Educational Technology

Larry Gordon, EdSource

The current state budget crisis may just do to Calbright College what past criticism from unions and legislators could not achieve so far: kill off the state’s new fully online community college. Calbright College, established last year to deliver online education for under-employed adults, is now the focus of strengthened efforts to abolish it and redirect $137 million of its funding to other higher education needs, according to testimony Tuesday at a state Assembly subcommittee hearing.

https://edsource.org/2020/new-calls-to-eliminate-the-fully-online-calbright-college-in-budget-crisis/631998

Meg Lloyd, Campus Technology

SkillsCommons provides a massive but navigable repository for the workforce development pipeline — supporting programs with affordable, openly licensed training and education materials. SkillsCommons is an enormous repository of free and open source workforce development training and education materials. By storing quality, vetted materials, it allows those working in workforce development programs to identify and use relevant open education resources (OER) — everything from individual assignments to entire learning programs — through open licensing agreements.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2020/05/19/oer-for-workforce-development.aspx

Stephen Castle, NY Times

The 800-year-old university said in a statement that it was “likely that social distancing will continue to be required” during the next academic year, which begins in October and concludes in the summer of 2021. The university said that the decision will be reviewed if official coronavirus guidance changes. “Lectures will continue to be made available online and it may be possible to host smaller teaching groups in person, as long as this conforms to social distancing requirements,” the university said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/world/europe/cambridge-university-coronavirus.html

As some institutes of higher education (IHE) open in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers the following considerations for ways in which IHEs can help protect students and employees (e.g., faculty, staff, and administrators) and slow the spread of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). IHEs vary considerably in geographic location, size, and structure. As such, IHE officials can determine, in collaboration with state and local health officials, whether and how to implement these considerations while adjusting to meet the unique needs and circumstances of the IHE and local community. Implementation should be guided by what is feasible, practical, acceptable, and tailored to the needs of each community.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/colleges-universities/considerations.html

BY DAN ROBITZSKI, Futurism
Doctors in the U.K. have started using mixed reality headsets to communicate with their peers, drastically cutting down how many medical workers need to come into contact with COVID-19 patients. The Microsoft goggles let the wearer communicate with colleagues or request information like x-ray results from technicians waiting safely in a different room, BBC News reports. And while the idea seems alien at first, doctors told BBC News they think the technology will definitely help limit future spread of the coronavirus.

https://futurism.com/neoscope/doctors-mixed-reality-treat-covid19-patients

Brian Runo interviews Ray Schroeder, MarketScale

Schroeder and host Brian Runo discussed the state of online learning for universities as the world faces the COVID-19 pandemic. With predictive models showing possible new surges of cases in the fall, some universities are going to continue online, while others will reopen for fall with safety precautions in place. Schroeder and Runo also chatted about what to expect from online learning in the future and how universities can prepare for education in the future.

https://marketscale.com/industries/education-technology/exploring-the-state-of-university-online-learning/

Brian Solis, ZD Net
In a time of COVID-19 disruption, futurists can accelerate organizational recovery and capacity. When partnered with purpose-built AI, augmented intelligence can also spur radical innovation. COVID-19 disruption has left enterprises with no choice but to reassess digital transformation investments and roadmaps. While less important projects are delayed, transformation projects involving AI and automation are receiving a lot of attention right now. In just the last 60 days, the adoption of varying levels of AI technologies across the enterprise surged with an incredible sense of urgency.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/now-hiring-ai-futurists-in-an-era-of-covid-19-its-time-for-artificial-intelligence-to-take-a-seat-in-the-c-suite/

PAUL RATNER, Big Think
A U.S. government intelligence agency develops cutting-edge tech to predict future events. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a research arm of the U.S. government intelligence community, is focused on predicting the future. The organization uses teams of human non-experts and AI machine learning to forecast future events. IARPA also conducts advanced research in numerous other fields, funding rotating programs.

https://bigthink.com/technology-innovation/secretive-agency-uses-ai-human-forecasters-to-predict-future