EdTech Resource

Tech & Learning: Ideas and Tools for Ed Tech Leaders is oriented to K-12 education*, but nonetheless should be useful to folks working in higher education.

Specifically, here is the annual, annotated list of "Top 100 Sites & Apps of 2012," with a focus on mobile learning and the "flipped classroom." 

* From http://www.techlearning.com/About_Us --

For 30 years, Tech & Learning has served the K-12 education community with practical resources and expert strategies for transforming education through integration of digital technologies. Our audience includes all job roles within the district community, with district-level technology coordinators the primary recipients. Beyond that, our magazine is often used as a professional development tool to help educators across the board get up to speed with the newest technologies and products in order to best prepare students for the global digital workforce.

Technology Future Trends

This is a good list -- edgier and less conventional than the ones typical at year end.

"20 Tech Trends That Will Define 2013, Selected By Frog," via Fast Company's Co.DESIGN. 

Yes, it’s already that transitional time when our current year ends and another begins, and today and tomorrow are quickly changing hands. Rather than look back at significant trends of the past 366 days (2012 was a leap year, remember?), we asked a wide variety of technologists, designers, and strategists across frog’s studios around the world to take a look to the future. The near future, that is. “Near” in that 2013 is not only upon us, but also “near” in that these technologies are highly feasible, commercially viable, and are bubbling up to the surface of the global zeitgeist. We believe you’ll be hearing a lot more about these trends within the next 12 months, and possibly be experiencing them in some form, too.

No manifestly obvious predictions like, "Mobility will be prevalent," or "Search will be social," but, rather, items such as 

• "We embrace a new type of patina" --

Devices on our bodies will multiply. Sensors, cameras, input methods, and displays will work their way into our clothing. They’ll listen for commands and whisper in our ears. Our environment will respond to us in new and interesting ways. The proliferation of large displays and projection technologies will relegate the small display on our phone to private or a constrained set of tasks. A new layered interaction model of touch, voice, and gesture will emerge as important as consumption: the continuous exchange of what we are doing, where we are, and who we are with. This will again work into the collective memory, attaching to our legacy--bringing in a new type of patina effect. It won’t be the same as physical degradation yet will offer fresh stimuli that allow for more meaningful navigation and recall.

• "Faces become interfaces" -- 

Ubiquitous cameras in retail displays, in hotels, in the palms of our hands via our smartphones, point toward our faces. Soon, algorithms will match them with photos, and then connect us with related personal and professional information on us available online. In 2013, as faces increasingly become interfaces, we will begin dealing with new questions around the loss of physical anonymity. And some professions--researchers, undercover cops, spies, journalists--whose livelihoods depends on not being recognizable, are in for a bumpy ride. While such careers will be destroyed by real-time recognition, others will be enabled, as there will be new legions of people that will become the true “faces” of brands.

Messaging

A few items caught my eye in the context of recent news from Facebook that its messaging app, Facebook Messenger, will be updated over time to allow anyone -- including people with no Facebook account -- to sign up for the service using just their name and mobile number, and send messages via data plans, avoiding (SMS) text messaging and its cost.

This further accelerates the nibbling away at text messaging by messaging within Facebook; by Twitter, Foursquare, etc.; and Apples's and BlackBerry's internal systems. 

Myself, I have seen friends and colleagues shift from email and text to messaging -- Facebook Messenger in particular.

"SMS Turns 20, Marches Towards Irrelevance," by Dan Rowinski via readwrite mobile. 

Smartphones Offer Texting Alternatives

The harbinger of the fall of the text is the smartphone. The following notion cannot be overstated: Smartphones are the equivalent of powerful computers that go wherever we do. As such, almost anything that can be done on a computer can now be done on a smartphone or a tablet. That means popular chat and instant messaging services that were once the domain of the PC are now available to anybody with a smartphone and a data connection.

Almost all of the major smartphone operating systems now have their own proprietary messaging services. For Android, that means Google Talk (also referred to as GChat, but Google does not actually call it that). For Apple’s iOS that means iMessage. Microsoft has its Windows Live Messenger. Research In Motion has BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). These services are used by hundreds of millions of people across the globe. Several of these services integrate texting into a unified messaging system, such as the message service in Windows Phone 8 as well as iMessage. 

Outside of platform-specific messaging systems, services like Skype or Facebook Messenger can work across any mobile device that has the app installed. In addition, there are many different enterprise-grade communication services from the likes of Citrix, Cisco and Fuze (among many others). Many of these also offer traditional unified communications (UC) features like voice and video calling, tele-presence and chat-based messaging.

Then there are cross-platform apps that can be used by any smartphone. One of the biggest is called WhatsApp, a popular service that offers cross-platform messaging on any device that has a data plan (see WhatsApp Denies Facebook Deal Rumor - But It Still Makes Sense). Pinger is a similar cross-messaging service. There are also apps that mimic old push-to-talk (PTT) walkie-talkie like services, such as Voxer, an app that allows you to leave a text or voice message to another user. 

The fact of the matter is that traditional phone services like the call or the text are beginning to be pushed to the wayside as telephones become more like computers. That does not necessarily mean that texting is doomed, but it decreases its relevance and may eventually push it to the margin of mobile communications.

Facebook’s Big Messenger Play

On Tuesday, Facebook announced an interesting move that could end up being a significant blow to the future of texting. The social network released a new Messenger app for Android that allows people to use Facebook’s communication service without a Facebook account. All you need to do is download the Facebook Messenger app on Android, enter your phone number, and begin texting all of your mobile contacts. The new Messenger for Android will be able to communicate with any of your contacts, start group chats and share pictures. Eventually, Facebook Messenger will come to feature (non-smart) phones as well.

"Text Messages May Be In Decline, But They Are Not Going To Die, And Here's Why," by Nick Statt via readwrite mobile. 

As the 20th anniversary of the text message came and passed last week, many in the tech and mobile business world (including Dan Rowinski of ReadWrite) couldn’t help but declare the death of SMS, claiming that text messaging is finally over the hill and on a one-way path to irrelevance. This was after mobile analyst Chetan Sharma announced that the average number of monthly texts in the U.S. fell for the first time, by 3%.

While analysts and market watchers have good reason to think that the 160-character communication method won’t be seeing a historic comeback given the numerous free options available, the most recent death knells completely ignore how pervasive the traditional text message is in our communication culture and why that guarantees its survival right alongside email and the phone call.

They also ignore the fact that in the face of a decline in traditional text messaging, U.S. carriers will likely begin to buckle over keeping high rate plans, giving up their once-astronomical text profits for a chance to keep the market from slipping away completely.

"Workers Can't (or Won't) Escape From Their eMail," by Dennis McCafferty via Baseline.

Do you sometimes feel as if you're perpetually buried inside your inbox? Join the club. Despite the massive popularity of social media, we spend a staggering amount of hours sorting, reading and sending email, according to a recent survey from Mimecast. eMail isn't simply a person-to-person communications tool. It's also handy as a search engine and file-storage option, findings show. Sometimes, it's a viable alternative to in-person "face time" at the office, as four of 10 information professionals say they regularly send and receive work-related emails outside of normal hours, and one-quarter admit that they've sent emails late in the evening purely to "show commitment" to the job. "While email is not perfect, it seems that information workers are reluctant to adopt other social tools if it means they have to leave their inbox behind," says Peter Bauer, CEO and co-founder of Mimecast, a supplier of cloud-based email solutions. "Therefore, rather than trying to entice users away from email and on to other platforms, IT teams should introduce new, inbox-friendly collaboration tools and make the data stored within the archive more accessible." An estimated 2,500 information workers in the United States, United Kingdom and South Africa took part in the research.

Eleven slides with information such as 

• Employees spend an average of 888 hours/year on email.
• Nearly 90% rely on email to search for documents or information in their inbox. 
• A third of business users expects email and social media to converge within five years. 
• Three-quarters of workers prefer email to social media for sharing information. 

---

* See http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/04/facebook-messenger-android-sms-killer, 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/12/04/facebook-messenger-takes-on-sms-with-no-account-needed/, and 
http://gigaom.com/mobile/facebook-opens-up-messenger-app-to-non-facebook-users/.) 

Update on Monday, December 17, 2012 at 12:10PM by williamgarrity

 http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/cio-insights/email-middle-aged-and-still-going-strong/39749729 

Via TechRepublic: 

"Email: Middle aged and still going strong" 

By Monica Seeley 

December 17, 2012, 4:24 AM PST

Takeaway: Email celebrated its 41st birthday recently, yet despite its age new research shows that its use is unlikely to significantly wane for at least the next decade.

Email celebrated its 41st birthday a couple of months ago and amazingly how we use it remains largely unchanged. It still is basically a messaging system, pure and simple, devoid of feelings (unlike talking). What has changed is the volume, accessibility and how we have bent this simple messaging system to be a tool by which to manage, collaborate, negotiate, conduct illicit love affairs etc. For how much longer will email be around as the backbone of business communications?

Not surprisingly, with the emergence and exponential growth of social technologies many have already written email off. Indeed, how many other technological inventions have remained for forty plus years either unchanged or still in demand? PCs as we know them have been transformed. The last typewriter rolled of the production lines earlier this month and fax machines are becoming a rarity. Over the last six months our research firm has been reviewing the use of email compared to social technologies such as intranets, wikis and LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Our research focuses on their use for all forms of communications and information sharing, excluding marketing. We found that the volume and use of email and social technologies is rising, see below

Continued. . . 

Trends in Digital Sevices

Via Fast Company's Co.Design, Fjord's Olof Schybergson writes about "5 Trends That Will Shape Digital Services In 2013." (Fjord ". . . is a service design consultancy. We create useful, effective, and desirable digital services that people love.")

1. The "Personal Ecosystem" -- devices and sensors interconnecting to form a support network for their owner -- 2013 will begin the "battle for the wrist." 
2. K.I.S.S. -- "Keep It Simple, Stupid" -- always good advice. 
3. Access instead of ownership -- why have the hassle of owning a car, for instance, when companies like Zipcar can give you access to one when you need one? 
4. Contention about use of personal data. 
5. Personal shopping -- "A statistic to strike fear into the heart of any retailer: Almost half of U.S. smartphone users have used their devices in-store, and more than half of those have gone on to abandon their in-store purchase. For smartphone users, the distinction between online and in-store shopping has all but disappeared." 

Mary Meeker's "The State of the Web"

Via Business Insider's SAI (Silicon Alley Insider), Mary Meeker's annual report on "The State of the Web." 

Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker is doing a year-end presentation on the state of the web at Stanford tonight.

We have the slides of her presentation here.

As usual, it's a must read for anyone in the industry, or anyone with an interest in technology.

This update to Meeker's deck has new data, and new slides covering digital payments, education, and healthcare. There is also a new section on big data. 

I *highly* recommend this deck to you -- Meeker's reports are very, very useful to knowing the direction of our digital world. (Yeah, it's 89 slides, but well worth it.)