Transforming Education through Disruptive Technologies

Panelists:

Steve NordmarkVice President, Solutions Management and Development,

netTrekker

Elango Kanagaraji Head – Web 2.0 Specialization, Aspire Systems

Moderator:

Kanchana RajagopalanMarketing, Aspire Systems

Date: Thursday, Apr 1st, 2010

Time: 11 AM EDT/ 04:00 PM BST/ 08:30 PM IST

Panelist

Steve Nordmark Vice President, Solutions Management and Development, netTrekker

Innovative leader in educational software development and research with over 20 years of experience in corporate consulting and K-12 educational technology.

Spearheaded the next generation re-architecture, design, development, and deployment of the flagship netTrekker product, providing an increased platform for growth, integration and flexibility.

Managed and lead several educational software development projects, including desktop-based, client-server, and online/SaaS solutions for more than 13 years.

Passionate about delivering personalized learning environments for all, blending a focus on strong Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles and meaningful connections of assessment and instructional content.

Steve has a Bachelor's degree in Engineering from the University of Illinois and a Master's degree in Education from Florida Tech.

About netTrekker

Founded in 1999

First to market with standards-based educational search tool

A leader in the delivery of digital K-12 educational content

Engaging students through personalized learning

Currently serving over 10 million students in 18,000+ schools worldwide

Honored with over 25 awards for educational excellence

Elango KanagarajiHead – Web 2.0 Specialization, Aspire Systems

Currently heads the Web 2.0 Specialization Business unit at Aspire Systems.

Responsible for the business/product development in Consumer Internet and Software enabled business areas and manages all customer engagements from North America and Europe.

Actively participates in customer interactions and new customer acquisition and drives various value added initiatives for customers

Instrumental in defining Aspire's focus in Web 2.0. Closely monitors industry trends in Web 2.0 and collaborates with Aspire's Web 2.0 CoE to build internal expertise.

Elango has a Bachelor's Degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from PSG Institute of Technology, Coimbatore

Panelist

Thought leader in Outsourced Product Development

1100+ product releases to date

50+ active engagements; 475 producteers

Offices in Chennai (India), San Jose, CA, and London, UK

ISO 9001:2000 certified

About Aspire

•Awards

•Ranked in the top 500 fast growing technology companies in Asia Pacific for 3 years in a row

•Ranked among the Top 20 Global R&D Service Providers by Zinnov

Consulting

Best established/emerging technologies education software providers should invest in

Technologies recommended for educational institutions and corporations

Market Drivers in the K-12 Education

Effects and Impacts of adopting such disruptive technologies

Agenda

So far so good

Gaining ground

Cloud Computing

Software on cloud can be delivered to any device and from anywhere

Software Solution - network, cloud and device dependent

Application built in to support cloud computing model and scale

across private and external cloud

Interoperable and Portable across cloud services to avoid Vendor

Lock, Support for Federated Identity Management service like SAML

Private Cloud - Data center for mission critical applications and others

can be moved to external clouds

Benefits for Schools/Universities using the applications on Cloud:

Reduce the cost of Managing Individual Devices and enable students to

use their own devices

Access the required application on need basis on any device and from

anywhere

Applications Integration Databases Servers HW/SW

Storage Networking

Managed By Customer

Managed By Vendor

Managed By Customer

Managed By Vendor

On-Premise

Hosted Solution

Cloud Solutions

Comparison

Virtual Space and Collaboration

Virtual Classrooms

Private spaces, interaction with multiple users in real time

Distributed and engaged learning

eCalendar – Organize and share assignments, events, post-

information to students, teachers, professors, parents etc.

Artificial Intelligence - Training assistance, facilitating academics,

training for medicine, battlefields etc.

Interaction with the real world while being constantly provided with

information about their surrounding – Student guides or virtual

tour of campus

Google Sky Map, Wikitude

Gaining ground

Rich Internet Apps

Why RIA for Education Software

Highly Productive Tools

Portal Environment

Mobile Devices

User Experience and Rich Content Delivery – Flex, Silverlight, HTML 5

Desktop Apps – AIR, Java Web Start, etc

Next Generation Electronic Books – iPhone, iPad, Tablet PC, Android etc

Gaining ground

Mashups

Personalized App creations, create own curriculum, courses, assessment tools

without any coding knowledge

Create Custom Data services – API calls or extract structured data from Web

pages

Create Data Feeds - RSS, XML, Microformats etc.

Example – Yahoo Search Monkey, Find the landmark, Flood Maps

Gaining ground

Semantic Web

Data on Web which can be interpreted by machine

Enhances user experience with better search, transfer Data between websites

and applications (Transfer Calendar event on webpage to Desktop)

Enhances Interactivity between Students, Schools, Teachers, Content

Authors in real-time

Web morphs into effective and focused information resource tailored for

specific content area objectives

Semantic Web Technologies for Education Software

System Integration based on universal Ontology

Building Semantic Metadata – RSS, RDF, Microformats, OWL

On the Horizon

Examples

Software Vendors Educational Institutions Organizations

netTrekker uses Folksonomy for its educational content search tool

Virtual Computing Lab at North Carolina State University uses IBM’s cloud to accommodate sudden demands of resources

Columbia University’s experimental ARMAR contains a head mounted display unit that provides graphic overlays to assist in making military vehicle repairs

Biz-LX LLC hosts a simulation that engages students in ethically challenging managerial decision scenarios

Stanford University's Libraries and Academic Information Resources has created a virtual library in Second Life accessible to all members

Learning Solutions Magazine Wiki spaces, an open source wiki for documenting e-Learning development processes in the organization

Blackboard Mobile Learn™ allows students access to institutional applications for course content access anywhere

Classroom 2.0 is a free, community-supported network created in Ning for those interested in Web 2.0 and Social Media in education

Doctors at Kaiser Permanente (KP) Medical Center use Clinical Events Team Training where labor and delivery events are simulated realistically using robotic maternal and neonatal mannequins

Blending Current and Future Disruptive

Technologies To Meet the Market Drivers

Major Budget Crisis – Increased Focus on Reducing Cost

National Educational Technology Plan

Grand Challenge: “…half the time at half the cost”

States Providing Clear Signals for Increased Appetite for Digital

Resources

Increased Emphasis on Technology Enablers for “Personalization”

Increased AI support, connecting learner profile, learning content and

assessment

Longitudinal Accountability – Following the learner

Project-based Learning – Collaboration

Global Competence

Market Drivers in K-12 Education

“…establishing an integrated end-to-end real-time system for managing learning

outcomes and costs across our entire education system at all levels.”

Self improving system that becomes more effective with interaction with

learners

Updated assessments for 21C environment across academic disciplines

Real-time access across multiple learning platforms and data systems

Online learning systems and/or blended learning systems that produce

equal or better outcomes that conventional methods in “half the time at

half the cost”

Grand Challenges in National Ed-Tech Plan

Greater needs for bandwidth capabilities, not just within schools but within homes

and communities

Greater R&D on interoperable learning objects May have a pre-defined scope and sequence (as an initial recommendation) Permit school systems and teachers to disaggregate resources and utilize those that best

meet the needs of specific students – supporting personalization

Greater R&D in “activity-based” learning objects that embed branching

assessments

Greater coordination among those involved with: R&D on digital identity profiles of learners Security measures that protect that information Policies that define the boundaries of the security framework – refining current guidelines

(i.e., FERPA and CIPA )

Impacts of the “Grand Challenges”

Greater R&D on interoperability standards that connect the digital identity profile of:

Learner

ContentAssessment

Impacts of the “Grand Challenges”

Greater R&D on interoperability standards that connect the digital identity profile of:

Interoperability standards to support multiple Learning Platforms and Data Systems

Learner

ContentAssessment

Impacts of the “Grand Challenges”

Scotland is implementing Glow, country-wide (about ½ population of Ohio)

In the US, we have open market for LMS/VLE/LP solutions

Don’t see Federal or State Governments in US implementing one choice

Requires significant increase in interoperability standards adherence from publishers

and Ed-Tech vendors Requires leadership from a policy level to highlight the importance of these

interoperability standards

Mandated Learning Platforms Versus Open Standards

Web-based authentication models – Single Sign-on (SSO)

Scotland and other areas in UK chose to standardize on Shibboleth for Federated

model of SSO - http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/about.html

Few places in US, outside of academic levels discuss similar approaches

Starting Point for Open Standards

Greater technology support for 21C authentic assessments

Greater shift to mastery level achievement goals with fewer penalties for risk taking

in learning along the way – promoting learning in a 21C innovation economy

Greater need for equitable student access to computing devices, starting with

laptops but quickly moving to smaller, more mobile device

Which leads to…

Impacts of the “Grand Challenges”

Greater need for client-server approach (“back to the future”) in the interim to respond to issues with connectivity and/or slower bandwidth in mobile platforms

Greater complexity and cost in application development and testing due to

increased number of Operating Systems beyond Windows and Mac

Greater QA requirements

Greater reliance on advanced GUI developers (whole new realm beyond current web GUI

developers)

Greater variability in application designs – supporting anytime, anywhere learning with or

without reliable connectivity

Impacts of Increased Mobility

Resisting temptation to port existing apps to mobile platforms - seriously rethinking

whether there is specific, increased benefit for supporting mobility

UDL challenges/opportunities due to different form factors and usage locations

Significant changes in keyboarding – potential impact on extended writing

Increased need for handwriting recognition software and voice recognition software to

compensate for keyboard limitations

Potential positive impacts on multimedia (audio/visual) record keeping and the potential

resulting impact on text literacy and writing skills

Rethink the use of audio and video because of difficulty with text input/output on smaller

screens (e.g., kReader Mobile and knfb Reading Technology from Kurzweil)

Impacts of Increased Mobility

Impacts of Increased Mobility

Greater potential for “personalization”

Increased acceptance for student-owned devices

• Defining personal preferences

• Tracking personal usage behaviors

Machine authentication vs. username & password

Increased need for new models of “student-friendly” authoring tools for multimedia presentations

Longitudinal Accountability

Looking for solutions that move with the learner

Longitudinal view of a student’s “profile” of learning

strong need for ePortfolio solutions that allow students to perform their work online through SaaS tools

open standards to allow the information to flow easily from one system to another as students move:

• from school to school within district

• from school to school across districts and across states

Collaborative Tools for Project-based Learning

SaaS solutions are essential to increase the ease of sharing among students in a

project group (in and out of school boundaries)

Asynchronous collaboration – eliminate the time boundaries to allow students to work

on varied schedules

Synchronous collaboration

Boost to the effectiveness of solutions to support students in the 21C

Already familiar with synchronous technology interaction (games, chat, social networks,

etc.)

Enabler for expanding the boundaries of typical classroom

Global Connections for Project-based Learning

“Global Competence”

(from Alexis Menten’s presentation at CoSN International Symposium, 2010)

Investigating their world

Recognizing their own and others perspectives

Being media savvy when communicating ideas to diverse audiences

Taking action as an actor on a global stage

Questions

Steve Nordmark

Vice President, Solutions Management and

Development, netTrekker

snordmark@nettrekker.com

Elango Kanagaraji

Head – Web 2.0 Specialization, Aspire Systems

elango.kanakaraji@aspiresys.com