The Cool Toys Conversation group started out as one of the many spaces on campus where people share cool tech they’ve discovered for education, research, clinical care, outreach, and productivity. Since then, it’s evolved to become more of a community of practice around emerging trends and technologies, but without ever completely giving up the original sharing of cool toys. Some of this happens in monthly meetings, usually at noon on the last Tuesday of the month (moving to BlueJeans only in January 2018), some in our email group cooltoysconversations@umich.edu, and some on social media with the hashtag #cooltoysu. The scope of the resources shared is broad, as fits the scope and range of activities and interests across the university, with some of them focusing on pretty hard core tech and others focusing on links or apps or tech to do something interesting in another topic.

Here are just a few interesting things selected from the hashtag. Highlights include: augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, mobile apps, games, and productivity tools.

Seeing AI

Seeing AI is a free app that narrates the world around you. Designed for the low vision community, this research project harnesses the power of AI to describe people, text, and objects.

Mirage

A fun little “photo” app, Mirage allows you to create 3D audio/video/emojis/doodles augmented reality content with your phone. You can also browse other people’s content, but right now, since it’s fairly new, you may not find a lot of content where you are. Here’s a nice introduction to augmented reality from Hackernoon.

The Evolution of Trust

The Evolution of Trust is a clever online game/interactive simulation that explores the mathematics of trust, distrust, and miscommunication through various character types.

Think Check Submit

This online checklist tool helps you choose where to publish your research. In their words: “Sharing research results with the world is key to the progress of your discipline and career. But with so many publications, how can you be sure you can trust a particular journal? Follow this check list to make sure you choose trusted journals for your research.”

Index App

Index touts itself as an alternative to Evernote, or as a one-stop-shop organizational tool. In their words: “Index is the easiest way to capture your ideas. #tag links, notes, files and anything from anywhere, and Index will organize everything into searchable, shareable #collections. Just promise you’ll use it for good and not evil.”