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Saturday, April 21, 2018

Google Vision Kit: Artificial Intelligence Meets Making


WHAT IS IT?
We recently acquired a new Google Vision Kit which uses artificial intelligence to detect and recognize objects. Along with Google Voice Kit which was released late last year, these new kits blend making with artificial intelligence. Vision Kit includes an onboard Raspberry Pi camera connected to a Raspberry Pi Zero. It takes about 1.5 hours to assemble the components and another hour to install and configure the software and apps required. Below I'm "recognizing" a bottle of dog vitamins. The Vision Kit can connect to an LCD so that the image is displayed. When setting up the Kit, you pair the device to your Android phone so that it can run over your wireless network. There are more than 1,000 objects in the image library.



EXECUTING THE SCRIPT
Once everything is installed, you run a Python script using a Chrome browser shell command. Using the device IP address, you execute a pre-built script called 'Image_Classification_Camera.py' that automatically recognizes whatever is in the viewfinder. The command line scrolls constantly while is recognizes and classifies the object. I captured the image below from my laptop. Note that the script constantly updates as the camera detects whatever is in its viewfinder



SEE IT IN ACTION
Here's a promotional video illustrating how it works and illustrating Face Tracker, Face Recognition, and Image Classification.



Sunday, April 15, 2018

Microsoft Artificial Intelligence Translation



 WHAT IS MICROSOFT TRANSLATOR?

We recently became aware of an exciting new technology from Microsoft Garage - a research incubator arm of the company - called Translator. This free artificial intelligence PowerPoint add-in can convert more than 60 languages bi-directionally. Let's say that you are entertaining a group of students from China who have limited English skills. Using Translator, the spoken words appear as captions in the targeted language - in real time. To start Translator, simply click the option on the ribbon.





This feature can also be used for audiences who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Additionally, up to 100 audience members in the room can follow along with the presentation in their own language, including the speaker’s language, on their phone, tablet or computer. 



KEY FEATURES

Live subtitling: Speak in any of the 10 supported speech languages – Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish – and subtitle into any one of the 60+ text translation languages.

Customized speech recognition: Optionally customize the speech recognition engine using the vocabulary within your slides and slide notes to adapt to jargon, technical terms, product or place names, etc. Customization is currently available for English and Chinese.

Personal translations: Share a QR- or five letter conversation code and your audience can follow along with your presentation, on their own device, in their chosen language.

Multi-language Q&A: Unmute the audience to allow questions from the audience on their device in any of the supported languages (10 for spoken questions, 60+ for written ones)

Inclusivity through Accessibility: Help audience members who are deaf or hard of hearing follow the presentation, and participate in the discussion.

Translate your presentation while preserving the slide formatting: Next to the "Start Subtitles" icon, the "Translate Slides" button allows presenters to translate their whole presentation while preserving its formatting.

MORE INFORMATION

Download Translator for free

Watch a demonstration of how this technology works.





Monday, April 9, 2018

Open Educational Resources: 5 R's


Open Educational Resources
This is one of several articles where we will explore Open Educational Resources (OER’s).
Before we can identify Open Educational Resources (OER), we need to understand what defines OER.  Currently, there are some common principles for determining if and when material should be considered "open".  These are referred to as the 5Rs:
The 5Rs of Openness
·         Retain: the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
·         Reuse: the right to use the content in a wide range of ways 
·         Revise: the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself 
·         Remix: the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new
·         Redistribute: the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others


 Retain:  This principle supplies us with perpetual ownership over the material.  Many times, when we talk about low-cost and free materials for students, the materials are supplied online - but if you are unable to actually save a copy of that material of your own, and students lose access to it after a course is completed -- then the material is really not "open", but "licensed" for a specific purpose or time.  Let's consider streaming, online videos.  You may be able to freely access or embed a video from a website such as YouTube, but you may not be able to download and save a video from such a site easily.  In this case, that video may not be considered a truly open resource.  
Reuse: This principle supplies us with the permission and right to reuse the material in a variety of contexts.  Many times, we like to have our students read scholarly articles as supplemental material.  But if the article come from a database, you may not have the right to reuse that article outside the database -- students may need to access it from within the database.  And then you may not be able to use it again and again as a permanent reading for your course from year to year.  Reuse enables you to control how you will deliver and supply access to the open content.
Revise: This principle allows you to take the content of the material and change it to fit your specific needs. This means you can revise what already exists, but you're not adding anything new to the content at this level.   As an example, you could translate the work into other languages, or format the content differently so it emphasizes different points.  
Remix: This principle allows you to add to the content and to create something new.  You can mix in elements from other open resources that will result in a new resource.  If you were adopting an open curriculum, you could then add in additional resources from other courses to build an entirely new curriculum that would fit your vision.  
Redistribute: Finally, this principle supplies you with the ability to share the resources with anyone and everyone without restriction, and is transferable once you share it with someone, so that they are able to share it as well.  Within this, you can also generate copies of the material so that you still "retain" a copy for yourself as you share.  


This material is based on original writing by David Wiley, which was published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221 .

Sunday, April 8, 2018

Open Educational Resources: Key Findings




Open Educational Resources (OER) are popular....and gaining steam. Hundreds of colleges and universities now deploy OER resources - a trend which is only expected to grow in the next few years. OER is not just textbooks, however. They can include videos, PowerPoint slide decks, images, and other instructional material. But, textbooks are often singled out given the tremendous cost increases over the past 30 years. The following are some key data points that were identified regarding the use of OER:

90%  college textbook price increase from 1998 to 2016. Recreational book prices fell 35% during that same period.
82%  of students indicated they would do better in courses if the resources were free or reduced and they were not as concerned about the cost of purchasing expensive books.
80%  of the textbook market controlled by the "Big 5" publishers. In essence, they have a captive audience.
75% of students have delayed purchasing a required textbook due to price.
73% of students have never heard of Open Educational Resources.
65%  of students don’t purchase the required textbooks.
50%  of students choose courses and majors based on textbook costs.
33%  reduction in DFW rates among minority and Pell-Grant eligible students who switched to OER.
30%  of students use financial aid awards to buy textbooks.
26%  of tuition and fees - on average - spent for textbooks. (39% at community colleges)
13%  of students have considered dropping because they couldn't afford course materials.
2.6  the average number of books purchased by students in a year that are never opened.
80% of textbook costs reduced by using OER.

 Recommended Resources

Saturday, April 7, 2018

Video Length in Online Courses: What the Research Says


Image Courtesy of Panopto

Lecture capture is popular. Very popular. It provides a number of affordances for faculty, such as capturing important content for students who miss class due to illnesses or athletics events. Almost every overhauled learning space at ESU now includes a camera and microphone. Many faculty now utilize lecture capture to record their courses - particularly courses where there is significant didactic content. 

While this is extremely useful for replaying a class that the student may have missed or where the content was difficult to understand, these recordings are not especially effective as a surrogate in an online course. Across the country, faculty use their class recordings as a replacement for their traditional lecture in the online environment. But are they effective? Research suggests otherwise....at least not in the hour-long+ format. While uploading a facsimile of a class lecture may seem advantageous to the time-strapped professor, there are suggestions noted further below in this blog that may make marathon videos more effective.

WHAT IS THE OPTIMAL VIDEO LENGTH?
A large scale study conducted by MIT of over 6.9 million video sessions recorded for MOOCs found that the optimal video length should be under 6 minutes. Shorter videos were found to be much more engaging. Videos longer than 6 minutes were found to result in significant viewer attrition.

A similar study conducted at the University of Wisconsin found that while students believed video to be very important to their learning, most preferred videos under 15 minutes in length. In addition, students leveraged captioning - even though none of the students in the study suffered from a hearing impairment.

Dr. Philip Guo from the University of Rochester analyzed several math and science courses delivered through the EdX platform and found that video engagement peaked at 6-minutes, and dropped off rather precipitously as the video length increased.

Consider this: Ad Age found that advertisers lose 33% of their video audience within 30 seconds; 45% within 1 minute; and 60% within 2 minutes. Attention spans are short...and getting shorter.

SOCIAL MEDIA VIDEO
When it comes to video provided on social media, the results are even more startling. The following list illustrates the 'ideal' video length on each of the respective platforms:
  • Twitter: ~45 seconds
  • Facebook: ~60 seconds
  • YouTube: ~2 minutes
So, do you still think those hour long lectures are engaging? Research suggests they are not.

RECOMMENDATIONS
  • Invest in pre-production that will allow chunking of the content into shorter segments. Add these video chunks to the respective learning modules.
    However, if the presentation is designed as a continuous presentation - such as a TED video - leave it as is. Note, however, that every TED presentation - no matter the presenter - is under 18 minutes. TED refers to this as the "18 minute rule".
  • Videos that intersperse the faculty with slides or whiteboard is more effective than a 'talking head'.
  • "Khan-style" videos with writing are more engaging than static PowerPoint slides. If interested in this, we encourage exploring a WACOM tablet with a writing stylus.
  • A faster speaking style is more engaging than a slower lecture with long pauses. Remember, too, that if your audience is not mic'd, their questions turn into uncomfortable, long, vacuous pauses with nothing being shared.
  • Informal recording venues are more effective than formal venues.
  • Many students replay video back at 2x or even 3x the normal playback speed. Be sure your product supports multi-speed replay. 
References

Berg, R. (2013) Leveraging Recorded Mini-Lectures to Increase Student Learning. Online Classroom

Burch, B. (nd). Video length in Online Courses. Quality Matters

Guo, P. (2013). Optimal video length for student engagement. blog.edx.org