BOSTON USA has been selected as the official site for the Immersive Education Initiative's inaugural BLOCKCHAIN IN EDUCATION SUMMIT (iED 2018), which will convene November 30th and December 1st.
All keynote talks will be open to the public free of charge.
Teachers, faculty and researchers interested in presenting at the conference are encouraged to respond to the corresponding Call for Participation (CfP).
Building on the success of the previous 12 years of Immersive Education (iED) conferences, the prestigious international conference series convenes the world's leading educational technology and blockchain experts in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 30 and December 1 to: 1) Address the emerging role of blockchain technology in the fields of education and training, and 2) Examine the role and impact of academic and corporate research on blockchain technologies and standards.
Speakers at previous Immersive Education Initiative conferences ("iED Summits") have included faculty, researchers, graduate students, administrators and executives from the world's leading academic and cultural organizations, universities, and companies, such as United Nations, NASA, United States Department of Education, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), MIT Media Lab, Microsoft, Google, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Smithsonian Institution, United States Department of the Interior (DOI) National Park Service (NPS), Stanford University, USC, UCLA, Keio University (Japan), INDIRE (Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research institute), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italian National Research Council), Intel, Università degli Studi di Padova (University of Padua, Italy), University of St Andrews (UK), University of Glasgow (UK), Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), National University of Singapore (NUS), University of Barcelona (Spain), Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (India), Technion Israel Institute of Technology (Israel), University of São Paulo (Brazil), and many other world-class organizations and academic institutions.
Bring it home! A personal Immersive Education (iED) Google Cardboard VR headset is available during registration to all attendees. Bring your iED VR headset home after the conference so that you can relive the memories that you capture in VR, and also so that you can enjoy thousands of new and emerging VR experiences free of charge once you get home. See the Google Cardboard Virtual Reality hands-on workshop below for more details.
Boston is one of the oldest cities in the United States, founded in 1630 by Puritan settlers from England. Boston's many colleges and universities make it an international center of higher education, including law, medicine, engineering, and business. Boston is considered to be a world leader in innovation and entrepreneurship, with nearly 2,000 start-up companies. Boston's economic base includes finance, professional and business services, biotechnology, information technology, and government activities.
Immersive Education Initiative Director Aaron E. Walsh
Immersive Education Initiative founding Director and Boston College professor Aaron E. Walsh opens the inaugural Blockchain in Education Summit with an introduction to blockchains, cryptocurrency and tokens—in the context of teaching and learning—while addressing the following topics:
The "tokenization" of education
Knowledge Token (Knowken) digital incentive and reward tokens for education and informal learning activities
Posting and securing grades, diplomas, certifications, credentials and other learner data on blockchains
Trends in teaching blockchain concepts from K-12 through Higher Education
Blockchain research projects in Higher Education
Director Walsh manages the international Immersive Education Initiative's blockchain research, design and development activities and teaches blockchain and cryptocurrency fundamentals, especially as these technologies relate to the field of education, in his Future Technology and Collaborative Computing courses at Boston College.
Walsh established the field of Immersive Education in the 1990s and is today the founding Director of the Immersive Education Initiative, a non-profit international consortium of universities, colleges, research institutes, consortia and companies that work together to define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems (i.e., virtual worlds, learning games and serious games, augmented reality, mixed reality and full immersion).
Thousands of faculty, researchers, staff and administrators are members of the Immersive Education Initiative, who together service millions of students worldwide. The world's leading experts in immersive teaching, training and learning convene annually at global and regional Summits instituted by Walsh.
Walsh has been featured in a number of leading technology and mainstream publications, including Newsweek and Newsweek International, for his work in international technology standards and Immersive Education.
He was recently interviewed by BBC World News and Larry King, and has been featured by both Entrepreneur magazine and CBS Interactive's business technology news service.
A biography describing how Walsh pioneered the field of Immersive Education appeared in Computer World's The Grill and as a cover story by Campus Technology.
In the 1990s Walsh coined the term "Immersive Education" and established the field of Immersive Education. In 2006 he received the Teaching with New Media (TWIN) award receiving highest honors in the competition for pioneering the use of Immersive Education at Boston College.
The award was presented to Walsh at a ceremony to honor exemplary uses of technology in teaching. He later coined the term "Immersive Illness" to describe issues such as addiction, alienation, and mental schisms related to the use of immersive technology in the age of Immersive Education.
Walsh has been named one of the 40 most innovative people in the Information Technology (IT) industry by Computerworld, the premier source of news and analysis for the IT industry.
He received the prestigious national award in recognition for his pioneering work on Immersive Education, which was recognized as "...innovative, promising technology which holds the potential to significantly affect society in the near future."
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Alex "Sandy" Pentland will deliver the opening keynote for the inaugural Blockchain in Education Summit. Pentland directs the MIT Connection Science and Human Dynamics labs and previously helped create and direct the MIT Media Lab (Cambridge, MA) and the Media Lab Asia (India).
During his opening keynote address Prof. Pentland will describe the work of his MIT research group, the Trust::Data Consortium, and how it enables richer, more personalized learning without endangering personal privacy.
The mission of the Trust::Data Consortium is to create open source tools and services that foster the development of a secure internet-based network of trusted data. Evolving from the 25-year history of MIT Kerberos in MIT's famous Project Athena, the Trust::Data Consortium continues the MIT tradition of solving difficult problems facing society today and in the future, and providing open source solutions, free to the world.
Dr. Pentland is one of the most-cited scientists in the world, and Forbes recently declared him one of the "7 most powerful data scientists in the world" along with Google founders and the Chief Technical Officer of the United States.
He has received numerous awards and prizes such as the McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review, the 40th Anniversary of the Internet from DARPA, and the Brandeis Award.
Dr. Pentland is a founding member of advisory boards for Google, AT&T, Nissan, and the United Nations Secretary General. A serial entrepreneur, he has co-founded more than a dozen companies including social enterprises such as the Data Transparency Lab, the Harvard-ODI-MIT DataPop Alliance and the Institute for Data Driven Design. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and a leader within the World Economic Forum.
Over the years Pentland has advised more than 60 PhD students. Almost half are now tenured faculty at leading institutions, with another one-quarter leading industry research groups and a final quarter founders of their own companies.
Pentland's research group and entrepreneurship program have spun off more than 30 companies to date, three of which are publicly listed and several that serve millions of poor in Africa and South Asia.
Recent spin-offs have been featured in publications such as the Economist and the New York Times, as well as winning a variety of prizes from international development organizations.
Pentland is a world-renowned pioneer in computational social science, organizational engineering, wearable computing (Google Glass), image understanding, and modern biometrics. His research has been featured in Nature, Science, and Harvard Business Review, as well as being the focus of TV features on BBC World News, Discover and Science channels. His most recent books are 'Social Physics,' published by Penguin Press, and 'Honest Signals', published by MIT Press.
What are the privacy concerns relating to blockchains?
How can schools and companies maintain privacy when using blockchains?
About the Moderator
Smith is an accomplished trial attorney who helps clients protect and defend their inventions in complex intellectual property litigation.
Technology companies of all sizes, from Fortune 50 companies to start-ups, have relied on him to manage their most sensitive intellectual property matters. He has represented entities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Bose, Evoqua, Webasto, Sartorius, UPPAbaby and Foursquare Labs in intellectual property litigation throughout the country and the world.
Smith has handled matters before federal district courts and appellate courts, as well as the International Trade Commission (ITC). He also handles post-grant review proceedings before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, including inter partes review and reexaminations.
Craig has been named a "Super Lawyer" by Thomson Reuters,and an "IP Star" by Managing Intellectual Property Magazine. Craig was included in the IAM Patent 1000 Massachusetts Super Lawyers, and The Best Lawyers in America: The World's Leading Patent Practitioners.
Pros & Cons: Blockchains in Education, Government and Business
The inaugural Blockchain in Education Summit features a panel discussion focused on the pros and cons of blockchain technology in education, government and business.
About the Moderator
Thomas Shola, Cyber Security Officer for John Hancock, is responsible for the development, execution and oversight of all John Hancock Retirement Plan Services risk management and information security activities, with an emphasis on cyber security and continuous improvement of the technical aspects of risk management and security posture.
Thom has more than 31 years of experience in the financial services industry. He holds certifications in Lean Six Sigma, Third Party Risk Professional and Certified Information Systems Security Professional.
Prior to joining John Hancock, Thom was with Santander Bank from 2013 to 2017 as Head of Event Escalation & Policy Assurance, Operational Risk Management. Prior to Santander he worked at the Royal Bank of Scotland as Head of Americas Fraud Operations.
Google Cardboard is a Virtual Reality (VR) platform developed by Google for use with a fold-out cardboard viewer (headset) into which a mobile phone is placed. Intended as a low-cost system to encourage interest and development in VR and VR applications, Cardboard is used extensively by learners of all ages in Immersive Education Initiative clubs, camps and classes.
This "Creating Mobile Virtual Reality (VR) Experiences" hands-on workshop will guide you through the process of creating 360° panoramic scenes, which are ideal for virtual tours and immersive school lessons, using your iPhone or Android phone. After you create your 360° panoramic scenes anyone with an iPhone, iPad or Android phone or tablet can experience them. Attendees with an iED VR Headset (available at the time of conference registration) will also be able to experience their creations in VR.
During this hands-on workshop attendees will learn how to use and create mobile VR experiences using their own Android phone or iPhone.
Workshop participants will receive Knowledge Token (Knowken) digital tokens as a reward for completing workshop learning activities. Participants will also learn first-hand how schools in the United States, Italy, and Australia are integrating Knowledge Token incentives and rewards into existing and entirely new curricular activities. Knowkens may be used to pay for conferences, training and certification programs, camps, clubs, Minecraft accounts & servers, and Virtual Reality (VR) headsets, 360 degree VR cameras, VR and gaming graphics cards (GPUs), and more.
Bring it home! A personal Immersive Education (iED) Google Cardboard VR headset is available during registration to all attendees. Bring your iED VR headset home after the conference so that you can relive the memories that you capture in VR, and also so that you can enjoy thousands of new and emerging VR experiences free of charge once you get home. See the Google Cardboard Virtual Reality hands-on workshop below for more details.
TEACHERS and RESEARCHERS: Attend this hands-on VR workshop to learn how you and your students can participate in United States government national projects such as the Immersive Bent's Fort project, the New Mexico Arts & Culture projects, or start a national project of your own.
College and high school students in Colorado enjoy Virtual Reality (VR) re-creations of the historic trading fort that they are standing in alongside park rangers from the United States Department of the Interior National Park Service. Attend this hands-on VR workshop to learn how you and your students can participate in United States government national projects such as the Immersive Bent's Fort project, the New Mexico Arts & Culture projects, or start a national project of your own.
Minecraft is an "open sandbox game" that revolves around the deceptively simple concept of breaking and placing blocks in a virtual world. When Minecraft was first released in 2011 most players spent the majority of their time building structures, such as houses and castles, to protect themselves against monsters that come out at night. But in time players began working together to create wonderfully complex and imaginative worlds and digital machines.
An official Immersive Education Creative Computing platform, Minecraft enables new forms of learning for a new generation of learners and is used around the world by learners of all ages (from primary school all the way through college and university students).
In the hands of a certified instructor, Minecraft is a powerful and compelling educational technology that immerses learners in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEAM), in addition to Art, & Architecture, Culture and History.
Immersive Education Minecraft classes, clubs and camps teach learners of all ages how to think logically and solve problems scientifically while creatively expressing themselves through 3D artistry, engineering and programming. An optional "3D Printing" module lets students to print out their creations so that they can actually hold their creations in their hands.
Minecraft can be considered to be a highly sophisticated immersive alternative to Legos that includes circuits, levers, switches, pistons, sensors, repeaters, and comparators. Your imagination is the only limit to what you can build with Minecraft.
Following are just a few of the many creations that have been built with Minecraft:
Historical buildings, cities and famous works of art
Mechanical computers based on MIT textbook schematics
Arithmetic Logic Units (ALUs) based on MIT textbook schematics
Rube Goldberg machines
Electrical circuits
Standard, scientific and graphing calculators
Roller coasters, elevators and drawbridges
Spacecraft (such as space shuttles and rockets)
Museums and libraries
Replicas of sculptures and other works of arts
Original works of art
Sensors and traps
Jukeboxes, music players and music machines
Painting and drawing games
TEACHERS and RESEARCHERS: Attend this hands-on Minecraft workshop to learn how you and your students can participate in United States government national projects such as the Immersive Bent's Fort project, the New Mexico Arts & Culture projects, or start a national project of your own.
Denver television news interviews college and high school students in Colorado as they reconstruct historic Bent's Old Fort in Minecraft as part of a new national arts, culture and history project. Attend this hands-on Minecraft workshop to learn how you and your students can participate in United States government national projects such as the Immersive Bent's Fort project, the New Mexico Arts & Culture projects, or start a national project of your own.
Coding to Develop Creativity, Systematic Reasoning, Collaboration
Coding (programming) is the new literacy, and is today considered by many to be as important as reading and writing. But until recently, coding has been notoriously difficult to learn. Thanks to Scratch, however, coding is now easy and accessible to everyone.
Scratch is a free programming language, content authoring tool and online community where learners of all ages (especially children and adults who are new to coding/programming) can create their own interactive stories, games, and animations.
Developed by the MIT Media Lab, Scratch has a proven history of teaching learners mathematical and computational concepts while they learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively in a fun and exciting manner.
The educational value of Scratch extends beyond providing an easy and interesting introduction to programming. Using Scratch students also have the opportunity to learn about information and communications technology (ICT), cause and effect, project planning, digital media and interactive media.
BRING YOUR OWN DEVICE: Scratch 3, the brand-new version of Scratch currently in beta release, is the version used in this hands-on workshop. Scratch 3 can run on modern tablets and computers. Please note that devices are not provided to attendees.
Pokémon Go is the world's first truly mass-market mainstream application of Augmented Reality (AR), and one of the most successful games in history. It is, in fact, one of the most wildly popular apps ever created and is played daily by millions of people around the globe.
You'll be among the first in the world to learn first-hand how the Pokémon Go phenomenon can be harnessed for education and business.
During this hands-on workshop you will have the option of playing Pokémon Go or simply watching others play (if you'd prefer not to play it yourself). Either way, you'll also be taught the fundamentals of playing Pokémon Go on your mobile phone.
This Pokémon Go workshop addresses the following topics:
Pokémon Go for Teachers and Education
Pokémon Go for Business and Marketing
Child-safety: Criminal Elements & Physical Safety
Legal issues with Pokémon Go and other forms of Augmented Reality (AR)
Pokémon Go for Student and Employee Engagement
Pokémon Go for Team Building and Relationship Building
Pokémon Go for Exercise and Socialization
Pokémon Go for Geography, Spatial Awareness and Map-reading
Pokémon Go as a Resource Management Simulator
Pokémon Go for Teaching Math, Estimation and Conversions
Incorporating Pokémon Go into Curricula and Lesson Plans
Inquiry-based learning (IBL) with Pokémon Go
Project-based learning (PBL) with Pokémon Go
Attendees of Immersive Itay 2017 and the 7th European Immersive Education Summit (EiED 2017) socialize and discuss potential collaborations as they play Pokémon Go in the streets of Lucca, Italy, applying the skills they learned moments earlier in the corresponding Pokémon Go workshop.
Location-based Learning Experiences with the Tapple
Platform
Tapple is a new mobile multimedia content platform that allows anyone to easily assemble video, image,
audio and text content into cohesive, professional, mobile-first presentations and deliver that
content to an audience via QR Code, NFC Chip, and/or geographic location. Tapple is used
primarily to allow objects, locations and events to tell a story and provide rich sources of information when no one is available to assist personally.
Tapple is unique in that the service is available to consumers without the need to download a
special app or create an account. All that is needed to access content on the Tapple platform is
a personal Internet-connected device, such as a phone or tablet, with a web browser.
This hands-on workshop and social event that will introduce participants to the full feature set of the Tapple platform and present the wide variety of ways it can be deployed in educational environments.
Workshop participants will create their own digital experiences and have the opportunity to participate in educational scavenger hunts that demonstrate the platform's ability to deliver location-specific content and questions, collect responses, track attendance, and distribute Knowledge Token (Knowken) digital tokens as a reward for completing corresponding learning activities.
Participants will learn first-hand how schools in the United States, Italy, and Australia are integrating Knowledge Token incentives and rewards into existing and entirely new curricular activities. Knowkens may be used to pay for conferences, training and certification programs, camps, clubs, Minecraft accounts & servers, and Virtual Reality (VR) headsets, 360 degree VR cameras, VR and gaming graphics cards (GPUs), and more.
BRING YOUR OWN DEVICE AND HEADSET: Participants in this workshop should bring their personal mobile device (iPhone or Android phone) and a set of headphones (or earbuds). Please note that devices are not provided to attendees.
About the Immersive Education Initiative
The Immersive Education Initiative is a non-profit international collaboration of educational institutions, research institutes, museums, consortia and companies. The Initiative was established in 2005 with the mission to define and develop standards, best practices, technology platforms, training and education programs, and communities of support for virtual worlds, Virtual Reality, augmented and mixed reality, simulations, game-based learning and training systems, immersive teaching and immersive learning systems, and fully immersive environments such as caves and domes.
Thousands of faculty, researchers, staff and administrators are members of the Immersive Education Initiative, who together service millions of academic and corporate learners worldwide.
Chapters support the rapid and continued growth of Immersive Education throughout the world, and constitute the geographically distributed structure of the organization through which regional and local members are supported and enriched. Chapters organize officially sanctioned Summits, Days, workshops, collaborations, seminars, lectures, forums, meetings, public service events and activities, technical groups, technical work items, research, and related activities.
About Immersive Education Summits
Immersive Education (iED) Summits are official Immersive Education Initiative conferences organized for educators, researchers, administrators, business leaders and the general public. iED Summits consist of presentations, panel discussions, break-out sessions, demos and workshops that provide attendees with an in-depth overview of immersion and the technologies that enable immersion. iED Summits feature new and emerging virtual worlds, game-based learning and training systems, simulations, mixed/augmented reality, fully immersive environments, immersive learning and training platforms, cutting-edge research from around the world, and related tools, techniques, technologies, standards and best practices.
Speakers at iED Summits have included faculty, researchers, staff, administrators and professionals from Boston College, Harvard University (Harvard Graduate School of Education, Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, and Harvard Kennedy School of Government), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), MIT Media Lab, The Smithsonian Institution, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Federation of American Scientists (FAS), United States Department of Education, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), United States Department of the Interior (DOI) National Park Service, Temple University, Rice University, Stanford University, Internet 2, Cornell University, Loyola Marymount University, Southeast Kansas Education Service Center, Kauffman Foundation, Amherst College, Boston Library Consortium, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Stratasys Ltd., Duke University, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Turner Broadcasting, Open Wonderland Foundation, Gates Planetarium, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, University of Maryland College Park, UCLA, USC, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Halliburton Company, Oracle, Computerworld, The MOFET Institute (Israel), Technion Israel Institute of Technology (Israel), Keio University (Japan), Chukyo TV Broadcasting Company (Japan), Nikko Telecommunications Company (Japan), National University of Singapore (NUS), Open University (UK), University of Glasgow (UK), Coventry University (UK), University of St Andrews (UK), Giunti Labs (Italy) and European Learning Industry Group, University of Barcelona (Spain), Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain), University of Oulu (Finland), Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (EnsAD; France), Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (Israel), Graz University of Technology (Austria), University of West of Scotland (UK), University of Essex (UK), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), University of Vienna (Austria), Government of New South Wales (Australia), Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem (Hungary), Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS; Brazil), Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (India), and many more world-class organizations.
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