Vanguard Magazine

T TeCHnology WATch 42 JUNe/JULY 2016 www.vanguardcanada.com vice intuitively. Instructions are considered to just really, really get in the way. This change means that Technology Enabled Learning must facilitate the stu- dents learning at their own pace, prefer- ably the way the individual best learns. It must interface well with a physical teacher that inspires the learner to focus towards achieving the employment goals they have chosen, or possibly open up new career paths. Finally, the student must efficiently develop the practical expertise needed to perform their occupational processes pro- ductively, and continue to expand that productivity during their career. In July 2015, the Commander of the Royal Canadian Navy, Vice Admiral Nor- man, approved the "Future Naval Training System (FNTS) Strategy" to continue to refit and modernize Canada's Naval train- ing to continue to meet the challenges of tomorrow. The strategy focuses on four principles: distributed learning, multi- purpose reconfigurable training, ubiqui- tous learning and networked training. In essence, the focus will be to emphasize interactivity and extending the classroom. These changes are sweeping around the world, and the Canadian Navy is smart to benchmark against other allied countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the United States to ensure that we are adopt- ing similar training practices. The learners coming into the system are changing, and the systems, tools and environment need to change with that. As usual, I caught up with a few Cana- dian tech companies leading the charge in Technology Enabled Learning. Chalk.com is a company that helps teachers and ad- ministrators make sense of the classroom. Used by over 150,000 teachers, Chalk. com does lesson planning, assessment, and collaboration apps and ties them together to create a powerful predictive analytics engine that helps to drive student success. The tools provide teachers with actionable insights and data at the right time, serving as almost a personal assistant for teachers. Right now it's difficult for educators to keep track of the students who are being left behind. But with data, it is much easier to determine which students are strug- gling with the concept, and which are excelling at it. Chalk.com CEO, William Zhou, commented, "As technologists, we often forget that education is a very personal and human endeavour. A high quality education cannot be automated or mass produced. Technology isn't here to replace teachers. When you couple great teachers with enabling technologies, we can finally have the tools and methods to achieve personalization at scale. When we do this, we're bringing quality education to all and helping give everyone an equal opportunity to participate in the future." I asked Jean-Claude Siew, Vice President Technology and Simulation at Bluedrop, his opinion on new training technolo- gies, and he commented that, "The new generation of trainees are used to tablets, mobile phones and expect training at their fingertips. The expectation is to have train- ing anywhere anytime. Also, the training must be fully interactive and with instant feedback of pass or fail and with the capa- bility to try and try again, like video games where you have multiple lives. The future of training will need to provide this as well as maximum interactivity and self paced learning." Bluedrop is a Canadian provid- er of blended training solutions from the classroom to virtual environments, located in the Atlantic region. They are currently developing new training solutions us- ing the latest immersive technologies and motion tracking technologies which are brought over from gaming. You also can not forget about Calian, a large Canadian training company who provides the "arms and legs," as I refer to them, to provide the training services. They are well known for the work they provided in providing pre-deployment exercises and training to prepare all Canadian military task force headquarters personnel to deploy into high-intensity combat operations within Kandahar Province, Afghanistan from 2005-2011. Calian CEO, Kevin Ford, is no stranger to technology, having previ- ously spent 10 years as a partner at IBM. Canada's small tech-enabled learning companies are key in this discussion. Blue- drop and Calian are great examples, but I will go over a few of them in this article, including Quebec based companies OVA and D-BOX Technologies, Victoria based Racerocks 3D, and from the Atlantic re- gion, Modest Tree and Stevens Solutions. OVA's platform, StellarX, is an afford- able virtual and augmented reality solution that does not require specialized program- mers to produce simulations of collab- orative emergency situations, whether it be for training or many other sectors. By cutting simulation creation time in half, StellarX's design and drag-and-drop construction capacity frees its users from lengthy production times. Harold Dumur of OVA noted, "Acquiring knowledge and discovering new learning paths that are as fun and interactive as a videogame is a big return for our users. We are essentially talking about the design and creation of training simulations in multiplayer-ready environments. We are confident that the future will bring more collaboration be- tween users, in the appropriate setting,

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