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Forest Hill

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Happy Friday!

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Cheryl happy place

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Hello there!

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Sibit and Bennington Here

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Hi everyone

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W. Noland.   Woo! Woo!

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I want to grow up and be like Larry

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Tech is everything.

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Hey..

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Glad to be here!

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Dobby The Free House Elf

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Happy New Year to everyone!

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Can't wait to learn more tech tools!

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UGH

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Hatton CLC

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Deb Musiek

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Dyan- Marcie really rocks! Thanks for the stickers!

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Dyan- Marcie really rocks! Thanks for the stickers!

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Adam and Carolyn

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Sarah Core

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Kristen Booth is here:)

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What the next generation looks like..

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INDE - One of the world's top Augmented Reality companies

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INDE is one of the world's leading Augmented Reality companies, specialising in Large-screen and Mobile AR development for Entertainment, Education and Marketing.

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Not your grandfather's medical student...

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Not your grandfather's medical student...

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The future of medical education is Here!😎🙀😀

#AR #VR #IoT # #edtech #education #innovation #VirtualReality #AugmentedReality #MR #MixedReality #UserExperience #CustomerExperience #CX #UX
#HealthTech #Biotechnology #tech #innovation #anatomy #Medical

CC:@q_worldeconomic

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The future of medical education is Here!😎🙀😀

#AR #VR #IoT # #edtech #education #innovation #VirtualReality #AugmentedReality #MR #MixedReality #UserExperience #CustomerExperience #CX #UX
#HealthTech #Biotechnology #tech #innovation #anatomy #Medical

CC:@q_worldeconomic https://t.co/wBrteIO5o8

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The future of medical education is Here!😎🙀😀#AR #VR #IoT # #edtech #education #innovation #VirtualReality #AugmentedReality #MR #MixedReality #UserExperience #CustomerExperience #CX #UX#HealthTech #Biotechnology #tech #innovation #anatomy #Medical

CC:@q_worldeconomic pic.twitter.com/wBrteIO5o8
— FUSE / NEW MEDIA (@FUSEnewMedia) January 17, 2018

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The future of medical education is Here!😎🙀😀

#AR #VR #IoT # #edtech #education #innovation #VirtualReality #AugmentedReality #MR #MixedReality #UserExperience #CustomerExperience #CX #UX
#HealthTech #Biotechnology #tech #innovation #anatomy #Medical

CC:@q_worldeconomic https://t.co/wBrteIO5o8

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
The future of medical education is Here!😎🙀😀

#AR #VR #IoT # #edtech #education #innovation #VirtualReality #AugmentedReality #MR #MixedReality #UserExperience #CustomerExperience #CX #UX
#HealthTech #Biotechnology #tech #innovation #anatomy #Medical

CC:@q_worldeconomic https://t.co/wBrteIO5o8

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
The future of medical education is Here!😎🙀😀

#AR #VR #IoT # #edtech #education #innovation #VirtualReality #AugmentedReality #MR #MixedReality #UserExperience #CustomerExperience #CX #UX
#HealthTech #Biotechnology #tech #innovation #anatomy #Medical

CC:@q_worldeconomic

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KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

A good baby gift idea is to record some friends reading their favorite children's books. Or you could have some of the biggest names in rap and hip-hop do it.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

First you need a good beat.

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE CRUZ SHOW")

LUDACRIS: (Rapping) Hey, llama llama red pajama reads a story - with who? - with his mama. Hey...

SIEGEL: That is Ludacris with his interpretation of the book "Llama Llama Red Pajama."

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE CRUZ SHOW")

LUDACRIS: (Rapping) Llama llama - what? - red pajama feels alone - with who? - without his mama.

MCEVERS: The video of "Llama Llama" as a rap is the latest video to go viral. It has more than one and a half million views on YouTube. You can thank J Cruz for these moments. He is the host of "The Cruz Show" on Power 106. That's a big hip-hop station here in Los Angeles.

SIEGEL: Cruz told us he was in a Barnes and Noble last year - he was going to be a dad soon - and the book caught his eye.

J CRUZ: I got to reading it and it kind of rhymed. And I kind of started like, llama llama red pajama went downstairs with his mama. OK. And I'm kind of reading it as the way an artist would read it, or at least I was trying. And then we thought, man, this would be very cool if we had artists reading it with a beat under them.

MCEVERS: So he asked the rapper Jeezy to give it a try.

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE CRUZ SHOW")

CRUZ: If we throw on a beat, can you read this?

JEEZY: No, I don't think I want to.

CRUZ: Why not?

JEEZY: I don't want to do...

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: For his kid.

JEEZY: (Unintelligible) Check it out though.

CRUZ: Come on, it's for my kid, Jeezy.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: He's going to play it for him. Uh-oh.

JEEZY: (Rapping) Mama kisses the baby hairs on the llama, goes downstairs.

MCEVERS: After that, other guests on "The Cruz Show" really started to get into it. There was D.R.A.M.

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE CRUZ SHOW")

D.R.A.M.: (Rapping) I said mama kisses baby's hair, Mama Llama goes downstairs. Llama llama red pajama calls down to llama mama, mama says she'll be up soon. Baby llama hums a tune.

SIEGEL: I like that one. Migos took it in a different direction.

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE CRUZ SHOW")

UNIDENTIFIED RAPPER #1: (Rapping) Llama llama waiting, waiting...

UNIDENTIFIED RAPPER #2: (Rapping) Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED RAPPER #1: (Rapping) ...For his mama.

UNIDENTIFIED RAPPER #3: (Rapping) Hey.

UNIDENTIFIED RAPPER #1: (Rapping) What's he waiting for?

UNIDENTIFIED RAPPER #2: (Rapping) Mama.

UNIDENTIFIED RAPPER #1: (Rapping) Yeah, coming. Yeah, baby llama.

MCEVERS: J Cruz says he thinks there's a reason people love the videos.

CRUZ: You know, it shows that they're human. It shows that they like to have fun. And it just shows a different side of them.

SIEGEL: Cruz told us - and this is an exclusive - that he intends on asking artists to rap and sing other "Llama Llama" books, and one day he plans on giving the recordings to his son Cameron, who's now two months old.

MCEVERS: The author of the "Llama Llama" series, Anna Dewdney, died last September at the age of 50, just before this became a thing.

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE CRUZ SHOW")

LUDACRIS: (Rapping) Baby llama, it wants a drink. Mama's at the kitchen - what? - the kitchen sink. I'm talking...

SIEGEL: Her partner, Reed Duncan, told us in a statement that Anna would be a bit incredulous that Ludacris and other hip-hop artists have freestyled her work, but she would definitely love it. He adds that she was actually a fan of Ludacris and that the hip-hop versions highlight her superior sense of rhythm and word flow.

MCEVERS: He ended his statement with this - Anna Dewdney represent, yo. So, Robert, what about you? Do you want to do a version?

SIEGEL: Do a public radio version, perhaps?

MCEVERS: Yeah, please. Yeah. Yeah.

SIEGEL: Yama (ph) yama red pajama reportedly reads a story with his mama.

MCEVERS: That's awesome.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

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Hip-Hop Artists Rap Beloved Children's Book 'Llama Llama Red Pajama'

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KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: A good baby gift idea is to record some friends reading their favorite children's books. Or you could have some of the biggest names in rap and hip-hop do it. ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: First you need a good beat.

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The developer behind an upcoming VR adventure game, about a mouse which can use sign language, has been 'blown away' by the positive feedback from the gaming community.

Moss is an action-adventure puzzle game that takes classic components of proven game design - compelling characters, fluid combat, captivating locations - and brings them together with the exciting opportunities of virtual reality. The result is a fully interactive and immersive experience set in an engaging fantasy world.

The protagonist's name is Quill, a young mouse who dreams of adventure beyond the confines of her quiet little town. As her ally on the adventure that unfolds within Moss, players have to guide Quill directly through the use of the analog stick and face buttons - directly manipulating the world around you as a character/guide in her world.

Richard Lico, animation director at Polyarc Games, talked about Moss and the decision to include sign language as a method of communication within the game.

"But we want Quill to be a living, breathing character who is more than just an avatar for the player. So we decided that Quill should sometimes act as an autonomous agent. She may decide to help you with a puzzle if she sees that you're stuck.

"Some way to ground her more in reality. Choosing sign language accomplishes this goal, while also benefiting a drastically underrepresented section of gamers. It'll be used in simple ways, mainly to convey gameplay or emotional states. The story of Moss will be told via other means, and not through Quill's use of ASL, so people who don't know sign language need not worry."

Richard, who lives in Redmond, Washington, also said that gamers shouldn't be surprised to see both VR and non VR developers working on future titles that include more sign language.

"I can't speak for the industry, but I can say that developers are clever folk who are passionate about their trade, and want to make games that players connect with. I'd be surprised if we don't see more sign language represented in gaming over the next few years."

"It's because we're passionate about developing characters that emotionally resonate with people. This is my first official time directing animation. So having this kind of reaction means the world to me. And I hope we can continue to support, include, and entertain our players when Moss is released this winter."

"Quill's so easy to work with, making my job of bringing her to life a joy."

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How a video game about a mouse that can do sign language will capture your heart

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The developer behind an upcoming VR adventure game, about a mouse which can use sign language, has been 'blown away' by the positive feedback from the gaming community. Moss is an action-adventure puzzle game that takes classic components of proven game design - compelling characters, fluid combat, captivating locations - and brings them together with the exciting opportunities of virtual reality.

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Hour of Code

This year, we're taking Hour of Code to new heights by offering coding opportunities that encompass both artificial intelligence (AI) and non-AI components.

Want to keep learning? Go beyond an hour

Teachers: Host an hour or read the How-To Guide

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Use computer science to explore and learn about AI!

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Problem Solving with Literature and Science 

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Problem Solving with Literature and Science 

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Russ Gossett for MindShift

Many elementary school teachers love to teach reading and writing, but are less comfortable with science and math. It's not a hard and fast truth, of course, but learning to read is a big focus of the early school years, so it makes sense that teachers who gravitate toward elementary school like teaching literacy. But it's also important to expose kids to science early and get them excited about the practices that define scientific inquiry. And literature may be the perfect starting point. Stories are full of tension, conflict and dilemmas that make wonderful departure points for engineering projects that weave subjects together.

Researchers at Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach partnered with teachers to design a program they call Novel Engineering, which plays on the literary strengths of elementary school teachers to help them explore hands-on science-oriented activities in their classrooms. Teachers pick a book with tension in it to read, but stop halfway to ask students to generate a list of problems the character is facing. Then students split off into pairs to design, prototype, test and iterate on solutions to their chosen problem.

'They went through three or four different designs to find something that worked well.' Martin Daignault, Fourth-grade teacher, Massachusetts

Martin Daignault's fourth-grade class at Winthrop School in Massachusetts tried Novel Engineering in one of the first weeks of class with Kate DiCamillo's book, The Tiger Rising. The story revolves around a boy who finds a caged tiger in the woods near his house. When the class stopped to identify problems, one boy noted that he wanted to give the tiger more freedom, but he also realized that if the tiger were free it would not only endanger the community, but that very freedom would also put the tiger at risk. During the design and engineering time, he built a leash system for the tiger.

Later, when the class finished the story, it turned out this student had correctly predicted what would happen to the tiger a hundred pages before it did. "I think he felt tremendous pride," Daignault said of the student, who happened to have difficulty reading. All Daignault knew about the student at this point in the year was that he had an Individual Education Program (IEP) and struggled with reading, but after this activity he saw what a deep thinker the kid was, too. That helped set them on a positive course for the rest of the year.

Brainstorming a list of problems in the book helped all students to read the text more deeply and got them excited to try to solve the issues they generated themselves. "Every person in the room had different takes on the big important parts of a story," Daignault said, and the activity set a tone of exploration, deep reading and hands-on play for the rest of the year.

"We all agreed it was time well spent," Daignault said of the team of fourth-grade teachers who have been working together to use Novel Engineering to deepen and extend their experience with practices in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). There's no extra time in the school year, so the week that Alicia Thomas, Gretchen Marinopoulos, Katie Norris, Robbyn Wile and Daignault spent with their classes reading, discussing, brainstorming, designing, problem-solving, testing and designing again was precious.

Designing a program that wouldn't be an add-on to what teachers are already doing, but that would offer opportunities for them to experiment with interdisciplinary learning, was a goal for the Tufts staff designing Novel Engineering. Originally intended for third through fifth grade, staff now work with K-8 teachers and don't see why it can't work with high school as well.

"We really wanted to make sure it was flexible and it was based on books teachers were already using in the classroom," said Elissa Milto, the program manager and a former classroom teacher. She understands teachers aren't looking for a whole new curriculum, but that they do appreciate ideas that can be flexibly used within their existing standards.

"It's really focused on the students' ideas rather than the teacher coming up with the problem they're going to solve," Milto said. This part is crucial because it not only requires students to read and understand the book deeply, but it builds their interest and motivation for the project. Teachers also encourage students to look to the text to guide their design choices so that they make something the specific characters would use.

In Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, for example, Peter's younger brother, Fudge, is always annoying him. At one point the 3-year-old messes with Peter's turtle, but their Mom says Peter can't lock the door to his room. Students might see keeping the turtle safe from Fudge as the problem, but they have to develop a system to do so without keeping the little boy out. In one class Milto observed, the students designed a pulley system that could raise and lower the turtle out of Fudge's reach.

Novel Engineering is meant to be accessible to any classroom, regardless of materials, so often students are only building prototypes of their solutions, not life-size pulleys. However, Milto stresses that the solutions should be functional, not representational, and there should be a way to test if the prototype works. So, for example, does the cardboard and rope contraption hold the weight of a turtle?

"We don't want it to be a craft project," Milto said. The goal is to use literature as a way for teachers and students to get their feet wet with engineering cycles and concepts, as well as to offer authentic entry points to discussions of required science content. In one classroom Milto worked in, a group of students realized packing foam floated. That led to a whole class discussion of buoyancy and things that float or sink.

"The open-endedness is more scary to teachers than the engineering part," Milto said.

She has observed that when teachers are less comfortable with a subject, they naturally tend to try to control the activities around it more. So when students pick the problem they work on and the materials they use - and not every student is working on the same problem or using the same materials - it can be a little scary at first.

"They really have to let themselves be open to their kids and the kids' ideas," she said. "They don't need to be responsible for everything." Her team tries to help ease teachers into that mindset by having them do their own design challenge in professional development. When they experience the process they are often more open to leading it themselves.
PITFALLS TO WATCH OUT FOR 1. Kids are used to looking for a right answer
While kids often love the freedom of Novel Engineering when they get the hang of it, there's also a learning curve. Milto recommends that teachers start with a picture book so that they can go through the process quickly once as a group. Often student designs aren't very functional at first, so picking one problem to work on as a group gives the opportunity to model critiquing a first iteration, problem-solving through any issues, and easing students into an activity that may feel strange to them at first. It also gives teachers a chance to practice facilitation before setting students loose on their own projects.
2. A mid-design share out is very important
While it's easy to focus on the final presentation, incorporating a chance for students to get feedback from peers on their designs is often the most important part of the experience. Sometimes kids commit to an idea early and have a hard time changing direction without a moment to hear and reflect on feedback. And often it's this mid-design check-in that spurs the most authentic and creative problem-solving.
3. Choose the right book
Since the goal of the project is to integrate literary and scientific thinking, the books that work best have concrete problems. Science fiction or fantasy doesn't work well because the solutions shouldn't involve magic.

Daignault's team used the Novel Engineering approach with an I Survived book on extreme weather to introduce the topic. One group was trying to find a solution for an uncle in the story who was caught in the storm, cut off from help. The group decided to design a bunker that could be quickly assembled when a storm came on quickly. They decided a tarp rolled over a ditch would do the trick. But when they tested how it would hold up in a tornado by blowing a fan over the top, the students realized the tarp wouldn't hold its position. That' when they designed stakes to secure it.

"They went through three or four different designs to find something that worked well," Daignault said. Along the way they took notes on what worked, what needed changing and how they planned to redesign the bunker. They also drew diagrams that they used to guide their work. Daignault was impressed with how students stuck with the project even when they hit difficulties, and while the learning about weather didn't go very deep in this project, it gave students prior knowledge for later learning.

"It really was better than something we might have come up with that would have been more contrived," Daignault said. He's already scheming up ways he might use the practice to integrate social studies, but also recognizes that it's a first step for his team as they try to develop their science teaching.

Ultimately he'd like science to be all about kids thinking for themselves, making sense of topics, and he doesn't think Novel Engineering goes deep enough. But, he said many people on his team weren't comfortable with design principles or science concepts before starting the project, and afterward they are more prepared to dig deeper. He thinks a workshop model like the one his school uses for reading and writing might work. It's something he and his team are exploring now.

One of the hardest parts for students is often working together. But helping them find ways to be collaborative, to compromise on ideas, and to learn from one another is also a valuable skill set and one that Daignault recognizes. But he and his colleagues are having a harder time documenting what progress looks like on those "process skills." Milto suggested that one way to emphasize these skills is through reflection at the end. Students could write about the experience of working in a group, what was hard, what worked and what they might do differently next time.

One group of fourth-grade girls she worked with spent so much time planning their design that when they went to build it they didn't have much time or many materials to use. She came back the following year and that same group of girls were able to have a clear conversation about where their process went wrong before. On their second try they set strict time limits on each stage of the project so they'd keep moving along.

"We're finding that students are able to do a lot more than we give them credit for," Milto said. She often coaches teachers to step back and let students take charge, only stepping in if they see students are so frustrated that they aren't moving forward. But rather than helping them solve the problem, she suggests questioning students to help get them unstuck. Once they have a new avenue of thought to pursue, they can keep working and continue to build their learning autonomy.

A Literacy-Based Strategy to Help Teachers Integrate Science Skills

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A Literacy-Based Strategy to Help Teachers Integrate Science Skills

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Many elementary school teachers love to teach reading and writing, but are less comfortable with science and math. It's not a hard and fast truth, of course, but learning to read is a big focus of the early school years, so it makes sense that teachers who gravitate toward elementary school like teaching literacy.

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Nothing exposes a city's limited resources quite like an emergency. The reality is that during many natural disasters, municipalities face more 911 calls than they could possibly field, more ravaged buildings than they could possibly repair, and more residents in need of help than they could possibly reach.

And yet the situation is not a hopeless one. By leveraging the power of data-whether by pushing relevant information out to residents and volunteer responders or prioritizing for rescue areas with more damage and vulnerable residents-cities can maximize the value of the resources they do possess. The successes and missed opportunities in the response to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma are an apt reminder of the value of data in emergency management and the capacity for cities to expand their efforts in the future.

Disseminating Data and Tools to Residents and Responders

During Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, Houston and Miami took on the responsibility of pulling together information from a variety of sources that would be useful to residents and responders during and after the storms. During Harvey, the City of Houston partnered with Harris County in order to release information like flooding estimates and evacuation routes. Then, during the recovery phase, the city released updates on the status of city services, a power outage tracker, and transit routes resuming service. Similarly, Miami curated flood maps from Miami-Dade County's website and initial storm surge information from Florida International University's (FIU) Storm Surge Simulator during the storm and information on city services, transit, and other critical developments throughout the response and recovery.

In addition to curating existing data, Miami's GIS teams out of its Department of Information Technology (IT) made efforts to gather new, more accurate flood data in the days following the storm. The city had models of storm surge from old FEMA maps, but wanted more accurate estimates of flooding. With this in mind, the city armed nine pairs of staff members from the Department of Planning and Zoning as well as four volunteer teams with Survey123 for ArcGIS, a tool that allowed users to input flood data from their smartphones.

Employees from the Department of Planning and Zoning estimate flood depth

The turnaround was astoundingly swift: "Within 24 hours, we had more than 700 datapoints," said Michael Sarasti, Chief Innovation Officer for the City of Miami. "The sense of urgency to use data and technology was really impressive. Irma was a rallying point to use tools that have been sitting there for a while," he added. The city made this information available in an online map, enabling residents and responders to make decisions using accurate flood information.

Internet of Things (IoT) sensors were also a valuable resource during the response. According to Sarasti, the Miami Police Department used wind sensor data in order to identify opportunities to safely dispatch officers to calls for service.

And to ensure this information reached the largest audience possible, these cities brought data to residents where they were already active-on social media. Houston and Miami alike used Twitter to disseminate information like open grocery stores in the area, shelters accepting residents, the safety of drinking water, the status of curfews, and evacuation orders.

Civic Tech Volunteers Spearhead Crowdsourcing

To supplement city data, Houston and Miami also sought to capitalize on residents' knowledge in order provide better information to those affected. Houston started this trend by working with local civic technology group Sketch City to create and disseminate via social media a Google Sheet for residents who needed rescue or knew of someone in distress. Residents were asked to input information including their location, the number of people in need of rescue, and any additional needs, such as medications or wheelchair accessibility. Tech volunteers then converted all of this information into a crowdsourced Google Map, which rescuers-both government first responders and volunteers like the now famous band of volunteers called the Cajun Navy-then used to identify and rescue people in need. "Emergency responders and volunteers were able to go from location to location on the map and rescue residents," explained Jesse Bounds, Houston's Director of Innovation. Houston-based civic tech group the Crowdsource Rescue Team also created a Houston Harvey Rescue site where users in need of rescue could input critical information and then replicated this effort for Irma.

To ensure that residents not only knew where flooding was happening but could also find their way to safety, Sketch City devised crowdsourced maps of all the shelters in Houston and Miami. The maps allowed residents to input the locations of shelters, whether or not they were accepting residents, and what supplies they needed. To complement this service and make it accessible to residents who may not have had internet connectivity, Sketch City also created a chatbot that enabled residents to ask for the nearest shelter via text.

To bring all these resources together, Sketch City and a number of other tech volunteers collaborated to stand up a Harvey Needs website that gathered relevant data and tools in one place. According to Bounds, "Throughout Harvey, we were able to express to Sketch City what we needed and they created it for us." On this website, residents could not only input their information for rescue and visualize the locations of shelters, but could also access emergency and safety tips, flooding and evacuation assistance, and emergency and government agency contact information. Residents could also volunteer to help in the relief effort by donating money or working at a shelter or food bank. Sketch City and a number of volunteers then forked the code for this website-copying the source code for independent development-in order to create the Irma Response website.

The Harvey and Irma open-source sites

Sarasti credits not only developers in the Miami area, but from around the country- including Cincinnati Chief Performance Officer Leigh Tami and South Bend Chief Innovation Officer Santiago Garces-for offering to help in the response. As an example of the kind of ad hoc help offered by civic tech leaders, San Diego Chief Data Officer (CDO) Maksim Pecherskiy built an Irma shelter map for Puerto Rico out of an Airbnb attached to the former Chief Innovation Officer's (CIO) house.

Going forward, Sarasti hopes to make the process for civic tech collaboration more systematic. "We want to develop a more clear process for integrating civic-driven disaster tools with city initiatives," Sarasti said. He envisions a network of civic tech collaborators ready to get to work at the city's request. "We want to create those inroads so we just flip that on," he explained. Bounds echoed this hope for systematization, explaining that Houston is "developing an emergency response package" that will outline processes and civic tech partners for future emergency situations.

Houston and Miami also relied on the power of the crowd for additional information the severity of flooding throughout the city. Created by environmental firm Marine Weather and Climate and tech company Tailwind Labs, online mapping application U-Flood allowed residents to input information on flooding throughout their city. Users needed only visit floodmap.io and click on street segments where they observed flooding. Originally designed for Houston, in anticipation of Hurricane Irma, the companies expanded the application to a number of Florida cities including Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Tampa.

By gathering information from people on the ground during the storm, crowdsourcing allowed Houston and Miami to collect accurate and timely information. "With crowdsourcing, we were able to get updates in real time," said Bounds. This allowed the cities to pinpoint areas and people in need and deploy more effective rescues.

Sharing Data Across Agencies

In the wake of Hurricane Irma, the City of Miami has started thinking about ways to better prepare responders and residents in the days leading up to a storm. "This is one of the primary discussions happening in the community now-was enough done ahead of time?" Sarasti explained.

A critical part of coordinating a proactive response is thinking creatively about how data across various city departments may be useful to responders. In Miami, the city's Fire Department and Emergency Medical Services did just that, collecting information on the location of vulnerable populations across the city that required additional assistance. According to Sarasti, the Resilience Office shared a list of affordable and critical housing structures, the Department of Planning and Zoning provided a list of assisted living facilities, and Florida Power & Light (FPL) collaborated with the city to provide power outage data. Knowing which neighborhoods had higher concentrations of buildings with prior structural problems, power outages, or residents lacking the physical or economic means to evacuate allowed Miami to send responders where they were needed most.

While laudatory of these efforts, looking to the future, Sarasti stated frankly, "We can do better. How we prepare communities that need more attention ahead of time and increase awareness of them post-flood-that's the next step," he explained.

Facilitating easier, quicker access to this data will be one way of improving emergency response. Following Irma, many news outlets circulated a story about an assisted living facility in Hollywood, FL where nine patients died in the wake of Irma. After a fallen tree destroyed the home's generator and disabled the air conditioner, many patients overheated and failed to receive prompt medical attention. While the city was looking at concentrations of assisted living facilities to inform response, ensuring responders have this information well before a disaster hits and make it a real priority in preparation will be critical in similar situations down the road.

Cities can also expand the range of data they use to inform response. For example, looking at data from the Department of Motor Vehicles could help determine which residents require assistance finding transportation out of the city. Targeting those areas that have fewer registered vehicles for evacuation assistance-or even pairing residents that do not have vehicles with those that do for carpools-could ensure that everyone is able to get out of dangerous areas.

Realizing these kinds of cross-agency predictive projects requires a culture of data sharing in city government. "We're still getting there on embracing open data in the community," Sarasti said. "We've released things like permitting and 311 data, but have not gotten sophisticated enough on the sharing side."

Analyzing Hurricanes Harvey and Irma can be a valuable learning experience for cities in the path of natural disasters. These events show that data is not a peripheral tool in disaster management, but rather is absolutely essential to effective rescue and recovery. And, as Sarasti explained, necessary to effective data-driven response is a municipal culture that emphasizes collecting and sharing quality data. Things like data standards, inventories, and useable platforms for sharing are not trivial matters reserved for bureaucratic quibbling, but in fact can be a matter of life and death.

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Data-Driven Emergency Response: Learning from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma | Data-Smart City Solutions

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Nothing exposes a city's limited resources quite like an emergency. The reality is that during many natural disasters, municipalities face more 911 calls than they could possibly field, more ravaged buildings than they could possibly repair, and more residents in need of help than they could possibly reach.

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When Ahmed Badr was 8 years old, his family's home in Baghdad was bombed in the midst of the Iraq War. The family was uninjured. They moved to Syria, which was peaceful then, and in 2008, they came to the U.S. as refugees.

Writing helps Badr deal with what he's been through, and he wants to give other young people the same outlet. Now a student at Wesleyan University, Badr founded the website Narratio to empower others to tell their stories.

Badr used writing to figure out what it meant to be an Iraqi-American kid. His life had dramatically changed since coming to the U.S. - in Baghdad, his parents were civil engineers; in the U.S., they worked minimum wage jobs at Home Depot and Wal-Mart.

Overtime, Badr realized that writing on his personal blog helped other people understand who he was and where he came from.

"There was this feeling of empowerment that was just overnight, all of sudden people were interested in my story," Badr says. "... And so with that in mind, two years passed, and I thought, 'OK, well this was great, but this is only helping me. This is only helping my own expression. So how about I take that feeling and that space that I created for myself and turn it into something that allows youth, refugee or otherwise, all over the world to do the same exact thing.' "

So Badr created Narratio, where young people from around the world submit poems, essays and stories. Badr curates them, and he's expanded the program into workshops to help young people learn how to express themselves.

Badr tells NPR's Ari Shapiro they are looking for pieces with a theme of empowerment.

"You're telling your story. You're expressing yourself through your own experience, and it's very very hard to dispute that," he says. "It's very hard to denounce someone's own personal experience. I think that's something that's incredibly beautiful about storytelling is that storytelling doesn't have to be divisive. Storytelling is meant to bring people together."

When Badr returned to Iraq for the first time two years ago, he says he felt guilty around his cousins who still live in Iraq. He says he feels personally responsible to give Iraqi youth - 18 million of whom are younger than 19 - an outlet to express themselves.

"I want to be able to turn that guilty feeling that I had when my cousins asked me, 'What are you up to?' into a responsibility ... and make it possible for them to be able to answer that question as freely as they would like to," he says. "And so, if I can do that by giving them a website that they can share their stories on, that's a step in the right direction."

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Iraqi Refugee Empowers Youth To Share Their Stories With 'Narratio'

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When Ahmed Badr was 8 years old, his family's home in Baghdad was bombed in the midst of the Iraq War. The family was uninjured. They moved to Syria, which was peaceful then, and in 2008, they came to the U.S. as refugees.

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November 21, 2016

I'm always amazed when I walk into a kindergarten classroom. Kindergarteners are the most energetic students in the district, where everything to them is new and exciting and they have no fear of trying a different app or activity.

This fall, our kindergarten classes were studying the plant life cycle within the life science unit. Each kindergarten class started with a pumpkin. The classroom teachers carved the pumpkins and remove the seeds, and yes, the class also decorated the pumpkins for Halloween, but that is beyond the scope of this blog post.

After the seeds were dried, the students planted the seeds with potting soil into a small cup. The classroom teachers then discussed the importance of sunlight and watering their seeds. I was asked to introduce technology into this activity, and I thought this was a nice opportunity to try some simple journaling with this eager group of students.

To help spark interest and set up the iPad activity, I used PBS Learning Media to find a short video for my class. After a search, I found a few resources that fit the bill:

Video: Between the Lions Poem: Little Seeds

Video: Between the Lions Poem: You Never Hear the Garden Grow

Video: Sesame Street: Strawberry Mouse

Video: From Seed to Fruit

For the iPad resource, I downloaded and installed an app called "StoryKit" on all of the kindergarteners' iPads. This app is for the iPhone, but it works well for iPad Minis, which is what we use in our kindergarten classes.

The StoryKit app comes with some preloaded stories, but for this activity we used the feature that allows creation of a simple book. Students can take and add pictures to a page of the book, then decorate the page with a simple paint tool, add text and also do an audio recording. The recording appears as a speaker icon on the finished page. It's a simple but functional app, perfect for young students, and a great way to record and document the growth of their pumpkin seeds.

The classroom teacher asked each student to get both their iPads and the cup containing the pumpkin seed. After everyone was seated, we started. I showed students how to open the StoryKit App, take a picture with their iPads, and add that picture to their new story. The classroom teacher and I could not believe how quickly the kindergarteners could do this, and in no time we were ready for the next step, decorating. I showed students how to access the simple drawing tools and soon the pictures were sitting on highly decorated backdrops.

For the last step, we used the audio recorder feature in StoryKit and students recorded the steps involved in planting the seeds, how they were going to care for their seeds and what they were going to do when they took the seeds home. This part of the activity will take some practice to put the observations into words, but I have no doubts they will develop this skill with practice.

What's next? I plan to visit the classroom again in a week and we will add another page to this story, and hopefully take pictures of pumpkin seed growth, record more observations and of course, paint another page. So with a few creative resources - PBS Learning Media and the App StoryKit - I was able to introduce a basic science journal to the kindergarten classes that inspired fun and learning.
Andy Hopkins is an Instructional Technology Specialist with Harper Woods Schools in Harper Woods, Michigan. Andy conducts regular teacher in-services on technology use and mentors best practices for classroom implementation. He also works with students in buildings across the district as they create and share creative, multimodal projects.

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Planting the (Pumpkin) Seeds of Learning with Technology | PBS Education

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November 21, 2016 I'm always amazed when I walk into a kindergarten classroom. Kindergarteners are the most energetic students in the district, where everything to them is new and exciting and they have no fear of trying a different app or activity. This fall, our kindergarten classes were studying the plant life cycle within the life science unit.

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PBS Tech Articles ~  Lots of Thinking going  on here... 

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PBS Tech Articles ~  Lots of Thinking going  on here... 

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Koji is the world’s most powerful Link in Bio, with hundreds of free apps to customize and monetize.

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Click the link below and then post to the columns the Action Plan Ideas.

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Ideally, when you walk into a room, what would you like to observe as it comes to technology standards at your building?

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Active Researching and Resources

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Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

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Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library offering free universal access to texts, movies & music, as well as 624 billion archived web pages.

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Easy, friendly, practical stuff by Richard Byrne

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As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. This is a post from February.

On Friday morning I had the idea to write a list of the things that I wish every teacher knew about technology. Before I started writing the list I put the prompt on Twitter and watched the responses come in. The responses covered just about everything that I would have written in one way or another, but there is one thing that I will add to the Tweets embedded below. The thing that I wish every teacher knew about technology is that even the most tech-savvy colleague or student in your school doesn't know everything about technology. Remember that when you're not feeling confident about using technology in your classroom.

The thing I wish every teacher knew about technology is...

All of the Tweets above were organized into a Twitter moment. You can learn how to create moments here.

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The Things I Wish Every Teacher Knew About Technology - Best of 2017

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As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. This is a post from February.

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We express ourselves in different ways. On Flip, you can use our simple and fun built-in camera to record your thoughts, add effects and share within your Flip group as video, audio only or text in your web browser or mobile app.

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Flip is a video discussion and sharing app, free from Microsoft.

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Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a video discussion and video sharing app, free from Microsoft, built for classrooms and beyond. Learn more.

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Looking for a GIANT list of EdTech Podcasts...  Start here 

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Looking for a GIANT list of EdTech Podcasts...  Start here 

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On the 11th day of Tech-Mas my true love gave to me... 11 Pods O'Casting.

Note: This post is part of my " 12 Days of Tech-Mas" series for 2017. You can see all of the posts for each day as they get released in the main post here: " 12 Days of Tech-Mas 2017".
Podcasts are one of my favorite ways to learn new information, be inspired, be challenged, discover creative practices in education, find out about the latest resources, and even be entertained.

Best yet, we all have busy lives, so podcasts fit in wonderfully to my schedule, allowing me to listen when driving to work or to a training, or mowing the yard, or going for a jog (which I need to do more often).

For the writing of this blog post I checked my podcast app and I currently am subscribed to 135 different podcasts, covering a wide range of topics and interests. I certainly do not listen to every episode of each, and only a portion of them deal specifically with educational technology. So for this post I have decided to highlight just eleven of my favorites.

These eleven examples all focus on EdTech and consistently provide me with valuable information and resources. There are many more podcasts I could recommend, and perhaps they can be part of a future post, such as those covering education in general ( The Cult of Pedagogy, Teaching Keating, Sustainable Teaching, 10 Minute Teacher, etc.) or interesting information ( 99% Invisible, No Such Thing as a Fish, RadioLab, Freakonomics, Tell Me Something I Don't Know, Reply All, The Allusionist, Science Vs, etc.)

See below for details on eleven of my favorite educational technology podcasts (in alphabetical order). If you are new podcasts, hopefully this will encourage you to try out a few. If you already listen, maybe you will pick up a couple new shows from the list. If you are a podcast addict like me, please share some of your recommendations in the comments at the bottom.

Listening to Podcasts

Before we jump into the list, if you are new to podcasts, here are some quick options for how you can listen to them:

On your computer - Most all podcasts have an associated website where you can find and play all of their episodes right from your web browser.

For each of the podcasts listed below you can simply search for the title in your podcast app to locate and subscribe to them. For those that have direct subscriptions links for iOS or Android, I have included those links as well.
Helpful hint: Most podcast players allow you to adjust the playback speed. You can listen much faster than people can talk, so you can save even more time by playing episodes at a faster pace. Depending on the podcast, my sweet spot is between 1.6X and 1.8X the normal speed. The only drawback is when I happen to hear the hosts speak in real life, they sound sort of sad as they speak at such a slow rate.

1) Check This Out
Brian and Ryan share awesome educational technology resources and ideas, and often bring on guests to share their area of expertise in EdTech.

2) EdTech Bites
Gabriel interviews educators and innovators to talk about educational technology and their favorite foods, and often how the two relate.

3) EdTech Rewind
Clint and Lee discuss what is going on in EdTech and beyond, and often include a guest from the world of education and technology.

4) EdTech Situation Room
A weekly podcast and live webshow, featuring analysis of current technology news through an educational lens.

5) TLC Ninja Teachers
Tech. Learn. Coffee. Lisa and Nancy have a little coffee and talk innovation in the classroom to help bring out the innovator in you (in only 15 minutes because "ain't nobody got more time than that!)

6) TOSAs Talking Tech
Two teachers talking about Technology Integration, giving ideas, troubleshooting, talking about SAMR and why we need tech in classrooms.

7) The EdTech Take Out
The EdTech Take Out is a podcast with "bite-sized technology tips" for teachers who are looking for innovative ways to use technology in the classroom.

8) The Google Teacher Tribe
Weekly podcast designed to give K-12 educators practical ideas for using G Suite and other Google tools.

9) The House of EdTech
Chris shares stories from teachers and creators about education technology, and recommends valuable tools, tips, and resources to integrate technology into your classroom and instruction.

10) The Teachercast Podcast
Join Jeff and the world's finest educators and educational technology creators as they discuss the latest in educational tech and pedagogy.

11) Wired Educator Podcast
Kelly interviews educators from around the world on technology, best practices, and what really works inside and outside of the classroom.

Post by Eric Curts. Bring me to your school, organization, or conference with over 50 PD sessions to choose from. Connect with me on Twitter at twitter.com/ericcurts and on Google+ at plus.google.com/+EricCurts1

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On the 11th day of Tech-Mas my true love gave to me... 11 Pods O'Casting. Note: This post is part of my " 12 Days of Tech-Mas" series for 2017. You can see all of the posts for each day as they get released in the main post here: " 12 Days of Tech-Mas 2017".

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This is my favorite tool. It helps you easily create awesome infographics using pre-designed templates. It also lets you create an infographic out of any Twitter Hashtag provided you are signed in which you can do using your Twitter account.

This is another great web tool to create infographics. Again the process is very simple just drag and drop. Easel.ly provides you with a set of pre-made designs to choose from and use as a canvas and you can also upload your own images to include in your infographics

3-PiktoChart

I love PiktoChart and I have used it a couple of times and found it really great. It also provides pre-made themes and allows you to cutomize the enitre font and colour scheme in your infographic

4- Infogr.am

Infogr.am is an easy to use online service that lets you create, share, and discover infographics and online charts.It is also very easy to use, you can select a pre-designed template, add charts, videos and maps and within a few clicks your template is ready to go viral.

Other infographic creation tools you might want to try :

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Great Infographic Making Tools for Teachers

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This is my favorite tool. It helps you easily create awesome infographics using pre-designed templates. It also lets you create an infographic out of any Twitter Hashtag provided you are signed in which you can do using your Twitter account. This is another great web tool to create infographics.

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Just because I like it...
GIFs, Memes, Infographics~ Info sharing.

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GIPHY is your top source for the best & newest GIFs & Animated Stickers online. Find everything from funny GIFs, reaction GIFs, unique GIFs and more.

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On paper, architect Ignacio Rodriguez designed a gorgeous Hollywood Hills home, but the potential owner couldn't envision how the multi-million dollar abode would look after it was built. Rather than hitting the drawing board, Rodriguez turned to his computer and built the house in virtual reality (VR) so his client could experience what it was like "living" there.

"After walking around the house in VR, the client bought it three days later," said Rodriguez, CEO of IR Architects, speaking at the 2017 VRLA expo in Los Angeles. More than 170 companies gathered to show new uses for VR technologies.

While VR attracts attention through immersive games and entertainment, the technology is proving beneficial for a growing number of commercial uses. At VRLA, experts in real estate, retail, healthcare, education and other industries explained their experimentation with VR.

"Even though the market is being driven by gaming today, we expect commercial VR to be 50 percent of the market as soon as the next five years," said Kumar Chinnaswamy, director of commercial VR in Intel's Client Computing Group.

"Awareness of augmented reality (AR) and VR has significantly increased because companies see the immediate benefits the technology provides," he said, adding that it could create new business models. "The tech can reduce product design risks, offer new ways to engage customers and enable immersive training methods."

Goldman Sachs estimates the market for VR and AR could grow into a $128 billion market by 2025.
A New Way to Imagine Dream Homes
After closing the deal on the Hollywood Hills home, Rodriguez now demonstrates all of his property designs as VR experiences, built using Unreal Engine, a popular game development tool. Business at his L.A.-based architectural firm has been booming ever since.

Rodriguez said the benefit of designing homes in VR is that clients know in advance exactly what the home will look like. If the fireplace is in the wrong place, he said, they can simply move it.

"The feedback is amazing," he said. "The clients get to experience the house and make changes to the design before anybody builds anything."

Having this feedback early, instead of in the middle of construction, is crucial.

IR Architects specialize in modern homes with huge price tags, ranging from $3 million to $22 million, including Beverly Hills mansions. Rodriguez said stalling a project for revisions can quickly result in a huge loss.

The immersive technology isn't just for the high-end real estate market. Show My Property TV, a digital agency specializing in apartment marketing, uses VR to create virtual tours of rental properties. Potential tenants can inspect living quarters from anywhere in the world.
Reinventing Retail Spaces
Even retail stores are looking to VR as a way to jazz up the shopping experience. It could help retailers blend real world and digital buying experiences as they struggle to attract and retain shoppers.

"[It's important for] developers in the commercial space to focus on solving a business's problems," said Chinnaswamy.

Mark Hardy, CEO of InContext, works with many retail and restaurant chains, including Walmart and Starbucks, to help remodel and optimize shelf space.

His team goes into a store and snaps thousands of photos of the products, while measuring the store's dimensions with laser rangefinder technology. This information helps them build an exact replica of the store. The pieces snap apart like Lego blocks, allowing retailers to freely design new layouts without the overhead costs of physically building a retail space.

Merchandisers can put on a headset and see their ideas immediately, before they roll plans out nationwide. For example, Starbucks used the VR application to find the counter arrangement that would best convey a cozy small-business atmosphere.

"Consumers are tired of shopping at stores that are distribution centers," said Hardy. "The challenge for retailers is that they're becoming experience centers like Apple Stores and Tesla."

He said VR is even changing how merchandisers do marketing research. To test the quality of a new store design, for example, retailers can study the shopping behaviors of people using the VR simulation. This gives retailers the freedom to explore store layouts that break the mold.
VR in Anatomy Classrooms
If VR can engage and educate shoppers, why not use it to train future doctors? That's what Blausen Medical does with its vast portfolio of award-winning medical animations.

Students traditionally learn about body structures from images in books, but Blausen Medical's illustrations expand to enormous sizes that can be experienced from different angles in VR.

The app positions the VR user right in the center of the human anatomy animation. The viewer sees and feels what it's like to be the size of an atom, as proteins and molecules tower above then undulate from side to side.

"Once you have the experience of interacting with the animation in VR, you can't go back to the textbook," said Bruce Blausen, the company's CEO and founder.

Blausen's VR imagery provides practical applications for education. According to Intel's Chinnaswamy, "Early research has shown that students who learn in VR score more than 25 percent higher than those learning by traditional methods. Gamification of learning in VR will further change the landscape of education over the next decade."

Blausen Medical's first VR model captures the complexities of a human's skeletal muscle contractions. Eventually, the company plans to convert its entire library of medical animations into VR, including tours through the inner ear, the cardiovascular system and even explorations of diseases in the body.

These VR apps will primarily be sold to universities and medical institutions, helping future doctors better understand the functions of the body.

From real estate to retail to healthcare education, the commercial uses of VR are expanding as access to the technology grows. By creating immersive experiences, industry leaders are poised to shape a future where real and digital worlds merge.

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VR Entrepreneurs Rethink Real Estate, Retail and Education - iQ by Intel

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On paper, architect Ignacio Rodriguez designed a gorgeous Hollywood Hills home, but the potential owner couldn't envision how the multi-million dollar abode would look after it was built. Rather than hitting the drawing board, Rodriguez turned to his computer and built the house in virtual reality (VR) so his client could experience what it was like "living" there.

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In a home in southeast Columbus, the cheery glow of a Christmas tree brightens the living room. The holiday may be more than a week away, but for Allison Carlisle's family, gift-giving has already started.

And she has Nationwide Children's Hospital, not Santa, to thank.

One of Carlisle's three sons, 12-year-old Michael, is developmentally disabled.

"He is ambulatory, he does get up and walk," Carlisle says. "He's non-verbal. And communication, very, very limited to none."

Toys for children like Michael have not always been available. But several years ago, Nationwide started a program to help fill the void - and now Ohio State University students are teaming up with them to get more toys to kids who need them.
Easy Play
Until recently, Carlisle says, her son could only play with baby rattles.

"We really couldn't go forward with toys that were more complex because he just, he couldn't do it."

But at Nationwide Children's Hospital, where Michael is a patient, Carlisle learned about "adapted toys." These are toys that have been modified so that special needs children can play with them, too. Now Michael has a bubble-blowing machine and a bump-n-go train.

Adapted toys have on-and-off switches that are easy for kids like Michael to use.

At Nationwide Children's, Lindsey Pauline is part of the adapted toy program known as Toys For All Tots. It's been running there for six years.

"All kids like toys, but not all kids can access toys the same way," Pauline says. "So therapists have figured out, 'Sometimes I've got to change this toy to get my child to want to interact with it.'"

Pauline demonstrates the wide variety of toys that have been fitted with special on-and-off switches: "We have our standard police cars, and of course our fire trucks," she points out.
Learning to Adapt
Nationwide Children's now has hundreds of helpers who make the workload easier. That includes a number of eager OSU students.

"They learn reverse engineering. They learn how to take something apart, they learn to figure out how it works, they learn series and parallel circuits," says Rachel Kajfez, a professor of engineering education. "But they also learn about, kind of, 'humanitarian engineering,' or giving back through engineering, which is really important. This is a really concrete, tangible way to show that."

In Smith Lab, three full shelf spaces are filled with toys. Second-year student Jarrod Manguiat points to Sheriff Callie, a singalong cat, as their post popular.

He may be a computer science major, but Manguiat has learned a lot about educating young people with special needs.

"Children really learn through play," he says. "And that's one of the first things you do, is when you play with a toy, you learn the ABCs, you learn your numbers. And children who have special needs don't usually get that experience; they don't have that mobility. So it's really important that we offer this skill so that each child gets that opportunity."
Giving Back
At this year's Toys For All Tots event, volunteers saw that the hours they'd put it were worth it.

"There's this whole table filled with about 100 toys that we adapted that we were going to donate," Manguiat says. "And so we had one child come in on a wheelchair and his eyes just lit up. And it was one of the coolest experiences, because it was something that we built, and it was just giving them so much joy."

Allison Carlisle is also grateful for the program. At Nationwide Children's, she learned how to re-engineer toys herself - so Michael can have more to play with.

"I'm super excited after going because I got to learn how to adapt," Carlisle says. "This train was actually what I adapted while I was there. So I'm really excited now because I want to go out and find toys that I can adapt for him, so he'll have a wider variety of things."

For Michael, and for many other children, Christmas has come early.

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How Volunteers Are Building Better Toys For Kids With Disabilities

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In a home in southeast Columbus, the cheery glow of a Christmas tree brightens the living room. The holiday may be more than a week away, but for Allison Carlisle's family, gift-giving has already started. And she has Nationwide Children's Hospital, not Santa, to thank. One of Carlisle's three sons, 12-year-old Michael, is developmentally disabled.

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Remember Google Glass?

They're the headsets that look like regular glasses but have a small computer on the side to speak to and access the Internet. If that's not ringing a bell, it could be because Google Glass fizzled out and was discontinued in the consumer market.

But now, it's getting a second life in the manufacturing industry.

One of the pioneers of this technology is a company based in suburban Atlanta. AGCO has factories all over the world where it makes large tractors, chemical sprayers and other farm equipment.

At one of AGCO's factories, Heather Erickson is putting together a tractor engine before it goes on to the assembly line.

She's wearing a red-and-black uniform over her blue jeans at a facility in Jackson, Minn. And she's wearing something else: Google Glass on her head.

"It took a little getting used to. But once I got used to it, it's just been awesome," Erickson says.

Google Glass tells her what to do should she forget, for example, which part goes where. "I don't have to leave my area to go look at the computer every time I need to look up something," she says.

With Google Glass, she scans the serial number on the part she's working on. This brings up manuals, photos or videos she may need. She can tap the side of headset or say "OK Glass" and use voice commands to leave notes for the next shift worker.

The headsets are being used in other industries as well. Companies working in the health care, entertainment and energy industries are listed as some of the Google Glass certified partners. And autistic children are using the technology to recognize emotions.

It was always my assumption that Google Glass was going to go into business for enterprises instead of mass consumer consumption.

Peggy Gullick, business process improvement director with AGCO, says the addition of Google Glass has been "a total game changer." Quality checks are now 20 percent faster, she says, and it's also helpful for on-the-job training of new employees. Before this, workers used tablets.

"We had a lot of tablets on our floor, and the tablets were being broken just by being dropped. And tractors are very tall machines when you're climbing on and off," Gullick says. "So we were looking for a solution that offered them more information in a more timely manner."

AGCO has about 100 employees using the custom Google Glass, which is attached to them and harder to lose. Each costs about $2,000.

Tiffany Tsai, who writes about technology, says it's one of a growing number of companies - including General Electric and Boeing - testing it out.

"It was always my assumption that Google Glass was going to go into business for enterprises instead of mass consumer consumption," she says.

She was one of the early users of Google Glass when it came out in 2013.

Two years later, it was discontinued for some consumers because people were concerned about privacy and security. And there were concerns that the headset could be distracting to drivers or that it wasn't made with all people in mind.

Tsai says another reason for it being discontinued was its challenging of social norms: With Google Glass, it may look like you're listening to the person in front of you, but you could actually be watching a movie or looking up sports stats. You could be in a different world.

"On Google Glass, [another person] has no idea what's happening, does not see anything that the user is looking at or analyzing," Tsai says. "And that creates this disconnect between people, and I think that that's highly frowned upon right now, especially with older generations."

Millennials may be more open to it in the future, but Google Glass still has a long way to go until it's considered more socially acceptable, she says.

But at AGCO's factories, it's not only accepted; it's desired. Gullick says the company plans to double the number in use by the end of the year.
WABE host Jim Burress contributed to this report.

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Google Glass Didn't Disappear. You Can Find It On The Factory Floor

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Remember Google Glass? They're the headsets that look like regular glasses but have a small computer on the side to speak to and access the Internet. If that's not ringing a bell, it could be because Google Glass fizzled out and was discontinued in the consumer market.

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Go forth and be techy :)