Suggestions for Cutting-Edge Technology in Education?

[Wolfman]

Dear All:

I am soon going to be taking a new job here in China -- it is with an ambitious start-up company here (the CEO is one of China's education geniuses, who's started three education companies previously, all of which have been wildly successful).

It offers very high-end, premium education to high school students in China seeking to study in top universities overseas. The cost for three years (the final three years of high school) is around US$ 80,000. In return, they give the students access to private tutors of the highest caliber, personalized training programs, and all sorts of other stuff.

As an example: they have a high school student who some day wants to study law at Harvard. She's currently 16 years old. Besides all sorts of language training, they also arrange for her to travel to Hong Kong once every two months, and attend several criminal trials there, observing what goes on. When she returns to China, she will then meet with local legal professionals (lawyers, judges, etc.), who will explain to her what she saw, answer questions, and give her new targets to be aware of the next time she goes.

None of this is done in a traditional classroom environment; these students all attend regular high schools. The training this company gives is on top of their regular education, and since they are from widely scattered locations around China, most such education/training is either given in person, one-on-one...or is given via computer, the internet, etc.

High tech is the name of the game for this company. They seek the very best in computer-based language learning, for example. They are producing their own multi-media internet-ready hardware that students can use to access video lessons, and/or interact with other students in other cities.

My question for those of you here -- are any of you aware of or familiar with new hardware or software products that either are being used for education, or could be adapted for use in education? I'm seeking cutting-edge stuff, stuff that's either just hit the market, or might be hitting the market soon. Or stuff that may have been around for awhile, but is not well known or widely used.

I'm seeking anything...it can be related to any subject (or applicable to all subjects), from pretty much any source...and price is not a major issue.

If you were setting up a 'virtual classroom', with students scattered over a wide area; and if price was not an issue; what would you suggest as being the very best products/tools to best help your students? I'm not looking for stuff that you add just to make it look good; or stuff that you add just to make a profit; but stuff that would provide a real benefit (and preferably that not many other people are using, so it will give us a competitive edge).

Thanks for any help or suggestions in this matter.



This thread is being posted in both the Education and Computer forums, as I think that people from both may have good suggestions, but may not participate much in the other forum.

[Dancing David]

SMART boards are cool, but not new.

[theprestige]

I guess I don't understand: Is your job to help implement such technologies? If it is, wouldn't you have been hired because you're already a subject-matter expert, qualified to tell us about these things?

If not, wouldn't this company already have a whole department staffed by such experts, who already know far more than this entire board combined? Because that's the way it is at every other tech company I've ever worked for.

As for "just about to hit the market": Products in this category are more than likely going to be trade secrets and highly confidential. Anybody who had anything concretely useful to say about such products would probably be committing legal, regulatory, and ethical violations if they answered the question.

And anybody who doesn't probably won't be able to add anything substantial to the speculation already going on in your employer's department full of subject-matter experts. In fact, as a potential customer, they might have already been approached by pre-sales staff, and already know more about these products--through legal, ethical means--than anybody on this board. (Your employer could also be engaging in industrial espionage, with the same implications.)

As for products already on the market... they're already on the market. Have you considered WebEx? GoToMeeting? Any one of the many name-brand e-training companies, and the tools they've licensed? But this is all easy and obvious.

I think, whatever your employer is currently using, and whatever they're looking for, it'll have some basic characteristics: Its architecture will be client-server based. It will be distributed, leveraging peer-to-peer communications methods to improve communications and reduce demands on the central server infrastructure. It will be modular, comprising several disparate components for different roles, linked by standardized interfaces. It will be scalable, and cheap to scale. It will use COTS components. It will be hackable. Etc. But this is all pretty obvious.

Was there something specific you were looking for?

[Wolfman]

I guess I don't understand: Is your job to help implement such technologies? If it is, wouldn't you have been hired because you're already a subject-matter expert, qualified to tell us about these things?There are other people who focus on the tech stuff...but the are all Chinese, and while fairly good in tech, don't have much of an education background. They've actually already developed some tools, but I am looking for more ideas.

My job is on the client relations side...to work with clients to set up customized programs, based on their specific needs.

My request is based on the fact that I don't want to limit our possibilities only to what the Chinese tech people may think of...I wanted to see if other people have suggestions or ideas that we haven't thought of.

If not, wouldn't this company already have a whole department staffed by such experts, who already know far more than this entire board combined? Because that's the way it is at every other tech company I've ever worked for.Its that type of arrogance that would actually almost ensure a company's failure. Do I think our tech guys are qualified? Yes. Do I think they've got some great ideas and products? Yes. Do I think that they have thought of every possible product, every possible application, every possible tool?

Absolutely not. And anyone who conducts business with the type of attitude you expressed -- "Oh, we've got our experts, no need to ask anyone else for ideas or suggestions" -- shouldn't be doing business in the first place.

As for "just about to hit the market": Products in this category are more than likely going to be trade secrets and highly confidential. Anybody who had anything concretely useful to say about such products would probably be committing legal, regulatory, and ethical violations if they answered the question. Actually, a vast number of products are shown at tech fairs, or discussed in magazines and online journals, featuring information about prototype products not yet on the market. There's tons of stuff out there that isn't quite ready to go to market yet...but for which there's tons of information available. As I don't follow such things very closely, I know that there are others here who do -- it is their advice that I'm seeking.
And anybody who doesn't probably won't be able to add anything substantial to the speculation already going on in your employer's department full of subject-matter experts. In fact, as a potential customer, they might have already been approached by pre-sales staff, and already know more about these products--through legal, ethical means--than anybody on this board. (Your employer could also be engaging in industrial espionage, with the same implications.)Geez, let's go from pointless to ridiculous. Now we're involved in industrial espionage.

Dude, take a chill pill. I'm simply looking for people keep abreast of such information to give me suggestions as to things that they've heard of, that they think might be useful.

That's all.

As for products already on the market... they're already on the market. Have you considered WebEx? GoToMeeting? Any one of the many name-brand e-training companies, and the tools they've licensed? But this is all easy and obvious. Not only is it obvious, its also already outdated compared to the stuff we're looking at. Like I said in my OP, I'm looking either for stuff that is new, or that isn't well known.
I think, whatever your employer is currently using, and whatever they're looking for, it'll have some basic characteristics: Its architecture will be client-server based. It will be distributed, leveraging peer-to-peer communications methods to improve communications and reduce demands on the central server infrastructure. It will be modular, comprising several disparate components for different roles, linked by standardized interfaces. It will be scalable, and cheap to scale. It will use COTS components. It will be hackable. Etc. But this is all pretty obvious. Very little of this stuff is going to be web-based. It will be delivered with proprietary hardware, delivered wirelessly using products that incorporate mobile phone technology. Or it will be software (such as language-learning software) that is much too complex to be simply used in a browser.

My reactions to your post are quite mixed. It seems needlessly aggressive, and highlights some rather major misconceptions about both business and technology (that businesses with experts should not seek additional advice/information; or that new technology will be secret, and no information available about it). I appreciate that you did make some suggestions, of a kind, toward the end...but given the overall content of your post, I doubt that you're really the type of person that I'm looking for...you don't seem likely to know much about the subject than I do.

[Policenaut]

How about something like Microsoft's Surface (the multitouch table). It's a few years old though but that may be to it's benefit ie bugs ironed out and time for developers to create software for it.

[Wolfman]

How about something like Microsoft's Surface (the multitouch table). It's a few years old though but that may be to it's benefit ie bugs ironed out and time for developers to create software for it.
Thanks...yes, we're looking at products like that...but I'm also looking for what kinds of software we may be able to run on it, either software that's been developed specifically for education, or that could be adapted to education.

[Robo Sapien]

Just get them all iPads. (brought to you by the NWO)

[Wolfman]

I hope that this (from my other thread) helps clarify what is obviously a rather vague and poorly-worded OP.
Sorry, I wasn't clear enough.

We've already got a tech team who are designing a whole bunch of cool stuff. But they're all Chinese, with little opportunity to travel overseas to attend technology fairs, and who can't speak English (and read about new/upcoming products in English-language publications).

I was hoping that there might be some people here who are already involved in education, who've either used something that they thought was really great, or who've seen something that they would love to use.

Sorry I can't be any more specific than that...this is such a broad subject, I don't want to limit responses. All I can say is that we're generally not looking for web-based applications.

Designing a curriculum is part of it...but keep in mind that our students are going to be interested in a wide variety of majors, and we can't possibly design detailed curricula for all of them. What we're after is A) cool ways of delivering existing curricula to students who are spread over a wide area, B) learning tools (hardware or software) that make learning more interactive...not just reading content, but interacting both with the software, and with other students, C) hardware/software that is not content-specific (ie. specifically for geography), but rather that can be adapted for many different uses.

That being said, more specific applications (like software to help students learn English, or other languages) are also potential targets, so long as they'd be something that would be useful to a significant portion of students in our program.

Let me try to explain the vision:

10 students in 10 different cities sign up for our program. They're all given hardware that is kind of like a cross between a Kindle and an iPad. General lessons and curriculum are delivered to them in this manner. The hardware is also able to handle language software, including language recognition. It has a built-in webcam and microphone, so students can interact directly to teachers/consultants/students as needed.

Take learning English for example. Students use their built-in software to learn this week's lesson, not just listening or reading, but also reproducing specific passages, then having the speech recognition software point out mistakes in pronunciation, to help correct and improve them. Then once a week, the students have an "English contest", where they all connect at the same time, and are given specific tasks that are then evaluated by an online teacher/consultant.

We've already got much of this stuff, at least in prototype...I'm just wondering if other people have suggestions or ideas that could improve what we already offer.

[Robo Sapien]

Indecision? There's an app for that.

[Ducky]

Is there an abacus app? I bet that would really help with math.




(or you could just use a *********** abacus.)

[quixotecoyote]

I hope that this (from my other thread) helps clarify what is obviously a rather vague and poorly-worded OP.
You might want to consider asking the mods for a merge.

[Wolfman]

You might want to consider asking the mods for a merge.
Except that the people who frequent this forum and the education forum tend to be quite different...which is the reason I posted it in both :)

[Wudang]

Any use?
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/portal/value/learningaccelerator.html

[Wudang]

Education for a Smarter Planet: The Future of Learning CIO Report on Enabling Technologies (http://publib-b.boulder.ibm.com/abstracts/redp4564.html?Open)

[Wolfman]

Any use?
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/portal/value/learningaccelerator.htmlThis one, not so much...problem is that its mostly web-based, and thus subject to the potential danger that the Chinese gov't blocks access to it; we can't afford to have our entire learning model based on something that can be so easily disrupted.


Education for a Smarter Planet: The Future of Learning CIO Report on Enabling Technologies (http://publib-b.boulder.ibm.com/abstracts/redp4564.html?Open)
This is much more what I'm looking for...thanks, am gonna' read through it in detail :)