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User Acceptance of Augmented Remote Sign Language Interpreting
User Acceptance of Augmented Remote Sign Language Interpreting
Helen NB from the AI/ advice team shared this article with me, as someone who is hard of hearing myself I have been keeping a keen eye on the use of AR glasses to support accessibility for Deaf/ deaf/ HoH users. The results seem promising in that AR could enhance/ improve remote sign language interpreting. But I'm not sure we are there yet with the technology, there were issues with the internet connection, battery life, and getting it set up and connected which limit its benefit as a handy/ on-the-go solution. I'd be interested in seeing how this space develops as the technology advances to lighter glasses with longer battery life though (such as the new Meta glasses).
#XR#accessibility
Kathryn-Woodhead·dl.acm.org·
User Acceptance of Augmented Remote Sign Language Interpreting
Extremely offline: what happened when a Pacific island was cut off from the internet | Samanth Subramanian
Extremely offline: what happened when a Pacific island was cut off from the internet | Samanth Subramanian
A pretty sobering look at what happened to a nation that lost its internet connection after a natural disaster took out it's sub-sea cables. The bit that stands out for me is that it's not just a case of losing internet and having to go back to pre-internet communications; it's that so much has been built around internet access, Tonga ended up going back almost to pre-telecomms technology days. Sobering, in a "it could happen to anyone" sort of way!
chrisbthomson·theguardian.com·
Extremely offline: what happened when a Pacific island was cut off from the internet | Samanth Subramanian
Techno-solutionism in education - Education Technology Society
Techno-solutionism in education - Education Technology Society
I'm a big Neil Selwyn fan and as I'm currently reading his latest book 'Digital Degrowth, I was thrilled to be able to geek out on this podcast deep dive in to techno-solutionism. This concept is expertly defined in the first couple of minutes and develops in to a thought-provoking and engaging discussion.
#Digital Sustainability#technosolutionism
·buzzsprout.com·
Techno-solutionism in education - Education Technology Society
Is the UK government getting too close to Big Tech?
Is the UK government getting too close to Big Tech?

I read this article from The Week with interest. The UK government has signed a major AI deal with Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia, securing billions in investment. This deepens UK dependence on US tech firms, raising concerns about digital sovereignty and environmental impact. For education, could this be a wake-up call to critically evaluate platform reliance and safeguard ethical data use?

#Digital Sustainability#Big Tech
·theweek.com·
Is the UK government getting too close to Big Tech?
Wait... Smart Glasses are Suddenly Good? - YouTube
Wait... Smart Glasses are Suddenly Good? - YouTube
Marquess Brownlee's analysis of the new Meta product. There are some really interesting affordances (live captioning and translation, maps...). The technology looks like a step forward in augmented reality technology but as he says, this system is locked into the dubious Meta ecosystem. Given teh physically intimate nature of the device. would you trust a corporation like Meta with treat data?
#XR#devices#tools#platforms#privacy#safeguarding#wearables
chrisbthomson·youtube.com·
Wait... Smart Glasses are Suddenly Good? - YouTube
Saying Goodbye to VLEs We Have Loved – a Moodle Story – Digital Learning Applications and Media
Saying Goodbye to VLEs We Have Loved – a Moodle Story – Digital Learning Applications and Media
I loved this fond farewell to Moodle from the Digital Learning team at University of Edinburgh. As a former student user myself, the mix of data and reflections made a great story and highlighted how VLE changes are very much about how people feel as well as functionality. Farewell Edinburgh Moodle!
·blogs.ed.ac.uk·
Saying Goodbye to VLEs We Have Loved – a Moodle Story – Digital Learning Applications and Media
Beyond the Technology: digital storytelling and assessment - Jisc
Beyond the Technology: digital storytelling and assessment - Jisc
My interview with Teti Dragas from Durham Uni and Richard Beggs from Ulster Uni about the uses of Digital Storytelling for assessment. For me the most interesting parts were about the pedagogies of human connection that it helps facilitate and how it's not something limited to humanities. Storytelling has a strong role in STEM too!
#digital storytelling#assessment#digital pedagogy
chrisbthomson·jisc.ac.uk·
Beyond the Technology: digital storytelling and assessment - Jisc
Reality check
Reality check
This thorough report on the state of the immersive tech industry is aimed at people with an interest in regulation, there are some important messages about adoption of XR and the state of investment which have implications for education. It's a long document but the Exec Summary is a good reflection of the whole.
We find, however, that the adoption of immersive technologies today is most significantly characterised by niche use cases, rather than by widely adopted general-purpose use cases.
Many of these use cases take place in high-impact industries, augment safety-critical tasks and overlap with vulnerable groups, such as children and people receiving mental health care. These factors create significant potential for risk.
There are limited consumer applications,4 and the applications that do exist are not offering enough added value to compel people to replace traditional technology with immersive technology products.5
Their use is isolated, characterised by applications that give people extra things to do rather than making existing day-to-day activities easier.
usability difficulties (e.g. set-up difficulty) and difficulty in integrating these technologies into social contexts.
Accessibility issues with immersive technology products15 mean that people with physical disabilities may not be able to use them effectively without additional adaptive technologies.1
Venture capital and start-up funding has decreased significantly,
anti-competitive market practices and the concentration of biometric data driven by the ‘loss leader’ data business models of big technology companies,
these may change in the future
Against the backdrop of the mass release of AI foundation models and generative AI products such as OpenAI’s GPT-426 in 2022, the immersive technology market seems to have slowed down, particularly for VR.
‘I think [Facebook], especially after the election, had just a terrible brand name and that’s why they had to rebrand themselves.’109
funding rounds for start-ups related to AR/VR and IVWs dropped by over 90 per cent, and total start-up funding fell by more than half between 2022 and 2023.115
For broad-scale adoption to occur, the technology must move beyond niche adoption and be widely utilised within the target market, not just by early adopters.
#XR#ed tech#digital media#ed tech AI#learning spaces#investment
chrisbthomson·adalovelaceinstitute.org·
Reality check
The first multi-university group arrives
The first multi-university group arrives
This maybe the first of many mergers in HE to come. Not strictly a digital practice issue but it might have implications for things like shared platforms and digital services. There's a lot that the FE experience can teach HE here, I think.
#leadership
chrisbthomson·wonkhe.com·
The first multi-university group arrives
Greenwich and Kent announce merger to form 'super-university'
Greenwich and Kent announce merger to form 'super-university'
Interesting that the OfS anticipates that we could see more of this in the short term as financial constraints on HE continue to bite.
Office for Students (OfS), England's higher education regulator, welcomed the move and suggested more universities may explore similar options as they battle economic challenges, with 40% of English universities now believed to be in financial deficit.
#HE
srhibberson·bbc.co.uk·
Greenwich and Kent announce merger to form 'super-university'
Just How Bad Would an AI Bubble Be?
Just How Bad Would an AI Bubble Be?
evidence is piling up that AI is failing to deliver in the real world. The tech giants pouring the most money into AI are nowhere close to recouping their investments. Research suggests that the companies trying to incorporate AI have seen virtually no impact on their bottom line. And economists looking for evidence of AI-replaced job displacement have mostly come up empty.
One participant later described the process  as the “digital equivalent of shoulder-surfing an overconfident junior developer.”
And the study focused on expert developers, whereas the biggest productivity gains could come from enhancing—or replacing—the capabilities of less experienced workers.
When researchers at MIT recently tracked the results of 300 publicly disclosed AI initiatives, they found that 95 percent of projects failed to deliver any boost to profits.
Gartner, a tech-consulting firm, recently declared that AI has entered the “trough of disillusionment” phase of technological development.
The dominant view within the industry is that it is only a matter of time before companies find the next way to supercharge AI progress. That could turn out to be true, but it is far from guaranteed.
enerative AI would not be the first tech fad to experience a wave of excessive hype. What makes the current situation distinctive is that AI appears to be propping up something like the entire U.S. economy.
By one estimate, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Tesla will by the end of this year have collectively spent $560 billion on AI-related capital expenditures since the beginning of 2024 and have brought in just $35 billion in AI-related revenue.
But there’s also a weirder, in-between possibility. Even if AI tools don’t increase productivity, the hype surrounding them could push businesses to keep expanding their use anyway.
chrisbthomson·theatlantic.com·
Just How Bad Would an AI Bubble Be?