Google Glass

Photo Credit:  Ted Eytan

ATSU and I will soon officially join the ranks of Google Glass Explorers.  I found out I was fortunate enough to have my proposal selected by MOREnet to get an invitation to the second round of this project.  MOREnet was looking for "highly motivated people" within the MOREnet membership who can contribute and share ideas on how Google Glass might be used to improve teaching and learning. I'm pretty excited to be able to participate.

For those of you not so tuned into the tech world, Google Glass is a very ambitious project from Google to develop wearable computers in the form of eyeglasses.  The initial group of beta testers, affectionately known as Glass Explorers, started back in February 2013.  Approximately 8000 people shelled out $1500 to try these miniature computers on your face. The original group was heavily weighed toward developers. The thinking was that developers could help expand the number of applications before additional rounds of testers had a chance to try the product.  This next round of invitations is thought to be significantly greater in number than the original 8000 and Google is expected to be ready to roll out the first widely available consumer version sometime in 2014.

To be selected for the explorers program requires a willingness to share thoughts and ideas about how this type of device can improve people's lives.  My list includes a variety of use cases.I'll share a couple now and others as I get to better know the capabilities and limitations of the device.

There were two use cases I submitted in my proposal to MOREnet.  First is a project that was suggested by KCOM OMM staff and academic technologies staff.  The idea is to record the delivery of OMM through a first person view using the video camera in glass.  The hope would be that this view would make it easier for students to see the hand and finger positions, and any movement during techniques.  An similar but alternative idea is to have students wear the Google Glass and use it to record their execution of various OMM techniques.  Faculty could then view the recordings and provide feedback.  The second use case is very similar tho the first.  In this case however, Glass would be used by Dental faculty and/or students.  The goals of the two use cases would be similar; namely improving existing instructional video and providing more detailed feedback to students.

I am very excited to experience Glass first hand and investigate its applications to healthcare education and even to administration process improvement.  As a true believer in technology, this is an exciting start to a whole new world of wearable technology.  Stay tuned for more.

Forecasting for 2013

Happy New Year!!

The new year is a good time to practice prognostication, so here are a few thoughts on concepts, tools and topics that I believe will be important to the world of technology over the next year.

1) Enterprise Social Networking - Social Networking tools and concepts have matured quite a lot over the past couple of years.  The practice of social networking, however, is still heavily rooted within the consumer  side of technology.  While there are a few notable organizations that have adopted internal social networking tools, I believe that 2013 will be a watershed year for enterprises to grasp the power of using social network tools to enhance workplace productivity.  Get your business profile posted soon.

2) Windows 8 - Desktop operating systems are no longer hyped in the press as they once were, but the reality is that most organizations still rely on the desktop computer as the primary tool for getting work done. Microsoft has invested a ton of resources in trying to consolidate the next generation operating between desktop, tablet and smart phone devices, and Windows 8 is at the core of this effort.  No doubt that tablets and other mobile devices will continue to sell more and desktops will shrink, but in 2013 I still believe a large portion of high end workers will be experimenting with and adopting Windows 8 on their desktops.  I'm not, however, as confident that this desktop experimentation will carry over to Microsoft's mobile device operating systems.  I'm watching Microsoft this year as an indicator of broader shifts in the overall OS marketplace... or perhaps a better term would be Ecosystem.

3) Analytics - Data will soon (if it is not already) be considered a commodity.  Everyone will have it, but not everyone will be creative and pro-active in turning it into actionable information.  Using data may sound simple, but it is deceptively difficult.  There is a steep learning curve to filtering, massaging, and formatting data to make it useful.  Analytics tools will help this process along, but human skills will need to expand faster to keep up.

Twelve months is a good time frame for these types of trends to play out.  We'll come back in a year and see how deeply these concepts have changed the organizational and technology landscapes.