I love this! Gmail motion was Google's april fools day prank and many people fell for it. Heck, if I'd had time, I might have played with it but after thinking I realized what day it was! Tee hee.
But a lot of people WANTED this -even though the gestures were designed to be silly (who is going to do a jumping jack for making a star on an email.) so ICT used a kinect camera and actually made Gmail actions work! Watch the video and enjoy.
People actually WANT this just not with the exaggerated motions and definitely not a shot that requires the camera to see your feet.
The mouse and keyboard are no longer the only way to input data into computing devices. This trend capitalizes on touch interfaces as made popular by the itouch/ iphone as well as the gesture based interfaces made popular by the Wii. Additionally, sixth sense computing (as seen in Minority Report) is a reality as this has already been invented.
These links are from the Horizon Report 2010 and will be used by students in the NetGenEd project to understanding Gesture Based computing
This is information on QR codes for Marketing but in this there is potential for schools - particularly ubiquitous "hardlinks" between educational experiences like museums.
Learning analytics and personalization only begins with technology for "drill and kill" but certainly that is one place we should always use it, like this student learning spelling words. Article from scholastic about Read 180.
"But while this student practiced his words, the most powerful stuff was happening behind the scenes. Out of eyesight.
With every keystroke, the technology gathered data on his spelling fluency. It calculated how fast he was at spelling each word. It remembered what he got right and got wrong, and knew exactly how many times it had to re-ask the same word before the student really knew it. Every bit of data it collected would update and add to the student's personal learning profile - a collection of data the teacher could look up at any time to track progress and glean insights on the student's accomplishments and struggles, and that the computer could interpret and display for the student in ways that empowered him and showed him how successful he had been.
Post Rank extensions for Google Chrome and Safari are cool. You have to be careful that you don't JUST read the highly ranked posts but if you have only time for a quick read, it is useful.
I'm impressed with the learning analytics that are in the Instructure Canvas offering. Instructure canvas is open source - you can download and use for free but if you host in the cloud, you can host through Instructure. They have just launched a K12 offering and the simple streamlined look and integration with social media has this on the top of my list as we look at an LMS for our school. WE don't have a lot of money but want simple and robust and I'm impressed with what I see. I had a call with the founder.
This workshop session at WebWise 2012 shows that museums are looking at gamifying just like everyone else. Anything to increase engagement. Whether you like it or not, it is time for some serious scholarly research.
"Last year, Nielsen Research found that online games overtook personal email to become the second most heavily used internet activity behind social networks. While most museum and library professionals aren't aiming to create the next FarmVille or Angry Birds, games have the potential to be meaningful learning tools and prompt real-world action."
Unlike smartphones and laptops, which replaced analog phones, typewriters, and
filing cabinets, the tablet is pure digital abstraction -- the love-child of two
digital devices
The answer is that our current digital ecosystem of smartphone + laptop
doesn’t really fill our needs. Our phones aren’t good at making phone calls, and
our laptops don’t share well. Both cost a lot but use only a fraction of their
features. So much has changed since these platforms were originally defined that
it’s time for a major re-adjustment, and the tablet is the first step. It’s the
tip of the iceberg.
The tablet’s greatest impact on the technology ecosystem was in pointing out
this weakness
. Tasks that had been split between two devices can be distributed among three.
So what happens next? As a result of the tablet, your smartphone is going to get
a bit dumber. It won’t lose all of its functions, but most ancillary features
will drop deeper back in the user interface, bringing the two killer apps of
phone and camera to the surface.
The form factor that a tablet provides means that you can still watch a movie or video without it being too small, but a tablet is also much more mobile than carrying a laptop around with your everywhere. Tablets can access a wide variety of content as well. In Canada, th
e majority of major media companies have released iPad apps so you can watch their content right on your device.
it’s no longer necessary for you to print out the majority of documents.
a tablet is an excellent way to find and read the news. Many major publications offer RSS feeds of their content that is exactly the same as it would appear in their print editions, or they at least link to their website so that you canAn RSS reader app can collect these feeds and present them to you on your iPad so that you don’t need to look at multiple different websites to find all the news you want to read.
having a tablet handy means you always have a great way to take down notes and you always have access to them, unlike that piece of scrap paper you probably just lost. Also when you write a note on a tablet, you can easily set them up to sync with your other devices so you can have them no matter what device is at your disposal.
it is much easier to pull out a tablet while using public transit if you want to lookup something quickly as opposed to whipping out your laptop.
Tablets get the best of both laptops and smartphones!
Apple seems to be on a mission to prove this with the release of iMovie and GarageBand for the iPad.
even easier to use than their “computer” counterparts
Tablets are still in their infancy as far as new technologies go.
I think tablets are here to stay, and whether you have an iPad or an Android tablet, there are plenty of benefits to owning one.
Go Christmas shopping, find restaurants, locate partying friends, tell the world what you’re up to.
Low-cost sensors, clever software and advancing computer firepower are opening the door to new uses in energy conservation, transportation, health care and food distribution.
The consumer Internet can be seen as the warm-up act for these technologies.
The concept has been around for years, sometimes called the Internet of Things or the Industrial Internet. Yet it takes time for the economics and engineering to catch up with the predictions. And that moment is upon us.
I find this is ironic that the publishers are calling Apple the "evil empire." And so it begins the echoes of a complete publishing industry turnover. Like the music industry ten years a go, great opportunity is born out of great turmoil. Futures of whole companies and industries will be decided in the next year.
"I humbly implore all media companies who read this - downtrodden newspaper editors, heads of publishing houses, and CEOs of media businesses: don't listen to Apple, Google, or Yahoo. Join the Rebellion. Help us save journalism.
While today the most popular forms of gesture-based computing are designed for
gaming and simulation/training purposes, there is a growing interest in applying
these technologies to K-12 education. Perhaps one of the best examples of such
application is the collaboration between Nintendo and the National Association
for Music Education to integrate Wii consoles and music software into secondary
school music classes