In a typical college classroom or study area, displays and TVs have replaced whiteboards and markers as the easiest way for students and professors to share information and collaborate with each other. For a long time, these displays were wired to desks or perhaps a podium at the center of a room. Anyone wishing to share something from a laptop or device had to connect to the display from that one position in the room.
But increasingly, colleges are beginning to experiment with wireless display technology that allows professors and instructors to walk around freely with their devices and lets students share videos and projects with the rest of the class.
If you think about it, this is really just the next logical step. Smartphones and tablets have become so common on campuses that we don?t think twice about seeing students operating one or more devices. Wireless display technology is simply capitalizing on the fact that students and professors have their projects and data on hand, and want to be able to share them quickly and easily.
Wireless display technology offers plenty of benefits that help simplify and enhance the learning experience. WiDi technology eliminates the need for cables, and allows students and instructors to move freely, or stay exactly where they are. There?s no need to change seats or exchange one laptop for another. This in turn reduces expenses for cabling and switch equipment.
But one of the real benefits of WiDi technology is that it improves collaboration and makes it easier than ever for students to share videos, pictures, presentations, and any other information critical to their studies. This is important in the classroom, but other areas like libraries and study rooms can benefit from the same technology. Students gathering together to study can easily compare notes, watch presentations, or collaborate on group projects?without the hassle of constant plugging and unplugging from wired displays. It even gives students and instructors the convenience of dual-screen multitasking. They can now stream a video from their smartphone, and while it?s playing, open email or search the internet.
With WiDi technology, colleges and universities can add another component to the technological innovations that are driving education. At N2N, we understand the complex relationship between technology and the higher education world. More technology can certainly be a boon for colleges, but it can also create problems as more and more apps and systems are added each year. That?s why we?ve created the N2N Integration Cloud specifically for higher education institutions. The NIC integrates all your existing apps and systems, and acts a translator, providing seamless and secure data transfers across all systems. Adding new apps is easy, and the NIC can be scaled up or down depending on the needs of your particular institution.
If you?d like to learn more about the NIC and the intersection of technology and education, contact N2N Services today.
Ask just about any college student what bothers them about their classes, and you?re sure to hear about their textbooks. It?s easy to see why. College textbooks can be incredibly expensive. Some books cost hundreds of dollars, and just one semester?s worth can easily run over a thousand dollars. Books can be bought used, but publishers change editions regularly, making an old textbook a hassle to use. In many cases, students are allowed to rent textbooks, and return them at the end of the semester, but this isn?t always an option, and most students don?t get away unscathed by the prices at the start of each semester.
Many students complain that they bought a book that they hardly used in class, and this leads to college students waiting to buy their books until they?re sure they need them?and already behind in the class. So where do digital textbooks fit into all of this? At first glance, they seem like the ideal solution, but let?s take a closer look and explore the pros and cons of the digital textbook revolution.
Pros
Digital textbooks allow for an interactive learning experience. Many companies offer links to videos and unique source material, and even interactive diagrams and quizzes.
Digital textbooks are also easy to use. Instead of flipping through a four hundred-page book, students can use search features to quickly find what they?re looking for.
They also add the benefit of superior portability. Carrying around four massive textbooks is now as easy as sticking your iPad in your backpack.
One of the most talked about aspects of digital textbooks is the pricing. You might think that digital versions of textbooks would be much cheaper?after all there is no cost for printing or shipping?but unfortunately this isn?t always the case. Combined with the cost of the tablet or e-reader, the price difference can end up being a wash.
Cons
Interactivity is great, but not all digital textbooks come with these features. Some are simply page scans, and many students still prefer books that allow you to use ?cognitive mapping??developing cues to remember where you saw the information in the first place.
Reading on a tablet is also fraught with potential distractions for students. That same tablet holds all their apps and social media that many students prefer not to be tempted by.
It seems that some students also just like the physical aspect of books. Being able to highlight and write directly on paper is preferable for some, and reading on e-readers can interfere with intuitive navigation of the text.
Lastly, while it?s relatively hard to steal a mammoth print textbook from the bookstore, digital piracy of textbooks is a growing concern for publishers. With prices as high as they currently are, it can be tempting for students to illegally download their textbooks.
At N2N, we understand the complex relationship between technology and education, and we?re here to help your institution innovate and flourish. If you?d like to learn more about how Illuminate can push data to mobile devices, dashboards and wearables, contact N2N Services today.
In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, Joe Peppard argues that executives get the IT they deserve. Peppard compares the relative ease and simplicity of digital services in these executives personal lives to the complicated nature of digital services in the corporate world.
This is because in the corporate world, there is a good chance that every software application is going to have to work in sync with several others. Information has to be shared across platforms and systems if there you are going to have a successful IT department. Peppard uses the analogy of traveling to a different city to see a band. For each portion of your trip, flight, hotel, and concert ticket, you would have to enter your personal information and credit card information separately. The systems don’t share your information, and so you’re forced to complete the same forms multiple times.
“Operating this way today is a big no-no in the corporate world. Imagine if your company?s internal applications couldn’t share data and processes carrying out similar functions or tasks, had different interfaces and screen layouts, and required different passwords. Just think of the inefficiencies and opportunities for errors,” Peppard writes.
It’s true. If you can’t share information securely, you’re going to have an incredibly frustrating and inefficient system that limits what you and your users can accomplish. In an environment with many different systems processing sensitive data, such as a college, it’s imperative that that data is shared in a simple and secure manner.
At N2N, we understand the need for safe and seamless data transfers between software applications and systems. That’s why we’ve created an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) software suite, the Illuminate platform, which is designed specifically for the world of higher education. A college or university has a myriad of applications and systems that students and faculty access every day. Keeping all of these applications working together and sharing data flawlessly is a huge task, but one made easy with Illuminate.
The designers of the Illuminate platform understand that there is no one-size-fits-all fix for integrating the diverse set of applications that exist on every college campus today. Illuminate takes the applications and systems that fit a college’s specific needs and integrates them via on central hub: the Enterprise Service Bus.
The Enterprise Service Bus is an architecture that allows many different applications to run together as part of one infrastructure. It integrates these applications, manages access to them, and presents them in one interface. With Illuminate, students can check grades, view financial aid status, and perform other previously time-consuming tasks right from their mobile device. On your end, Illuminate’s cloud-based format helps keep costs low and provides you with the ability to analyze data more efficiently, leaving you with the resources you need to make good decisions about business and your students’ educations.
If you think your college could benefit from the Illuminate platform and our team of dedicated professionals, contact N2N Integration today.
Fitbit for learning, anyone? Imagine a targeted alert system where the student is personally notified when an assignment is due, or when grades have been posted, or when the next big game is scheduled? Imagine a targeted notification system when, for example, the balance on student’s meal plan is under threshold?
SaaSification of education
Most edtech companies will be working on plans to convert?their on-premise/hosted solution to a SaaS model during the year 2016. This trend will continue this year and probably reach a feverish pace during the year 2017.
Personalized learning pathways
Competency Based Education, Game Based Learning and other personalized learning pathways will become mainstream and will continue to transform learning technologies this year.
Future of education, powered by?Integration
At N2N, we are committed to transforming education by solving the systemic integration issues at the core of administrative information systems. N2N’s Integration Platform (now called “Illuminate“) is at the core of our offering to support the future of education. During year 2015, we have entered into?following strategic collaborations to support educational institutions and leading edtech companies
During the year 2016, we are looking to transform learning by deploying our real-time, bi-directional APIs (http://illuminateapp.com/apis/sdoc.jsp) at educational institutions.
Powered by N2N’s API Management platform, N2N’s standardized, student information APIs can be used by educational institutions to achieve the following strategic objectives
Share?Student Data with SaaS providers in a secure fashion using turnkey APIs
Expose Student Data to Wearable, mobile and other devices to send targeted alerts and notifications
Synchronize Student Data between SIS and other third-party applications in a real-time fashion
Summary
N2N has been a strong proponent of collaboration and we have partnered with over 60 educational institutions and several edtech vendors over the years. We will continue this pursuit during the year 2016 to support the future of learning.
Join us to reimagine education during the year 2016.?
Educause recently published their Research Snapshot, Top 10 IT Issues 2016. We?d like to give you N2N?s perspective on some of these important issues, and our thoughts on how our Illuminate platform can help institutions address these areas.
First on the list is Information Security. This is a perennial concern, and is an area that has consistently, and justifiably, been a top issue for IT leaders. Concern is needed, as our interconnected world opens many avenues for malfeasance. N2N?s Illuminate platform can be an asset here, as one of its core value propositions is to make it easier for users to manage data interconnections between applications. Having a central platform with controls for data exchange and logging of transactions helps users understand where and to whom data is moving.
Educause states that technology leaders must work with academic leadership and faculty to Optimize Educational Technology. That is certainly true, and especially so in today?s fast-moving world where an institution?s perceived competitiveness can be tied to its ability to seamlessly integrate its administrative and academic technologies. N2N?s Illuminate platform has out-of-the-box adapters for many popular ed-tech (educational technology) applications, and also creates application programming interfaces to institutional data that can be leveraged by in-house developers.
Student Success Technologies are critical to improve educational outcomes. Leveraging technology means sharing data, and unfortunately, much institutional data is stuck in its own silo, and each time it needs to be provided to a new, innovative application, a customized interface must be written and maintained. N2N?s Illuminate addresses this by leveraging its core Enterprise Service Bus technology to convert a complex web of interconnections and a ?one-to-one? integration philosophy to a ?one-to-many? paradigm, helping an institution to be nimble in its use of changing tools.
Enterprise Application Integrations (#8)?are a key to efficient and effective institutional operations, and are the core value proposition of the N2N Illuminate platform. The Illuminate platform?s ready-to-use adapters for common educational enterprise applications makes it easy to connect legacy systems to its Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). This ?one-to-many? connectivity model allows technical staff to focus on areas where they add unique value to their organization rather than continually building and maintaining a mesh of ?one-off? connections.
At N2N, our motto is “connect anything to anything,” and we are constantly leading the pack when it comes to higher education systems integration. Providing colleges and universities with a solution that interconnects their disparate data systems has always been our goal, and we’ve developed our Integration Cloud platform, called Illuminate, to do just that. Illuminate takes each data source and integrates them securely and affordably. But we want to keep pushing the boundaries of what our technology can do for higher education. We want to extend this data connectivity with a rich, in-depth, and interactive mobile application.
That’s why we’ve teamed up with Modo Labs. Together, we intend to provide a truly stunning mobile solution that allows students to connect to their financial data, course work, grades, and other information, while at the same time empowering them to interact with their teachers, advisors, tutors, and other campus activities. This innovative new platform is the product of collaboration between our Illuminate date engine and Modo Lab’s Kurogo, a mobile app assembly platform.
So who are Modo Labs, and why is this partnership so transformative for higher
education? Based out of Cambridge, MA, Modo Labs provides a complete mobile solution that empowers ordinary people to create their own applications. These types of mobile capabilities used to only be the domain of mobile developers and expensive consultants. Now, Modo Labs Kurogo Platform gives non-developers an outstanding app assembly system with powerful mobile implementation and development capabilities. The secret is in Kurogo’s combination of data access, pre-built functionality, and ease of use. Today, creating mobile apps for campus is no longer out of reach for non-technical staff or business owners.
And how does this platform fit in with N2N’s Illuminate data engine? Well, the combination of the two allows a massive simplification in the mobile app building process. Illuminate integrates and allows access to the multitude of different data sources in a university system, while Kurogo quickly and easily mobilizes them into a well-developed mobile experience.
Stewart Elliot, Modo Labs CEO said, “We are excited to partner with N2N Services. The combination of the two platforms makes it easier than ever for Universities to provide the comprehensive mobile experience that students expect. Students will be able to easily accomplish even more important tasks on their mobile phones, including the ability to perform direct transactions in virtually any student information system, such as class registration, yet do so as part of an advanced, interactive and rich mobile experience.”
This combination of higher education technology is a major development for colleges and universities around the country. At N2N, we understand the importance of easy-to-use technology in campus life. Today’s students are used to instant access and in-depth mobile apps. Our partnership with Modo Labs provides these institutions with the best of both worlds: secure enterprise data access, and an unsurpassed front-end mobile experience.
If you would like to hear more about our partnership with Modo Labs, and how your college can benefit, contact N2N Services today.
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SaaSification of education
