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Michael Johnson

Apprehending the Future: Emerging Technologies, from Science Fiction to Campus Reality... - 8 views

  • environmental scan
  • The environmental scan method offers several advantages, starting with the fact that drawing on multiple sources and perspectives can reduce the chances of bias or sample error. The wider the scan, the better will be the chance of hitting the first trace of items that, although small at the moment, could expand into prominence. A further advantage is pedagogical: trying to keep track of a diverse set of domains requires a wide range of intellectual competencies. As new technologies emerge, more learning is required in subfields or entire disciplines, such as nanotechnology or digital copyright policy.
  • Disadvantages of this method start from its strengths: environmental scanning requires a great deal of sifting, searching, and analyzing. Finding the proverbial needle in the haystack isn't useful if its significance can't be recognized. Furthermore, the large amount of work necessary for both scanning and analyzing can be daunting, especially for smaller schools or enterprises.
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  • That complexity demands non-simple responses. Each of the techniques sketched above offers one way of helping groups to think through these emergent forces and to apprehend the future. Crowdsourcing, scenarios, prediction markets, the Delphi method, and environmental scanning are complementary strategies. Using several of these methods can teach us to learn about the future in more sophisticated, pro-active ways. If the methods appear strange, resembling science fiction, perhaps that is a sign of their aptness for the future, since the future often appears strange just before it becomes ordinary—or, in our case, just before it becomes a campus reality. As higher education budgets clamp down and the future hurtles toward us, we need these methods and techniques as allies that can help us to survive . . . and to learn.
  • Crowdsourcing, scenarios, prediction markets, the Delphi method, and environmental scanning are complementary strategies. Using several of these methods can teach us to learn about the future in more sophisticated, pro-active ways. If the methods appear strange, resembling science fiction, perhaps that is a sign of their aptness for the future, since the future often appears strange just before it becomes ordinary—or, in our case, just before it becomes a campus reality. As higher education budgets clamp down and the future hurtles toward us, we need these methods and techniques as allies that can help us to survive . . . and to learn.
  • to apprehend the future. Crowdsourcing, sce
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    Alexander discusses methods for keeping up with the future of technology and its use in higher education.
anonymous

Snapter - "Goodbye, scanner. Hello, digital camera." - 0 views

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    Use your digital camera as a mobile scanner to scan documents, business cards, whiteboards, and books. Snapter makes camera photos look like scanned documents!
Dean Mantz

Bugscope: Home - 1 views

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    The Bugscope project provides free interactive access to a scanning electron microscope (SEM) so that students anywhere in the world can explore the microscopic world of insects. This educational outreach program from the Beckman Institute's Imaging Technology Group at the University of Illinois supports K-16 classrooms worldwide.
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    The Bugscope project provides free interactive access to a scanning electron microscope (SEM) so that students anywhere in the world can explore the microscopic world of insects. This educational outreach program from the Beckman Institute's Imaging Technology Group at the University of Illinois supports K-16 classrooms worldwide.
Paul McKenzie

OCR Terminal: Free Online OCR - Convert PDF to word, jpeg to word, scanned images to ed... - 0 views

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    We all stand on the shoulders of giants, right?
Clif Mims

VirusTotal - Free Online Virus and Malware Scan - 0 views

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    Virustotal is a service that analyzes suspicious files and facilitates the quick detection of viruses, worms, trojans, and all kinds of malware detected by antivirus engines.
Ben Rimes

The Future of Less: How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education - 0 views

  • Today, we've gone from scarcity of knowledge to unimaginable abundance. It's only natural that these new, rapidly evolving information technologies would convene new communities of scholars, both inside and outside existing institutions
  • "We said, 'Let's create a university that actually measures learning,' " Mendenhall says. "We do not have credit hours, we do not have grades. We simply have a series of assessments that measure competencies, and on that basis, award the degree."
  • Hulu.com, launched just 18 months ago, is widely considered to be the first Web site to prove that mass broadcast-television viewing as we know it can and will shift online. Hulu did that by being attractive, well-designed, and easy to use, and by having a viable business model with actual paying advertisers -- and soon, subscribers.
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  • He has also offered five of his courses to anyone on the Web for free; he donates his own time to review nonenrolled students' work, awarding a signed certificate in lieu of course credit. Wiley's most recent open course was formatted as an online role-playing game, with students divided into "guilds" completing "quests" -- a learning community inspired by the world of online gamers. "If you didn't need human interaction and someone to answer your questions, then the library would never have evolved into the university," Wiley says. "We all realize that content is just the first step."
  • If you want to perform a proper string quartet, they noted, you can't cut out the cellist nor can you squeeze in more performances by playing the music faster. But that was then -- before MP3s and iPods proved just how freely music could flow. Before Google scanned and digitized 7 million books and Wikipedia users created the world's largest encyclopedia. Before YouTube Edu and iTunes U made video and audio lectures by the best professors in the country available for free, and before college students built Facebook into the world's largest social network, changing the way we all share information. Suddenly, it is possible to imagine a new model of education using online resources to serve more students, more cheaply than ever before.
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