Higher Innovation

The Fifth Year of Higher Innovation

Cameron Evans — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:51:00 +0000

I did not want to let January slip away without acknowledging that Higher Innovation is four years old. Over 260 articles on education, technology, STEM, innovation, creative, and learning have been written over the past four years. It has been fun and exploratory journey.

In February, I will share my views on how the web has changed in these four short years and the implications on learning and content creation. I will share now that simply publishing content to a blog does not mean it is consumed as the author intended.

Thanks for being in this conversation on education and innovation for the last four years. In the fifth year, it is time to take the conversation higher!

The America Within Our Reach

Cameron Evans — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:17:08 +0000

If America’s government functions as well as its military, imagine what our nation could accomplish.

After listing significant military accomplishments over the past year, President Obama posed a challenge to the U.S. Congress to mirror the effectiveness of the military in its legislative action. That outcome would be amazing for our nation and our national competitiveness.

Investing in Innovation
Our President’s address tonight highlighted the technologies and innovations that have led to America’s global progress. He also highlighted that government funded basic research was invested to achieve many innovations that we often take for granted. Investing in innovation always takes time. Not every research investment pans out to be meaningful. However, the government (in particular, the military) has supported more investments in basic research that have led to innovations that we still benefit from today.

The transistors that led to the microchip is an innovation that stands out. It is kind of hard to launch a rocket with vacuum tubes for computing guidance. Yet, when it comes to the jobs that are being created in STEM-related disciplines, the jobs are available; we simply do not have enough ready citizens to take them.

Higher Education Is Not Luxury
In addressing the jobs gap, President Obama highlighted the critical importance of having a well-educated and competitive citizenry. Starting with making higher education more affordable through technology and alternative delivery models to expedite graduation while maintaining rigor and keeping costs down. This is possible today. Colleges and universities need to leverage the blend of institutional services and cloud services to achieve a student-centered advantage.

While the cost of higher education is enough to give anyone pause, President Obama suggested that States should compel its citizens to remain in high school until they graduate or turn age 18. This suggestion reminded me of remarks made on the student panel at NBC’s Education Nation. NBC’s Ann Curry interviewed a panel of young adults. Panelist Stephanie Torres stood out.

Stephanie Torres shared her life’s story without a high school education. Stephanie dropped out of high school at age 17. She explained how difficult it was to find a job without a high school diploma. Moreover, Stephanie talked of how difficult it was to get a better job without her graduation equivalent diploma. However, getting a GED costs money. It is a vicious trap.

Here is the kicker. After experiencing the challenges she has had since dropping out of school, Stephanie concludes that no child should be giving the option to dropout of school. Well, I imagine that Stephanie would be the first supporter of President Obama’s proposal for compulsory education.

Video: Voices of a Generation: Students Speak Out

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Students need to graduate from high school ready for higher learning and life—not just graduate to meet a metric or policy mandate.Otherwise, we will risk the watering down of education to increase graduation rates and still not achieve a more competitive America.

Today, our military only wants high school graduates. Perhaps if our society only provided jobs and benefits to high school graduates, the citizens would set an expectation for our youth that education is important and dropping out is not an option for success.

The question for you: is increasing high school graduation rates our collective job as citizens or is it the government’s role to do it?

Conversations @Microsoft Institute–Boston 1 of 4

Cameron Evans — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:29:32 +0000

I am having a great time being back in Boston. It is home to some of the world’s best revolutionary thinkers—historically and present day. I got to meet with some revolutionary thinkers and actors at the Microsoft Institute hosted by Microsoft Partners in Learning. I want to share with you some highlights from our day and encourage you to attend when this series is available in your area.

Leading with Vision
I had the opportunity to open the day with a conversation about vision building and execution in education institutions. The remarks that resonated the most were that by 2015, I hoped that we see the end of Education Technology Plans and District Improvement Plans. These high level planning efforts are often multi-year documents in production and certainly in deliverables. Meanwhile, our students and teachers need resources for the class that is in the room now—not three years from now.

There is a strong tension in “managing the present” and “creating the future” in public education. Perhaps, we could reconcile this tension with the retirement of institutional planning efforts and focus our efforts on the student’s future learning today—individualized planning. Instead of one uber plan for the institution, we should empower our people to actively and dynamically create personalized learning plans for students.

With all vision building scenarios, we are attempting to a chart course for a mass exodus into an unknown and uncertain future. For some, the ambiguity of our future state only creates anxiety because there are few to no models of effectiveness in education to pattern. The simple truth is that to realize an innovative vision for learning, leaders would be better served looking outside of education to find models to pattern.

The first question cannot be who else has done this education? The first question for innovation should be who else has done this or something similar anywhere?

I have been getting Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble recommendations for books for well over a decade. However, when I go to a public or school library, the library’s automation system never recommends new reading to increase my patronage nor my readership. There are no models for this—now old—market innovation in education. However, this example is well-researched and proven in industry.

What models of industry innovation do you think we need to pattern in education?

Finally, achieving a new vision requires people to change more than technologies, processes, or pedagogy. The climate and culture of the organization will directly impact the speed of change for the organization. While influencing our stakeholders is absolutely key to long term change, these are not people I consider first in strategic planning. I recommend we return full circle to my opening statement—it is not about our institutional planning, it is about the student’s success.

I know in our hearts we get that the student comes first. It is a rational consideration to make. Where we are most likely to differ is on which students are we talking about. If we are planning for a university, the students we should consider are in middle school today. If we are planning for high school, the students we should consider are in upper elementary school today. If we are planning for elementary, the students we should consider are new parents.

The journey we are all planning will take time to realize. So, we should consider who will be served when the vision is achieved. The beneficiaries of our learning vision will mostly likely not be the students that are currently in our systems today. With the lens of an anthropologist, we should observe the behaviors and motivations of the next generation to come. What are their expectations of technologies for play, learning, entertainment, and discovery? If our vision is to achieve what is possible now; please forgive the pun, but, that is not higher innovation.

In the end, vision requires that we expect more value than what are current reality can muster. We need to look in new places for diverse experiences that will enable our schools to not only just do more—but an entirely different kind of more. Our people and their competence will determine the success and speed of this journey. Most of all, the prism that we must focus the light of our vision is always on two people—the learner today and the learner to come.

How are you leading with vision in your schools and district? Do you agree of disagree with our perspective?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr—An Enduring Legacy

Cameron Evans — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:58:56 +0000

It only takes a moment for me to see the impact of the American Civil Rights Movement on my life.

When I look at my bride and our daughter, I am constantly reminded that many suffered and gave their lives for the blessings we share today. It is never taken for granted. Nor is the significance of the sacrifices made—lost on us.

I imagine that when most people see black and white news footage of the Civil Rights Movement, it looks like a faraway time and in a foreign place. For me, it was home—Birmingham, AL, the Magic City. As most school age children know, Birmingham became the epicenter for civil rights in America during the 1950s and 1960s.

What is remarkable is that in one generation, the world as I would come to know it change. My upbringing was not filled with racial violence and injustice. It was filled with hope, optimism, and opportunity. Growing up in Birmingham, AL persuaded me that I could do anything and become whatever I imagined to be. An outlook of life that I share with my daughter daily.

I hope today gives you a moment to pause and reflect on the progress of our journey thus far and the life work of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

And, if you are ever in the beautiful state of Alabama, be sure to visit the Magic City and make his story, your story.

Higher Innovation Week RT, Jan. 13, 2012

Cameron Evans — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:39:14 +0000

Welcome to a new feature for Higher Innovation—the Week’s Retweets (RT).

In the Week’s RT, we share a curated list of tweets from across Microsoft in Education, the company, and our industry colleagues on the web. You may even see your own tweets. There is a lot of news happening all of the time, this provides a compilation for easy discovery, reading, and sharing.

Enjoy this Week’s RT and feel free to add new tweets in the comments below.

Have a great weekend as we celebrate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Search API will now always return “real” Twitter user IDs. The with_twitter_user_id parameter is no longer necessary. An era has ended. ^TS

— Twitter API (@EDUCTO) November7, 2011

See you next week.

Kinect for Kids: Playful Learning Initiative

Cameron Evans — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:11:00 +0000

There is so much happening with XBOX 360 and Kinect. Everyday, it seems like XBOX 360 can do something new. With Kinect for Kids and the new Playful Learning Initiative, Microsoft has teamed with Sesame Street and National Geographic in helping kids learn through play.

The video below will bring you up to speed on what the goals of the Playful Learning Initiative are. After that revisit, my earlier article on Sesame Workshop’s new Kinect for XBOX 360 experience.

Video: Kinect for Kids – Playful Learning Initiative

Bing: Playful Learning Initiative

Okay, take a break and go play. Who knows, you might learn something.

Kinect for Windows Starts Feb 1

Cameron Evans — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:00:29 +0000

Last year, Microsoft Research announced a Software Development Kit (SDK) for the Guinness Record-Making Kinect Sensor. Afterwards, we watched the world create the Kinect Effect. Now everyone can join in February 1, 2012 with official release of Kinect for Windows.

Later this year, we will offer special academic pricing (planned at US $149) for Qualified Educational Users.

Kinect for Windows
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/

Kinect Effect on YouTube: http://youtu.be/diy7rkWkDtU

The big question for educators: How will you use natural (human) user experiences to create relevant, compelling, and meaningful engagement with and for your learners?

The Kinect Sensor challenged video game designers to think more anew about interactivity without a handheld controller. Then other companies and individuals took the Kinect experience further with medical applications and robotics.

We have Innovative Educators that have produced remarkable learning experiences that were either built with the Kinect Sensor or the Kinect Sensor is core to the learning experiences. The vanguards of the immersive learning are already here.

I am a pragmatic optimist when it comes to espousing the educational power and opportunity that comes from the careful integration of technology into the classroom. When it is done well, as Bernajean Porter once remarked, the new learning experience was impossible to achieve without the thoughtful inclusion of technology. Like many of you, I have more often than not seen it done poorly.

I have seen warehouses of computers never deployed or computers deployed with no network or power supply to support them. I have seen computers abandoned to dusty corners of the classrooms, never turned on or updated, let alone used for learning. I have seen hallways of abandoned electronic whiteboards because no one ever installed them.

And I have seen schools spend millions on really expensive paper and pencils that they called tablet computers. In the end, they only do what they did before more expensively.

The Kinect for Windows opportunity creates a new occasion to shift our thinking about what immersive learning means in and out of the classroom. It would be a sad mistake to think of the Kinect Sensor as a web camera. Kinect is about computer vision—giving your computer the ability to see, hear, and respond.

I can imagine a student practicing dissecting a frog at home on his or her XBOX 360 or Windows PC with Kinect. Then the following day, she or he will have to take the simulated learning into the real world and dissect a real animal.

I can see students sharing and manipulating real objects in virtual space at a distance with the Kinect Sensor.

The time when imagination takes flight is when Kinect’s computer vision is combined with other modern classroom and consumer technologies to something we have yet to imagine or consider. The Kinect Sensor alone will not change the classroom to improve learning. However, I am confident that smart people, unbridled by present reality, will create a lasting and viral impact on learning with Kinect for Windows.

The question now: Are you smart people? I think you are clever!

For more information on Kinect for Windows:

Come and Play on Sesame Street, Really Let’s Play

Cameron Evans — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:57:48 +0000

I cannot imagine a world without Sesame Street. The Sesame Workshop (formerly Children’s Television Workshop) has been an instrumental part of learning and childhood for youngsters everywhere.

It is a uniquely American institution that has gone global.

I can still remember all of the Bert and Ernie memorabilia my brother and I shared as children. A generation later, Elmo has been the iconic citizen of Sesame Street for my daughter’s early learning.

During Steve Ballmer’s Microsoft keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show 2012, Sesame Workshop unveiled what the next generation of Sesame Street youngsters will experience. It was nothing short of amazing.

Video: Microsoft CES2012 Keynote with Sesame Workshop

This new Sesame Workshop experience is part of the Kinect for Kids Playful Learning Initiative announced fall 2011.

Helping kids get a head start on learning, early in their academic careers, is crucial to everything that comes later. At NBC’s Education Nation 2011, we learned that our brains are wired for learning the moment we are born. I wrote about this an earlier Higher Innovation article.

Sesame Workshop has a long track record of helping pre-Kindergarten learners get ready for school and life. Through toys and television, Sesame Workshop has always strove to make those experiences as interactive as the technology of the day would permit.

Now, Sesame Workshop is making their television programming directly interactive with Kinect for Kids. It is a first of its kind experience. The next generation of students will be able to take a digital walk on Sesame Street and actually meet Bert, Ernie, and Elmo.

Ah, to be a kid again.

Sesame Workshop is a nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street. Consider making a gift to support children learning everywhere in 2012.

Classified: For Education Only

Cameron Evans — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:30:22 +0000

TeachTec’s Tools for Schools
Our own swashbuckling Tony Franklin with the Microsoft Partners in Learning team curated this impressive collection of free (read no freaking strings attached) tools, services, resources, and apps for teachers and students.

I had a chance to see Tony demonstrate a few of these apps in-person at a recent Microsoft Institute sponsored by the Microsoft Partners in Learning team. I was unaware of some of items they pulled for this collection. Nor have I ever seen them all in one place.

My hope is that this would become the most shared education asset in social media. My only request is that you share this incredible collection with all of your teachers and students that you know.

You can follow Tony @teachtec on Twitter.

Microsoft CES 2012 Live Feed

Cameron Evans — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:10:13 +0000

The 2012 Consumer Electronics Show may indeed be Microsoft’s last appearance on the big stage. However, Microsoft has never been more committed to consumer technologies and connected experiences.

Find out what is next for consumers at the CES 2012 Pre-show keynote with Microsoft Chief Executive Officer, Steve Ballmer.

Watch the Live CES Stream

Show starts Monday, January 9, 2012 6:30PM PDT

For Official Microsoft CES 2012 News
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/ces/liveevent.aspx

Share your comments with Microsoft on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/Microsoft