Techno-News Blog

by Frederic Lardinois, Tech Crunch

Over the last few years, Google and Coursera have regularly teamed up to launch a number of online courses for developers and IT pros. Among those was the Machine Learning Crash course, which provides developers with an introduction to machine learning. Now, building on that, the two companies are launching a machine learning specialization on Coursera. This new specialization, which consists of five courses, has an even more practical focus.

Google and Coursera launch a new machine learning specialization

by SUZY GARCIA, Kicks 1055

Governor Andrew Cuomo is making it easier for New Yorkers to attend college these days, by earmarking $8 million for students’ textbooks. It’s an attempt to reduce the expense of books for State University of New York ,and City University of New York students, according to a press release from the Governor’s office. Textbooks can cost hundreds of dollars each with some classes requiring more than one, then multiplied by several classes, and that’s in addition to the cost of classes! It really is cost prohibitive for many hoping to attend college. This looks like it will certainly help. The Open Educational Resources Initiative is what this allocation is being called, and it’s making textbooks and other lab materials available by giving students the ability to download these materials, edit them and share them with others.

http://kicks1055.com/college-textbooks-in-new-york-state-becoming-more-affordable/

by FABRIZIO CARMIGNANI, the Big Think

Research shows women are better positioned than men to resist the automation of work and possibly even benefit from it. Women are overrepresented in industries that require high levels of social skills and empathy (such as nursing, teaching and care work), where it would be difficult to replace a human worker with automation. Women in advanced economies also have, on average, higher levels of education and digital literacy, giving them a comparative advantage in a labour market that is continuously transformed by technological innovation.

http://bigthink.com/the-conversation/women-are-less-likely-to-be-replaced-by-robots-and-might-even-benefit-from-automation

by David McArthur, EDUCAUSE Review

Researchers, educators, and developers have envisioned various roles for blockchains in education and training, including their use for storing standards and issuing credentials. Several possibilities arise based on ideas from blockchains that provide trustworthy intellectual property records. For example, an educational standards committee might upload formal statements of their official competency hierarchies to a blockchain. Further, smart contracts managed in blockchain systems such as Ethereum could establish conditions under which a student would receive a certificate from a provider, and a series of those contracts could define a full degree program.

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2018/5/will-blockchains-revolutionize-education

by Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Education: Digital Learning

MIT, once again, has taken a huge step toward further embedding technology into our lives. In this case, it is giving voice to thoughts, speech to the speechless and opening the door to telepathy. The technology, named “AlterEgo,” generates digital signals to unvoiced thoughts. One wears a tiny, spare, flexible frame that contains between 4 and 16 tiny electrodes to pick up non-vocalized speech – such as when one reads text or deliberately thinks articulated thoughts. It transforms these brain pulses into digital transmissions. What are the potential implications for teaching and learning? As with most technologies, there are both the good aspects and the challenging.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/views/2018/05/23/how-might-new-technology-enabling-communication-between-human-and

by Tom Vander Ark, Forbes

“GPAs are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless,” said Laszlo Bock, former head of HR at Google. “Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and GPAs and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything,” added Bock. In the now famous 2013 interview with the New York Times, Bock signaled the beginning of the end of courses and credits as the primary measure of learning and the beginning of the show what you know era. Professions (including law, real estate, and accounting) have long relied on test-based measured of readiness. Some professions have gone a step beyond to require demonstrated competence (e.g., doctors and pilots are required to pass tests, endure simulations, and perform in a variety of live settings).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanderark/2018/05/21/show-what-you-know-the-shift-to-competency/#6687f2a81a5b

BY ELENA COX, eCampus News
Artificial intelligence’s potential to reduce human error and to scale human expertise is worth understanding.  We can also measure inspired ideas and expertise by administration, faculty, advisors, coaches, and others for correlation to individual success and evidence of performance at scale. We have found variables in the output that are low- to no-cost to test in control trials and then at scale. This combination of actionable data, extracted with precision, and affordable practices that work at scale is the powerful promise of AI to education. Realizing this promise depends on human intelligence and discipline around data practices. With dialogue about AI and ML becoming pervasive, and often surrounded by excitement, it is important that everyone in this sector gain a basic understanding and language on this subject. Otherwise, this dialogue can become another hyperbole.

Going beyond the hype: How AI can be used to make a difference