Educational Technology

Cheng Choon Fei, Straits Times

In regions where the majority of people have access to low-cost computers and Internet, MOOCs are a blessing given the high cost of tertiary education. They cultivate a habit of self-learning, a vital life skill. MOOCs broaden access to information and provide alternatives to traditional universities, which will force institutions to be more competitive and reduce their costs. Such online courses place the initiative on students who must really yearn for their education and be passionate about the subject.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is credited for being a fine educational establishment. MIT also offers an expansive list of MOOCs. Critics question whether MOOCs offer a quality education but all systems of learning have their flaws and none is perfect.

https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/letters-in-print/traditional-universities-need-to-move-with-the-times

by Emily Alford, ClickZ

By 2020, as many as 70 million U.S. households will own an Amazon Echo, Google Home, or Sonos One. That’s probably because smart speakers and voice assistants save time and make life easier; at least that’s what smart speaker owners say. According to the IAB, 18% of American consumers already own smart devices, and 65% of those owners say they couldn’t imagine going back to life without them. Studies show that more than half of consumers are using smart devices for convenience. It’s just much easier to ask Alexa how long to roast a chicken than it is to Google it yourself. And studies indicate that consumers would like to extend that use of voice search to finding local businesses and making purchases. In fact, 27% are already using voice search as their primary means of finding local businesses.

https://www.clickz.com/voice-engine-optimization-strategy/220274/

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

When your school doesn’t have the budget or the space to accommodate an extensive lab, your students might feel like their science studies are lacking. Educators become frustrated by the lack of resources available to accurately teach science in a modern classroom setting. Fortunately, there are handy tools like the Amazon Alexa that can help engage students. This tiny device is inexpensive for educators to purchase, as well as extremely interesting to students of all ages. Before you plan another science activity, make sure you know these top five things that the Amazon Alexa can offer your science classroom.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/using-amazon-alexa-for-the-science-classroom/

BY KYLE BROWN & BOB NILSON, eCampus News

The eSports market is booming, and on its current trajectory, the number of people who watch and participate in eSports will grow from 395 million this year to 580 million by 2021 according to Newzoo. As the passion—and career opportunity—for eSports grows, colleges and universities are looking for ways to build gaming teams and gaming facilities into their athletic and academic programs. In the case of SUNY Canton, the interest for an eSports program was already there. Upon program launch, tentative transfer students opted to stay, and the amount of interested new students grew. This year alone, SUNY Canton received 270 applications for its eSports-inspired major, Game Design & Development.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2018/11/05/the-explosive-growth-of-collegiate-esports-part-3/

by Ray Schroeder, Inside Digital Education

Yet, the value of Google search increasingly is tarnished as more and more nefarious players have become sophisticated in promulgating their materials on sites that look more like places that we have come to trust. And, of course we are constantly combating sites that install malware and steal information from browsers. This has not gone unnoticed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Danny Hillis, SJ Klein and Travis Rich are developing Underlay — a new knowledge base. As described at the MIT site, the concept of Underlay is to provide deeper citations of sources in order to better inform users

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/search-post-truth-era

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
Although educators have enthusiastically promoted personalized learning, there’s still “imperfect evidence” that it leads to improved outcomes for students. Likewise, curriculum for personalized learning is “underdeveloped,” and policies still exist that could “hinder” its success. In other words, it could be set up to fail, according to a recent RAND Corp. perspective. As the assessment suggested, educators “who want to use rigorous research evidence to guide their designs will find many gaps and will be left with important unanswered questions about which practices or combinations of practices are effective.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/11/05/evidence-on-value-of-personalized-learning-still-needs-to-catch-up.aspx

by Dorothy Gundy, VOA

Amazon wants to get more young people to consider becoming computer engineers. The American technology company this week launched a program that aims to teach more than 10 million students a year how to code. Amazon says it will pay for summer camps and other costs for young people from low-income families. It also will offer teacher training at low-income schools. The program is called Amazon Future Engineer. Amazon hopes the programs will help bring more African-American, Hispanic and female students to the field of computer science.

https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/amazon-wants-to-teach-kids-to-code/4638850.html

DAN ROTELLI, Venture Beat

Among the throngs of zombie AI systems, though, exist a few quality AI systems. These systems are highly intelligent, and though they have some minor human dependencies, they produce incredibly reliable results. The developers of these systems want customers to have a good grasp of the ‘magic’ behind the intelligence – ‘magic’ that really amounts to specific settings, mechanics, controls, even known limitations. True AI can be recognized by its interactivity and trainability. These systems combine intuitive interfaces with algorithms, instructions that tell the robotic brain what logic to use. And with a little coaching along the way, true AI gets smarter and learns to differentiate right from wrong. Compared to zombie systems, true AI systems require more time investment initially but are typically more sustainable in the long run because the coaching continually improves them over time.

https://venturebeat.com/2018/11/03/make-sure-youre-not-investing-in-zombie-ai/

by ILYA BAÑARES, the Star

Alex Jung, an MA candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, is the institution’s first Wikipedian in Residence. It’s a new role. “The purpose behind the position, ultimately, is to go where our community is,” said Jesse Carliner, Communications Librarian. “Everybody, whether they admit to it or not, uses Wikipedia as a starting point for their research if they don’t know anything about a topic.”

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/11/01/u-of-t-libraries-hires-first-wikipedian-in-residence.html

By Divyesh Aegis, BCW

We are sure somewhere you also have come across the name of artificial intelligence. The whole world is discussing the power of artificial intelligence and how it will influence humanity either in positive or negative ways. The terms machine language and artificial learning have become the most complex buzzword across the globe. But believe it or not, artificial intelligence is truly a game-changing technology in the field of enterprise learning. Some of the big organizations have actually been taking the full advantage of artificial learning.

http://www.businesscomputingworld.co.uk/7-ways-machine-learning-will-transform-the-enterprise/

By Amelia Harper, Education Dive
Organizations such as the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) are pushing for a movement toward broad educational reforms, such as competency-based education, with assessment of mastered skills or proficiencies replacing traditional A-F grading systems, according to a column in The Hechinger Report. However, some parents and students in Maine and other locations are pushing back against these changes, citing issues such as a lack of clear guidance in the transition, a lack of student voice in the decisions and the feeling that such shifts are being forced upon them. Obstacles to these new models can come from both sides of the ideological aisle and may result from factors, such as suspicion of philanthropy-backed reforms, a lack of clear communication about the research behind the models, why such changes are necessary, their long-term impact and the fact that most communication about these changes is couched in educational jargon.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/communication-critical-when-introducing-competency-based-models/541195/

MONIKA MARKO AND TJ CRAWFORD, UIC

Although up to 20 percent of adolescents experience a depressive episode each year, the medical community has struggled to implement programs that effectively prevent depression. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have worked to fill this gap in pediatric primary care by conducting clinical trials to evaluate and compare interventions. A new study published in JAMA Network Open highlights the positive effect of one web-based intervention, called CATCH-IT, on preventing depressive episodes among adolescents most at risk.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-11/uoia-oph110218.php

By Sam E. Sharfstein and Connor J. Wagaman, Harvard Crimson

Government Professor Michael J. Sandel spoke about the importance of civic education Thursday evening at a talk titled “Civic Education Goes Global.” Sandel, a pioneer of and advocate for “massive open online courses,” highlighted the importance of creating a global community of respectful discourse through education.  In the discussion, Sandel said his goal is “to take the distance out of distance learning” and to replicate an engaging classroom experience for online learners.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/11/2/ed-school-sandel-talk/

Frost & Sullivan

The increasing adoption of AI technology among Australian businesses is expected to disrupt the country’s labor market across industries such as agriculture, automotive, banking/finance, education, healthcare, ICT, and legal services. “AI technology is disrupting and shifting the global labor ecosystem in terms of job shift, skills shift and work engagement trends. We predict more than 40% high-routine and low-skilled tasks to be automated by 2025-2030,” said Mr. Vijay R Rao, Research Director Mobility, Asia-Pacific, Frost & Sullivan. Furthermore, it is likely for hybrid work environment to emerge, where machines handle tedious tasks and leave high-skill functions for humans.

https://ww2.frost.com/news/frost-commentary/ai-disrupting-labor-ecosystems-automation-replace-human-element-routine-and-low-skilled-jobs-2030-predicts-frost-sullivan/

Greg Toppo, Inside Higher Ed

The University of California, Berkeley, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are doing just that, creating entirely new institutions within their campuses to come to terms with the ubiquity of data and the rise of AI — and to accommodate a surge in popularity that these fields are generating among students and employers. Berkeley on Thursday said it plans to form an entirely new division, to be tentatively called the Division of Data Science and Information, that will engage faculty members and students across the flagship UC campus. The division, officials said, will be led by a new associate provost and connect departments as disparate as UC’s College of Engineering and its College of Letters and Science.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/11/02/big-data-ai-prompt-major-expansions-uc-berkeley-and-mit

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eSchool News

During a two-year period, 100Kin10 developed the Grand Challenges, which created a roadmap of the underlying problems facing STEM education. It also identified 104 critical challenges and catalysts that, if improved, could be the impetus for the greatest STEM education improvements across the education system.

The report draws from three of those catalysts to address three major issues related to teachers’ work environments:
1. Relevant professional growth during the school day
2. Opportunities for teacher collaboration during the school day
3. School leader responsibility for creating positive work environments

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2018/11/01/can-we-design-schools-where-teachers-and-students-thrive/

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

During new-student orientation, Assessment and Planning administers two surveys, one on the impact of orientation and the other to baseline student engagement or their preparedness for college. Then there’s the first-year experience survey given during the fall semester as well as other surveys on financial literacy, student satisfaction with services, satisfaction with admissions and enrollment for transfer students and plenty more. Plus, every semester students’ GPAs are updated, grades are added, data on math proficiency is factored in, and scores from the Multi-State Collaborative to Advance Quality Student Learning are collected, along with standing on the dean’s list and majors declared. Each student is tracked for at least seven years, including where they’ve gone if they’ve withdrawn from the institution before graduation

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/10/11/finding-the-data-that-makes-a-difference.aspx

Daljeet Kaur, Entrepreneur

The education sector has seen a noticeable increase in educational standards, advancement and innovations in recent years. Schools and other educational institutions have begun to adopt modern teaching methods through interactive intelligent boards, projectors and smart notebooks, etc. And we can not deny, these technological updates make the education system more interactive and easier. Students prefer to use tablets, phones and other devices to share and transfer study material that saves their time and efforts. On the other hand, this smart technology helps teachers to turn boring lectures into an engaging session. It is not just about sharing information but also creating a better online presentation by avoiding the need to write manually.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/322587

By Tina Nazerian, EdSurge

One way professors can use artificial intelligence is to help find new materials to add to their lessons, said Bowen. An instructor can type in a concept or idea, such as “industrial design,” into the tool his team built, called Eureka!, which acts like a recommendation engine. Eureka! uses Wikipedia as a source of information. Once the tool generates results, the instructor can identify which ones are most like what he means by “industrial design” or whichever term he used. Eureka! will then use that information to refine the definition of that original term.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-11-01-robots-won-t-replace-instructors-2-penn-state-educators-argue-instead-they-ll-help-them-be-more-human

MIT, Engadget

When you teach language to AI systems, you typically use annotations that describe how words work. But that’s not practical in many cases — even if everybody agrees on those annotations, they often take a lot of time to produce and can still seem unnatural. MIT’s solution? Have AI learn like a child. Its researchers have developed a parser that imitates kids’ learning processes by observing scenes and making connections. The system studies captioned videos and learns to link words to objects and actions by determining the accuracy of a description.

https://www.engadget.com/2018/11/01/ai-can-learn-language-the-way-children-do/

Worcester Polytechnic University

In an effort to build the nation’s strength in artificial intelligence research and teaching, the U.S. Department of Education has awarded Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) $895,500 through its Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) program. With the funds, WPI will provide six needs-based fellowships to U.S. citizens pursuing a PhD in fields deemed to be “areas of national need,” specifically artificial intelligence in such areas as deep learning, natural language processing, machine learning, healthcare analytics, data science, and learning sciences. To be eligible, candidates must plan to pursue a career in teaching or research.

https://www.wpi.edu/news/us-department-education-funds-wpi-help-address-anticipated-shortage-artificial-intelligence