Smart Glasses

Tom Elgan provides an in-depth look at the impact smart glasses are having on business and education. He predicts these augmented reality devices, which display additional environmental information to the user, will transform our lives in future years.

-DD

Residual Learning Communities

Brian Mathews interviewed another faculty member at Virginia Tech about his use of Google Glass and his intention to use Google folders to establish residual learning communities . He quotes Ralph Hall on the concept of residual learning communities:

My vision is that once a student takes my course, she/he never leaves. It may take a while for the concept to take root, but I believe that students will like the idea of having a lifelong intellectual connection to their university. As they progress through their professional careers, my hope is that they re-engage with the course when they have something to contribute. This is actually a key point, students can disengage and re-engage by simply deciding whether to open a folder on their computer or look at what’s happening on the Google+ community. (Ralph Hall, 2014)

My thought is that lifelong mentors have been a reality in academic careers for thousands of years, so this concept involves new technology enabling distance relationships.

-DD

 

Google Glass, the User Experience

There are several user reviews of Google Glass on YouTube.
Warning: These videos are at least six minutes in length.

-DD

Augmented Reality

Colin Neagle expounds on "Augmented Reality: What do Businesses Need to Know?." Neagle provides examples of firms (Lego and Ikea) that are already deploying augmented reality technologies similar to Google Glass. They are being used to attract customers, to demonstrate how a project can be completed, and so forth.

Another form of augmented reality was explored by Zack Minors, who reports that at SXSW the "Beam [Mobile Robotic] Videoconferencing Device Takes a Spin." Minors reports that "on the exhibit hall's opening day, attendees were greeted by a talking monitor on wheels." Other firms such as Double Robotics and Mantarobot.

I believe a more primitive, less interactive version of robot technology was used by the Japanese to explore the radioactive Fukushima nuclear power plant. I can forsee that distant supervisors might rent such robots to conduct surprise inspections of distant facilities, creating a market for "robot rentals."

-DD

Google Vision is an experiment to povide a wearable computer interface.

-DD