will be two things: Mobile and personalised. All content needs to be relevant to the user on a personal level, and they should be able to access that content wherever they are. The true paradigm shift will happen when those two factors converge seamlessly, and we will provide both of them. “

They are also launching a marketplace to enable content providers, including teachers and students, to buy and sell learning materials. Anything from lecture notes to lesson plans could be shared and monetised through the platform, with Claned taking a 30% commission on the sale of paid-for materials.

Education in the future will be two things: Mobile and personalised
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The content recommended through the platform is based solely on personal relevance and learning effectiveness, however, and those materials can be in any format, either free or commercial. For publishers this certainly represents an attractive additional sales channel for their content, where they can potentially make higher returns through micro-transactions rather than relying on subscription and bulk sales revenues:

“It’s really valuable for content providers to be able to see the data around how individual bits of content are being consumed, and it will eventually allow them to fine-tune their offering. If 50% of your readers drop off after page 3 in a text, for example, maybe there’s something there that you need to fix there. Or you know that this particular piece of content works well for that particular group of people, so you make more of that.”

The commercial opportunity that personalised learning represents is undoubtedly huge. The education market is worth over 300 billion Euros annually, 100 billion of which falls under E-learning. This is reflected in the fact that, even flying under the radar until now, Claned already attracted over 4 million Euros in investment and has just launched a very healthy-looking equity Crowdfunding campaign to raise another €500,000.

Claned already attracted over 4 million Euros in investment
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Yet like Funzi and other Finnish start-ups I spoke to in the EdTech sector, they don’t see a conflict between building a sustainable business and making education tools accessible. Claned propose to do this by keeping the product free to individuals while charging subscription fees from institutions and corporations. The marketplace will allow them to monetize commercial content while their data will also enable them to provide premium services such as generating tailored courses based on individual learning profiles.

“So the future vision would be that if you decide you want to do this biology course, for example, we can then piece together a course and materials which are individually tailored to you. We don’t sell you the materials themselves, as we don’t own them, but we can sell you the service of generating that course for you.”

The industry, says Perala, has been talking about personalised learning for decades now, but nobody has been quite able to pull it off. Being student-centric is not a new concept in itself, but achieving it in practice is something else entirely, and the content agnostic approach Claned is adopting is a crucial part of that

“We start personalising your learning path, and the content that paves that path can come from anywhere. It can be a Wikipedia page or a YouTube video, or a chapter of a book, because we index everything that can be machine read, and we keep that content so you can annotate them, etc. This not only works to drive up interaction, but gives us more accurate and granular data so we can optimize the learning process even further.”

Another key element to their proposition is leveraging social interaction and collaboration. “there’s a ton of evidence showing that once people start interacting with others, better learning takes place, whether that’s in the real world or in virtual environments.”

In one pilot they saw collaboration increase by about 500% compared to anything else that had been used in class before, including social platforms such as Facebook. The feedback they had was that students found the process to be more interactive than dealing with their teachers and classmates face-to-face.

Students found Claned more collaborative than face-to-face interactions
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Although Claned initially targeted the platform to university-level students, the plan is to expand this to other age groups as well, allowing students to start building their personalized profiles earlier on and evolve them over time:

“Your Claned learning profile is yours to keep. You can make parts of that public, private, or share it selectively with individuals, it’s incredibly flexible.”

As Perala shows me what the learning path for a student looks like, I’m struck by how detailed the information is. Individual learning sessions are mapped out, and you can see how long they spend on each subject or lesson. This data, when cross-referenced with that of other students on the same course, can help to identify bumps on the road and optimize learning:

“We can look at a med school course and see, for example, that these two topics were the ones that students found the most challenging. The teacher then is able to adjust the learning curve based on their student’s orientation and strengths, providing additional grounding and materials beforehand, or recapping afterwards. It takes the pressure off individual students, who often will not speak up when having difficulties.”

The student’s ability to track their progress in real time helps boost motivation and focus, he believes. “it encourages learners to take more responsibility for their own studies, but the challenge – which is reflected in the high drop-out rates in MOOCS and other online courses – is to get that feedback loop just right, finding the right balance between challenge and skill level. Optimal experiences feed optimal performance – as renowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi asserts, “Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act.”

Personalising Learning with Artificial Intelligence
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Students learn how to learn through this system
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This is similar to the way that activity sensors such as Fitbit use our visualised data as motivators (think of the nice feeling you get when you reach that 10,000 steps goal) but merely showing data to the users could actually be counter-productive, as a learner who perceives that they are falling behind can quickly become demotivated. The goal, instead, is to encourage students to use successful strategies to help them accomplish more effective learning practices, scaffolding and enhancing the learning process at every step.

“The students basically learn how to learn through this system, continuously building their own learning portfolio over time. We use a combination of short-and long-term goal setting as well as time management planning and evaluation. The idea is that instead of trying to spend as much time as possible trying to memorise content, it is more effective to use focused learning intervals to accomplish pre-set goals.”

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Personalising Learning with Artificial Intelligence appeared first on Tech Trends.

“Evangelist” is an overhyped term in tech, yet Chief Evangelist Aape Pohjavirta makes it work.

His enthusiasm is contagious, and after a few minutes chatting about Funzi – the start-up he founded two years ago – I feel like I’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid. Maybe it was the strong Finnish coffee that gave me that buzz, or perhaps it was the fact that Aape can use terms like ‘futurification’ without making it sound like empty nonsense. This is clearly a man on a mission, which he casually outlines as we sit in a swanky Helsinki coffee shop:

“We want a world with no wars, where everyone is healthy, happy and has a job.”

But what, I ask, are his more ambitious goals?


He laughs, but there’s no mistaking that the goals are deadly serious, he’s got an  impressive track record to back them up. Having been involved with education technology since the 80s, he collaborated with some of the early Apple pioneers. Over the decades that followed, he experienced the hype around e-learning and multimedia as well as the meteoric rise of social media and mobile. But, he says, they all failed to live up to the promise of truly revolutionising education.

“The education industry is fragmented and works in silos. There is no global driver. When you look at EdTech companies they usually start off by segmenting themselves by topic, language and geography, so you cannot scale, you’re always just jumping from niche to niche.”

As a friend of his – Chief Technology Officer at Stanford University’s School of Education Paul Kim – once put it, the current education system is simply incapable of reforming itself because everyone in the system is already a product of that system, so disruption needs to come from outside.

“You don’t need any new inventions in order to digitise the whole system of education delivery. Everything you need is already there. The only reason why this hasn’t happened is because publishers of educational books have always been hugely profitable, so disruption in that space won’t come from them. We’re doing to education exactly what Google did to search. We’re destroying other people’s business because other people’s businesses have been wrong.”

We want a world with no wars, where everyone is healthy, happy and has a job
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In order to really shake things up, they started by first looking at how people were using their mobile devices, and how they would best learn through them. Funzi essentially works on the premise that when people can focus on learning the things that they’re good at, and that they’re interested in, education – delivered through technology – can have a much bigger impact

“It’s not about doing the same things better, but about doing better things. We’re using mobile to liberate people from education so they have the freedom to learn.”

Their business model is based on learning outcomes, where user have access to all the content for free, but pay for certification if they wish to validate that learning externally. It’s a powerful concept, since users can be confident that the course works for them before ever making a payment – if they make it at all. And looking at the numbers, that strategy does seem to make the product very ‘sticky,’ meaning that 20 out of every 100 users that try it come back the next day, week and month, with sessions averaging 8 minutes. Impressive stats in an age of information overload and short attention spans.

“It’s a false choice between free learning and monetising, you can have both in this system. We can optimise the way that any learning is delivered anywhere, and we can do this at not cost to the user while still enabling the creation of valuable content and lucrative businesses.”

Another false paradigm, he says, is that EdTech is a competitive market: “This is a 6 trillion dollar a year industry that has to be digitised. 1 percent of that is still $60 billion. Divide that among a thousand different companies and that’s still $60 million each, so could you please tell me where the competition is?”

It’s not about doing the same things better, but about doing better things
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“We’re empowering people with skills to build their dreams” Aape says, pointing to the fact that over 40,000 people have taken their entrepreneurship course in Iraq alone. “We see from implementation how practical knowledge drives the birth of new communities and adds life to existing ones. It’s the desire and curiosity to learn new things that keeps us humans alive.”

At the same time, the global refugee crisis broke out, and like many in the tech community, Funzi felt compelled to help in any way they could (TechCrunch Editor Mike Butcher has been organising such global initiatives under the Techfugees umbrella since last year), so they leveraged the platform’s capabilities and scalability to help streamline the arrival and assimilation process for refugees—from finding reception centres and applying for asylum, to figuring out schools, work permits and the local language.

We’re empowering people with skills to build their dreams
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The next step in scaling up will be working with partners to reach users and deliver learning that’s relevant to them. “We know, for example, that there are 471 million Facebook users on mobile who said they were interested in education. Those are the people we’ll be targeting,” says Aarpe, who’s also cautiously optimistic about Facebook’s own education ambitions:

“We were at F8 (Facebook’s Developer Conference) this year and when I listened to MZ’s (Mark Zuckerberg) keynote it sounded like he was using my script,” he recalls. “From what I heard, he understands the huge responsibility that his organization has. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, right or wrong, but I do know he has a genuine interest in pushing the envelope in the only field that can ever really change the way the world works, and that’s education. At least he’s doing something… And when you look at the proposition, to deliver personalised, free learning to anyone, anywhere, what could be more beautiful, or more democratising? That’s exactly what we’re going to enable.”

To deliver personalised, free learning to anyone, anywhere, what could be more beautiful?
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Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Funzifying Mobile Learning appeared first on Tech Trends.