Techno-News Blog

By Beth Humbred Scott Latham, Honolulu Civil Beat

Millions of today’s jobs are expected to be affected by artificial intelligence and automation as part of the “fourth industrial revolution.” But just which occupations are most at risk has been a guessing game among economists, futurists and scholars trying to predict winners and losers. As experts on workers’ identities and careers and industry and technological change, we developed a new tool we believe will help workers more accurately determine the fate of their professions – and figure out how best to prepare.

https://www.civilbeat.org/2019/04/how-you-can-tell-if-you-might-get-replaced-by-a-robot/

Hallie Busta, Education Dive
The function and makeup of the workforce will change as industries adapt to new technology and processes, raising questions about how educational models are responding to deliver relevant training, explains a new white paper from the World Economic Forum and the Boston Consulting Group. The report examines eight possible outcomes for the future of work based on three variables: educational models, workers’ economic mobility and the rate of technological advancement. A combination of the outcomes is most likely, the authors note.  One common theme throughout the outcomes is what the report positions as a consequence of educational models being slow to adapt to workforce needs: displaced workers competing for fewer jobs as industries become increasingly automated.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-new-learning-modes-will-shape-the-future-of-work/553133/

Megan Leonhardt, CNBC
Almost half of young adults have student loan debt. And 36% of college graduates paying off student loans say now that taking on that debt wasn’t worth it, according to a new report by Merrill Lynch and Age Wave, which surveyed over 2,700 early adults (defined here as those ages 18 to 34). A smaller poll by GoBankingRates recently arrived at similar conclusions: It found that, while a vast majority of Americans with college degrees don’t regret college itself, many do say the student debt they incurred wasn’t worth it.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/36-percent-of-college-grads-with-student-loans-say-debt-wasnt-worth-it.html

By KEI-SYGH THOMAS, TapInto

As early as next year, more than half of all jobs will require technical skills. Yet, a majority of students still do not learn to code in or even outside of school. Panasonic Foundation and the Hispanic Heritage Foundation (HFF) have partnered to launch the National Code as a Second Language (CSL) institute in Newark as an effort to shrink the STEM accessibility gap. The six to eight-week coding course will also launch in three other cities across the country: Reno, Nevada;  Atlanta, Georgia; and Calexico, California. “This initiative with the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, Panasonic and The Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club Newark-Ironbound will afford our students access to the very best in education so that they will become global citizens to meet the growing demand of computer science careers,” Superintendent of Newark Public Schools Roger León said in a statement.

https://www.tapinto.net/towns/newark/articles/code-as-a-second-language-institute-launches-to-increase-latinos-in-tech

Times Square Chronicles

Learning, development, and training programs are critical parts of an organization that wants to keep its workforce on its toes with the latest market trends and technological evolutions. However, successful and impactful learning and training programs are those that are designed, developed and managed in a way to increase employee productivity.  The impact often measures the success of an e-learning platform it has on improving employee engagement, employee retention, and employee performance and productivity. All of this translates to a better run and a more efficient and competitive organization. With the help of data analytics, the information available today can be collected, interpreted, analyzed and presented in a way that turns a mediocre and mundane training program into a highly personalized, interactive and absorbing one.

https://t2conline.com/how-to-use-data-analytics-to-improve-development-and-design-of-e-learning-platforms/

Akiko Fujita, Yahoo Finance
Squeezed by a tight labor market and shrinking pool of employees, big corporations like Starbucks and Disney are increasingly turning to a new tool for recruitment: education.  Companies are partnering with universities to offer employees fully-subsidized Bachelor’s or Master’s degrees in hopes of attracting ambitious workers who want to build out their careers. “There are so many new jobs that are either coming or that are here already. So it is shifting from an employer standpoint: How you have to differentiate yourself?” said Chris Trout, VP of learning and development at The Walt Disney Company, speaking at the recent ASU GSV Summit in San Diego.

https://news.yahoo.com/disney-starbucks-walmart-big-companies-are-increasingly-5-offering-education-benefits-for-employees-141316405.html

UNESCO

In 2016, UNESCO created the OER Commons repository on the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) website, where open courseware resources could be indexed according to the ICT CFT competencies and objectives. The ICT CFT Hub has a search tool that allows developers to search for, and identify, resources that would support teachers to acquire a specific ICT CFT objective. This hub contains collections of Open Education Resources (OER) curated by UNESCO and partner countries, which are aligned to the UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers (CFT).

https://en.unesco.org/themes/ict-eduction/competency-framework-teachers-oer

Sascha Segan, PC Magazine

5G is an investment for the next decade, and in previous mobile transitions, we’ve seen most of the big changes happening years after the first announcement. Take 4G, for instance. The first 4G phones in the US appeared in 2010. But the sorts of 4G applications that changed our world didn’t appear until later. Snapchat came in 2012, and Uber became widespread in 2013. Video calls over LTE networks also became widespread in the US around 2013.  The actual 5G radio system, known as 5G-NR, isn’t compatible with 4G. But all 5G devices in the US, to start, will need 4G because they’ll lean on it to make initial connections before trading up to 5G where it’s available. That’s technically known as a “non standalone,” or NSA, network. Later, our 5G networks will become “standalone,” or SA, not requiring 4G coverage to work. But that’s a few years off.

https://www.pcmag.com/article/345387/what-is-5g

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eSchool News
If students are going to tackle the jobs of tomorrow, they need AI skills today.  It’s OK if you don’t know exactly what artificial intelligence (AI) is–but you need to learn, and quickly, because it’s already firmly ensconced in our lives, and AI skills are shaping the future lives and careers of today’s students. AI has already fundamentally changed the way we “do” many things. For instance, most people talk about how the internet destroyed the entire chain of brick-and-mortar Blockbuster stores with Netflix, but this assessment isn’t exactly true–AI was behind that transformation. “We talk about AI as if it’s coming,” but in fact, it’s already here, and it’s been here, said Joseph South, ISTE’s chief learning officer, presenting with ISTE CEO Richard Culatta during a CoSN 2019 session.

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2019/04/19/ai-skills-will-make-break-students-futures/