Adaptive and machine learning algorithms already power educational software, often teaching more discursive subjects like math, languages, and literacy. Examples include Duolingo and the Chinese company LAIX\u2019s Liulishuo<\/a>. Both serve as language learning apps.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n But a few have begun work that seeks to increasingly automate the teaching process. Some even have backing from the Chinese government<\/a>. These deep learning AI solutions involve software that goes far beyond the measurement of and response to individual systems. These emerging solutions involve many layers of student assessment. They also promise to one day replicate the ideal teaching scenario\u2014which would be 1:1 instruction\u2014on a global scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few companies have begun work on personalized learning systems. These include\u00a0VIPKid, the Chinese online language tutoring giant<\/a>, which already tracks student faces to determine the efficacy of their instructors. Part of the $500 million Series E funding they secured this summer will go to further developing AI, with the aim of potentially replace instructors altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n But difficulties remain. Face-tracking technology is hardly perfect<\/a>. Beyond that, many still doubt<\/a> that an algorithm can effectively teach a student without the supervision of a human instructor. Doing so requires knowing in advance the path down which learners will progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s been a few years now since VR and AR technologies have entered classrooms<\/a>. A quick search of #edtech on Twitter will leave anyone inundated with images of primary and secondary school learners donning headsets to visit historical sites, distant regions, and even animated environments.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In most of these examples, the viewer remains tethered to the super-wide angle 360\u00ba camera that captured the environment. This summer, however, eLearning Inside <\/em>got in touch with a small New Zealand based team that is pushing the limit of virtual environments<\/a>. When Reality Virtual founder Simon Che de Boer\u2019s house burned down, he was inspired to see if he could recreate it virtually.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI thought, \u2018Could I use my old family photographs of my place to recreate my old house so my daughter and I could go home?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know anything about virtual reality, I just knew how to put things together. So I spent many years working on a pipeline of how to do things. Along the way, I discovered photogrammetry. So when I was getting into it, photogrammetry was very new, no one was doing environments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Photogrammetry<\/a>\u2014capturing an image or site with hundreds if not thousands of photographs from numerous different angles\u2014soon led Che de Boer to develop a system of virtual environment capturing and software that could allow any photographer to make incredibly high quality virtual environments. He and his team have scanned sites like Queen Nefertari\u2019s tomb in Egypt and New Zealand\u2019s Mana Beach and Wallace Homestead. The company is currently collecting old pictures of historic Christchurch, which was largely damaged and destroyed by a series of intense earthquakes in 2011, to recreate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While not strictly new tech, one of the world\u2019s largest educational publishers, Cengage, made a big move this year. Instead of selling and renting individual titles\u2014like virtually every other publisher\u2014the company transitioned to a Netflix-style model where learners can pay a subscription to access their catalogue<\/a>. Cengage Unlimited arrived at the heels of a college textbook market that has increased prices at a rate of four times that of inflation in the past decade.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe industry was set up so that professors adopt and students pay,\u201d said Cengage CEO Michael Hansen. \u201cBecause of that, the industry thought for the longest time they had tremendous pricing power. They could just price whatever, increase prices way above the [rising rate of] cost of living, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe industry tried discounting in a few different ways, discounting here, a little bit there, custom books there, but nobody really asked the fundamental, compelling questions, which is: Shouldn\u2019t we just change this entire business model? And shouldn\u2019t we give students what they need day one at an affordable price? And how can we do that? And without\u2014obviously, we\u2019re all for-profit businesses\u2014wrecking the bottom line? We came to the conclusion for us given the position that we\u2019re in and given all the work it took to get there, now is the time that we would finally change the business model.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cengage Unlimited went live in time for the 2018 fall semester. It remains to be seen whether the service will earn larger buy-in rates required to turn a profit. But fortune favors the brave, and along with emerging OER<\/a> and other alternative textbook publishers<\/a>, Cengage\u2019s gamble marks the largest effort to disrupt the college textbook market to date.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Apple\u2019s ARKit was announced in the summer of 2017, developers at GeoGebra were paying attention. This summer, the world\u2019s largest and least commercial comprehensive math app<\/a> debuted a new version. The app can replicate an object in AR<\/a> and describe and manipulate the virtual object as a series of functions. <\/p>\n\n\n\nVirtual Environments<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
![\"queen](\"https:\/\/news.elearninginside.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/nefertari-tomb_1-1024x555.png\")
Cengage Unlimited<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
GeoGebra AR<\/h1>\n\n\n\n