Higher Innovation

What I Learned @LAUSD Family Summit 2012: Estoy Aprendiendo Español

Cameron Evans — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:54:34 +0000

On May 5, 2012, I joined with my Microsoft colleagues to support Los Angeles Unified School District for their Family Summit 2012. This was amazing day to share about careers, entrepreneurship, and college. In the end, I walked away with some lessons learned for me.

The LAUSD Family Summit 2012 was held at the University of Southern California. Microsoft was sponsor of the event as a part of our Corporate Citizenship. We had a team from our Microsoft Store, our local LA offices, and members of our Worldwide Education team led by Anthony Salcito, Worldwide VP for Education.

Mónica García - School Board President Gives Impassionate Talk For Families

The Robotics First West Coast Finalists also were displaying their basketball playing autonomous vehicles. The beautiful USC campus and the broad portfolio of technology from Microsoft made this an exciting and immersive day for students, families, and educators. Thousands of families attended the Summit. While the focus was on pathways to college and career–it was clear that every family in attendance wanted a better life and brighter future for their children. I am fully convinced that it gets better and brighter for LAUSD and families across the nation.

My workshop presentation was the 2012 Edition of STEM:EARN. Both of the sessions were well-attended with families seeking insight into how science, technology, engineering, and math empowers students as entrepreneurs and career seekers.

Because of LA’s diverse population, we had an interpreter in every room with state-of-the-art translation gear. This was a tremendous benefit and made the workshops more accessible to everyone. In my first session, I had 100% English-language speakers. My second session was more diverse.

It was during my second session that I had an aha moment, my slides were designed to be presented to ann English-only audience. Even though we had an interpreter, I had prepared my workshop with only one audience in mind. While I was speaking and interacting with the parents and students, I was thinking about how my presentation would be perceived if they were in German or Hindi and my audience was Italian. I reflected on that dynamic for the remainder of weekend.

While we had addressed the language barrier with the great interpreters we had available; I felt a final barrier was still there for me to remove.

In considering my bride’s Mother’s Day gift, I made a decision to buy a Spanish language course. When I presented it to her, she immediately declared that we would learn a new language as a family. As of this writing, that journey has begun.

I thank the families of LAUSD. In the future, I will make the necessary investmentsto ensure that nothing is lost in translation. It is journey. With that in mind, I have used our Bing Translator to update my workshop deck.

You can learn more about the LAUSD Family Summit 2012 event at the Microsoft LA Blog.

Microsoft as a tremendous advocate and enabler of accessibility in technology. Visit the Microsoft Accessibility site to learn more.

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Celebrate National Robotics Week Apr 7-15, 2012

The Great Transition: Windows XP to Windows 8

Cameron Evans — Mon, 14 May 2012 02:47:28 +0000

In just under two years, the venerable Windows XP operating system will reach end of support on April 8, 2014. What should schools do to get ready for what’s next?

For over ten years, schools and universities around the world have been using Windows XP as the core operating system for the business of learning. Now, schools are grappling with multiple consumer trends impacting their future direction for teaching, learning, and instructional technology for professional faculty, for students, and the business administrators.

A quick revisitation of the most pertinent trends are appropriate:

The world has gone mobile: Consumers are purchasing mobile broadband devices at an exponential rate. As more individuals seek boundless computing and media consumption options, this trend line will be consistent well into the future.
Electronic texts is becoming mainstream: You cannot have an education conversation today without some time spent on ETEXTBOOKS. While ETEXT is not new; we have reached a point where the screen resolution rivals that of traditional printed books. Additionally, the cloud economy is providing an opportunity to rethink warehousing and distribution for students.
Broadband options abound: By the time we learn which telco carrier has the fastest 4G LTE network, the world will need to get ready for 4G LTE Advanced and Super Wi-fi. Suffice it to say, mobile broadband options are getting faster and more robust for high fidelity services.
We are all social butterflies to some degree: The wisdom of crowds is influencing how we work, collaborate, and make decisions. This is driving all apps, services, and devices to be inherently social.

Against this backdrop, Windows XP will reach its end-of-support; Windows Vista enters extended support; Windows 7 is getting its full stride; and Windows 8 begins its march to global debut.

So, the most frequently asked question is, “Do I wait for Windows 8 or continue with our Windows 7 deployments?” The second most frequently asked question is, “Do I retire Windows XP and move to adopt a mobile only platform?”

I will start with the first question. The answer is really simple, if you are on track for a Windows 7 deployment–continue the deployment as planned. There are a lot of great resources for migrating the Windows Client to current Windows operating systems on Springboard Series on TechNet.

The good news for Windows 7 deployment planners is that all of the work being done for Windows 7 will pay forward to Windows 8 in the future. None of the effort or investments will be lost.

The second question is more interesting–a mobile only OS. There are a lot of options on the market today. It seems that every ten years, there are a lot choices for operating systems and mobile devices. So what is different now.

Windows 8 is Windows reimagined. Part of that reimagination of Windows is making the operating system even more mobile by design. While Windows 7 is a great mobile OS today, Windows 8 takes what is great about Windows 7 and makes it even better. This is not news. The news was made at CES 2011 when Steven Sinofsky announced that Windows 8 would support system-on-a-chip devices. You can read my earlier remarks here.

Because of SOC architecture and support for ARM devices, Windows provides the first no-compromise operating system that is secure, robust, cloud-optimized, and inherently mobile.

So, should you wait for Windows 8? The answer to that question is highly dependent on the scenarios that you are seeking to enable. Windows 8 offers some exciting scenarios that I will talk about in June when the Windows 8 Release Preview is available. In the meantime, visit the Building Windows 8 blog for details.

If you are not familiar with what comes next in Windows 8, I highly encourage you to read the Windows 8 Consumer Preview product guides. There are three product guides for consumers, developers, and business. I really love the developer product guide because it gives a greater sense of what is possible in Windows 8. This is the best starting point to determine whether these new scenarios would be more beneficial if you wait or start a Windows 7 deployment plan now.

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview is still available. In early June 2012, the Windows 8 Release Preview will become available. The Release Preview is the near final preview before Windows 8 General Availability–which of course is at a date to be determined.

While the Windows 8 GA date is still a topic of speculation, the April 8, 2014 date for Windows XP End-of-Support is not. In a nutshell, fall 2012 is the last full school year for Windows XP in education. This summer is the time to start planning your Windows migration in earnest.

Questions for you:

What summer projects does your school or university have planned to get ready for Back-to-School 2012?

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Campus Inspiration from Retail Innovation

Cameron Evans — Fri, 04 May 2012 18:34:43 +0000

Could a connected retail shopping experience inspire schools to build holistic engagements for educators, students, and parents? Catch a glimpse of what is possible today.

Razorfish Connected Retail Experience Platform (codename “5D”) from Razorfish – Emerging Experiences on Vimeo.

There are two points that I want to highlight about this demonstration from Razorfish:

We are entering an age of multiple connected screens that can use computer vision and context to drive immersive engagement beyond the single device screen. Retailers, telecom/cable providers, consumer electronics manufacturers all understand this connected multi-screen world and we should consider this alternate perspective to think beyond bringing your own “device” (singular) to experiences that work across all of the Windows (pun intended) of our lives.
I eulogized the textbook last year. Since that time, I have been thinking about what comes next for the campus bookstore. Once colleges begin to recover shelf space from the printed page, new retail experiences should be considered to keep students practicising their custom in the bookstore. The Razorfish model is a glimpse of what is possible today–not ten years from now.

The video features a series retail experriences that are connected and personal. A lot of topics that I write about on Higher Innovation are promoted (e.g. mobile, natural user experiences, social, search, and more).

The questions for you:

What do you think it would take for classrooms to reset around a multiscreen world versus a single device construct?
If media/telco companies are building for shift to multiscreens, why are there so many articles still focus on a single device?
How many screens do you experience a single service on today?

I have more to write and research to share on this, but I wanted to get the conversation started now.

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Microsoft Research Mashup for Pictures and Video

Cameron Evans — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 23:13:58 +0000

Microsoft Research Cliplets is an interactive app that will that will let you create the newspaper images from Hogwarts’ Daily Prophet.

Credit: Harry Potter Wikia

Okay, maybe I used a little hyperbole in that introduction. However, when I first discovered MSR’s Cliplets–the images in the Daily Prophet came immediately to my mind.

Cliplets can be made with a handheld video camera. Try it out with your students or use it to showcase classroom projects on your school website.

A still photograph is a limited format for capturing moments that span an interval of time. Video is the traditional method for recording durations of time, but the subjective “moment” that one desires to capture is often lost in the chaos of shaky camerawork, irrelevant background clutter, and noise that dominates most casually recorded video clips.

Microsoft Research Cliplets is an interactive app that uses semi-automated methods to give users the power to create “cliplets”—a type of imagery that sits between stills and video from handheld videos. The tool provides a creative lens one can use to focus on important aspects of a moment by performing spatiotemporal compositing and editing on a video-clip input.

Things to remember: Cliplets is a research project. It is not a product. It is not supported by Microsoft Support…so there are no warranties or guarantees provided or expressed for its usage. If you need help, please visit the Microsoft Research Cliplets Support Forum.

If you choose to make Cliplets, post a comment below of where you published it online, so that I can view it.

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Get More Lync to Love

Cameron Evans — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:29:32 +0000

Across the nation, Microsoft Education has been sharing our excitement and real impact stories about Microsoft Lync in Education. Now, I want to share with you a few more things to love about Microsoft Lync.

Tabbed Conversations Add-In for Microsoft Lync 2010
Tabbed Conversations is an application that provides a tabbed Lync 2010 conversation window to allow multiple instant messaging (IM) conversations in a single window.

Information Dashboard Add-In for Microsoft Lync 2010
Information Dashboard helps you start a conversation with a remote contact by providing current information about the contact’s location. For example, if you are calling a co-worker or a student in Chicago, IL, you can open Information Dashboard and enter the location of Chicago before making the call.

Conversation Translator Add-In for Microsoft Lync 2010
Conversation Translator provides a real-time language translation service for Lync instant messaging (IM) conversations. With Conversation Translator, both the sender and receiver can converse in their native language, and Conversation Translator handles the translation.

Conversations Analyzer for Microsoft Lync 2010
Conversations Analyzer is an application that reviews your Microsoft Lync instant messaging (IM) conversation history and gives you scores for your use of trust-building language in day-to-day communications with business associates and friends. Conversations Analyzer applies trust rules to determine the occurrence of words and phrases that have a positive or negative effect on trust.

I think of all of these add-ins, I am most interested in the Conversations Analyzer. I believe with Covey that organizations move at the “speed of trust.” Electronic communications must enable and foster the building of trustworthy relationships as we become more mobile in our work and learning. I am hoping the Conversations Analyzer will allow me to check own language.

If you are using Lync, download the add-ins and let me know which one you found most useful. If your not using Lync, tell me why in the comments below.

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Celebrate National Robotics Week Apr 7-15, 2012

Cameron Evans — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 15:00:27 +0000

Consumer robotics may represent the next era in computer science and consumer electronics. This is the week to learn more about what’s next in Robotics.

National Robotics Week 2012
Movies have depicted our future with robotics through cinema history. Some of you may remember the robots from science fiction television series like Lost in Space or Star Trek: The Next Generation. There were also great movies like Star Wars, The Terminator, Short Circuit, and A.I. Highly advanced computers, robots, and androids have been common protagonists and antagonists in all entertainment genre. In the second decade of the 21st Century, we are ready to see science fiction become reality–well maybe not the Cyberdyne Systems T-800.

This year is the third annual celebration of National Robotics Week. It is a time to discover, learn, and build everything robotic. There are a number of robotics competitions happening around the world to engage learners and provide a venue to demonstrate their competence. Visit the National Robotics Week website to find learning resources and competitions.

Microsoft Robotics
At Microsoft. we are providing the tools for students, professionals, and hobbyists to get started in robotics with the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (RDS). The Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio is free .NET programming environment for building robotics applications. You can download the developer tools here to get started.

Now, with Kinect for Windows, students and hobbyists can build robotics applications that use sensors to see, hear, and respond to people, objects, and actions in the physical world. Watch the video below to see the new RDS reference design for building robotics with Kinect for Windows.

Video: Kinect Follow Me Robot

Have fun this week building the future. Let me know what was your favorite movie or TV show featuring a robots, advanced computers, androids, or artificial intelligence in the comments below.

Robotics References:
Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio

Kinect for Windows

Robotics@Home Competition Site

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Can eBooks Make Minority Students More Avid Readers?

Cameron Evans — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 22:30:42 +0000

A new report from Pew Research Center highlights “the rise of e-reading“ and the Americans who read electronically.

Only one of these students read an eBook last year.

This is a timely study as more schools and universities investigate how ETEXT can be a core component of next-generation learning.

PCs favored over Tablets
The report has many interesting findings:

Readers that are age 16 and older read on a wide range of devices. The lion’s share (42%) of those readers consumer their eBook on a PC. On surface, this is a surprising finding. However, when you consider that books are published in so many varied formats; reading on a PC makes sense because of the support for those varied formats. Furthermore, until there is some standardization across the market for publishing, the PC will most likely remain the most flexible consumption device. This is particularly true as the PC form factor continues to evolve in design, weight, and battery life.
More people read on a phone (29%) than a tablet computer(23%). So all of the schools buying tablets may be in a for surprise when results do not match their expectations. My eight year daughter told me that she preferred her Zune HD, Nintendo DS, and iPod Touch over her Windows tablet or iPad. Her reasoning should be obvious, the other three devices fit into her pocket. Cellphones share the same characteristics of portability and form factor as media players and handheld games. Her generation will be an important demographic to watch because her peers may share her preference to small screens versus tablets when the graduate high school at the end of this decade.
The demographic data on who is reading is telling. Full-time employees and households with low income state that they read less often or never for work or school. I found this important for high school and college students who work. ETEXTS may not be the ideal solution for this demographic and more importantly, it certainly should not be the only solution.

When investigating the reasons people read, pleasure top the charts. Reading for work or school was nearly a 50/50 split between those who did and those who did not.

Another Digital Divide
There were nearly 3000 survey respondents. I encourage you to dig deep into the data, especially on the demographics. The average number of books read last year by the respondents was 17. However, the demographic data highlights that there some clear socio-economic variances in the data. Both Black (12) and Hispanic (11) Americans read below the average of 17 than their White counterparts at 19 books read.

A fifth of Americans (18%) said they had not read a book in the past year. This group is more likely to be: male than female (23% vs. 14%), Hispanic than white or black (28% vs. 17% and 16%), age 65 or older (27%), lacking a high school diploma (34%), living in households earning less than $30,000 (26%), unemployed (22%), and residents of rural areas 25%. Those who did not read a book last year also tended not to be technology users.

There are clearly some Digital Divide issues permeating the report.

Literacy v. E-Literacy
While the data shows that those who read eBooks read more than their non-eBook counterparts; it does not suggest that because content is electronic that it will suddenly improve an appetite of or fluency in reading. Readers love to read, regardless of the medium.

If there is any major nugget that should come from this report, is that if we cannot kindle (no pun intended) a love for reading in students–technology alone will not do it. The Pew report found that 4 out of 5 Americans did not read an eBook last year.

Perhaps, we should take the time get literacy done right and let the E-literacy follow. If you think differently or agree, let me know in the comments below. After you have digested the report, I would love to know if your conclusions were different than mine.

Pew Research Center, “The rise of e-reading,” April 5, 2012.

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Seniors Groove With Kinect for XBOX 360

Cameron Evans — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:48:58 +0000

We have written a lot about this generation’s students getting immerse in Kinect. Now the seniors are taking their turn with Kinect for XBOX 360 for wellness and fun.

Read the full story at Microsoft News Center “Exergamers Wellness Club Uses Kinect and HealthVault to Enhance Seniors’ Well-being“

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Microsoft and GE Form New Health IT Company

Cameron Evans — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:39:43 +0000

Introducing Caradigm… a new kind of health IT company announced by GE Healthcare and Microsoft Corp.

Important news for our medical schools and universities. Learn more at the GE News Center.

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Why Windows is Expanding My Thinking on BYOD

Cameron Evans — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 17:00:55 +0000

Windows 7 made the solid foundation for building Windows 8. Now, Windows will expand your thinking about how to do Bring Your Own Device.

I have written about BYOD before. I continue to argue two principle points:

It is not the device that is mobile. It is you–the student, the educator, the administrator, the person.
In the near future, the ability to bring your own data will trump the device du jour circus.

I have yet to find a persuasive argument that runs counter to these two points. Though, they are open to constructive debate.

Coming soon to Microsoft Virtualization and Windows 8 are two technologies that caused me to ask: “Why are we still talking about devices at all?”

There is a really good reason that devices are still in the digital learning conversation, but I will get to that in a moment.

User Experience Virtualization (UE-V)
First, I have to say that UE-V is a really cool product name. It makes me think of Total Recall. In a way, that is not far from the truth.

Microsoft User Experience Virtualization (or UE-V) is a user state virtualization product that keeps users’ experience with them. It allows them choice to change their device and still keep their experience so that they do not have to reconfigure applications each time they login to a Windows 7 or Windows 8-based device. Regardless if it is a rich desktop or a VDI session, UE-V enables a consistent, personal Windows experience that matches their unique work style. You can read more at the Windows for Your Business Blog.

For schools that continue to provide Active Directory Domain credentials to students, especially in K12 schools, this prompts some great conversation on the student and educator experience. Regardless of whether the student’s or educator’s computing device is a mobile tablet, slate, Ultrabook, or lab PC; his or her’s own unique Windows desktop experience is as mobile as they are. Their apps and Windows configurations will travel with them. They can login to any Windows 7 or Windows 8-based device and it always looks like their own.

Last week, I shared this scenario with a group of education leaders in south Florida. Imagine a household that has two school age children–a forgetful junior, Jessica and a studious seventh-grader, Anthony. After cheerleading practice, Jessica left her mobile tablet in her girlfriend’s car and will not be able to get it until morning. Meanwhile, Jessica has homework that needs to get done tonight. She asks her eleven-year brother (he skipped a grade) if she could borrow his tablet after he is done with his homework. Anthony feels pity for Jessica and loans her his tablet. When Jessica logins, all of her apps, including the apps she uses at high school that her brother does not use load for her. Jessica gets her work done and logs out. When Anthony logs back in to his tablet, he only see his apps and not Jessica’s apps or user experience.

The scenario is meaningful because of two things: Firstly, kids do forget things and leave them in places they should not. Secondly and lastly, this is a scenario that is only possible with Windows 7 and Windows 8-based devices. Other consumer tablets do not allow for this scenario.

In fact, the most common Terms and Conditions and privacy policies for consumer tablets only allow for changing the registered device user once every 90-days. In that scenario, Anthony could not use his tablet for 90-days after Jessica made it her own. For perspective, school is only in session 180-days. That means you may be able to be forgetful once in a school year with non-Windows devices.

You are reading this and you are thinking, that is something to seriously think about. The user experience should follow the “user”, not the device. If you build an experience that works better for people than machines, you are more likely to get people to love using the machines that enable those experiences.

If this has you needing more information, then the first half of my mission is accomplished. Go to the UE-V site, www.microsoft.com/getuev and sign-up for the Public Beta. You can start evaluating this new technology in your school or university today.

Windows to Go
When I first saw Windows 8 Consumer Preview of Windows To Go, I thought are you kidding me? If I were writing a dictionary entry of BYOD for Oxford English Dictionary, I would append it to include Bring Your Own USB Drive with Windows 8. This is one of those must-see features to believe. Windows To Go is a full-version of Windows 8 running on a USB Drive using the hardware of any x86 machine for compute, memory, and display.

Take the previous Jessica and Anthony scenario. That works really great when Jessica and Anthony are on the same district network. However, let us change the scenario to now, Jessica is staying at her aunt’s house for the evening to visit with her cousin Christine. Jessica takes her Windows To Go USB Drive with Windows 8 and plugs it into her aunt’s corporate-managed, Windows XP notebook PC. Jessica boots directly to her personal Windows 8 user experience without ever loading her aunt’s veneral desktop operating system. She logs into the school network and gets all of her homework done and stores the documents on either her Windows To Go USB, SkyDrive, or Office 365 account. No policy or data changes happen to her aunt’s notebook PC.

The Windows To Go feature of Windows 8 expands the landscape of compute devices available and expands the mobile computing options for education institutions. You can learn more about the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and the Windows To Go feature here.

Do Devices Still Matter?
In both of the aforementioned scenarios, I wanted to highlight something that can be easily overlooked. The economics of BYOD are different at all schools and households. The User Experience Virtualization allows more flexibility when you have a single device in a home or fewer devices than children. A personalized experience is still achievable without the inflexibility of consumer electronics device privacy policies or the cost of procurement and maintenance of a device per student. With Windows To Go, students carry their entire Windows-based academic world on a USB key fob. They can securely boot Windows almost anywhere they can find a current x86 PC with an available USB port. USB Drives are radically less expensive than mobile PCs. When we reduce the load of student backpacks, you cannot get much lighter than a USB Drive or UE-V.

So, yes, devices do matter. They just do not matter in the context of one device to rule them all. Devices are endpoints that enhance the user experience based on the capabilities of the hardware and its ability to use great software and services to full advantage. In learning environments, there will always be a need for different devices with different configurations for learning goals and objectives. Students and educators need the ability for their experience to be as mobile as they are across a world of connected devices and services.

With Windows 7, we began the advocacy of a life without walls. As long as your current and future devices are running Windows, you will not have to worry about artificial walls limiting your choice or options.

Let me know if this gave you some new thinking regarding BYOD or not in the comments below.

Links to visit
Windows for Your Business Blog has great insights on Windows for enterprise customers.

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