David Grebow KnowledgeStar

I’ve written several posts about the evolution of education, especially from the analog past to the digital present and future.

My own experience between the two was real a wake-up call. I bought a new car a many thousands of miles ago and had a lot of music I wanted to hear from my cassette tapes (analog). The new car could only play cassettes and not discs. That was okay until I went over to Borders (remember them?) to buy some new cassettes (remember them?).

Surprise! No more cassettes only discs … Bill Gates was right, the pace of change is changing.

Longer story shortened,  I was listening to the old cassettes until I found a way to transmit the music from my iPod (digital) through my car’s stereo speakers.

 

 

Back to Crossfy. I’ve been wondering since then who was going to be smart enough to build a bridge from the ‘old’ analog – which will be around for quite awhile yet – to the new digital.

And here it is …

“Think of all the possibilities” …  Crossfy is an Brazilian company that has figured out how to connect the offline and online worlds, build a bridge between space and cyberspace. Well known in the Brazilian startup community, its CEO Amure Pinho is also the founder of Sync Mobile Based in Rio de Janeiro, a startup initially focused on developing apps and other mobile solutions.

The Crossfy technology identifies printed ads and images to give access to associated digital content, from text and audio to video. It  connects the offline to the online world, via a mobile phone.

As Amure Pinho explains:

“The integration between print and digital media will revolutionize the way we consume newspaper content. For instance, think of all the possibilities around the upcoming Olympic Games in London. For the first time, Brazil’s main TV channel won’t broadcast the largest sports event of the year. This gives us space to deliver a new experience on top of print media. Who knows, this could even help print media to be stronger than TV over that period.”

Imagine you’re reading a textbook, and there’s a great piece about [   fill in the blank  ], and you hold your phone (or iPad) over the book and SHAZAM you get your choice of

• a video of a recorded interview with the writer
• directions from here to there if you’re nearby
• a documentary that relates to the subject
• photo album of people who went there.

… and more.

I know it would be a curated link, and not as much fun as surfing around, then again how many textbooks make you want to learn all there is to learn about a subject? I don’t know about you, but anything that brings the printed page ‘alive’ for many students is a great option for people trying to transfer information to others, not to mention their instructors (facilitators … more on that later).