Could Slack be the next online learning platform? — from edsurge.com by Amy Ahearn

Excerpt:

Enter Slack. The online communication platform launched two years ago and now has more than 2.3 million users. It facilitates an online, supercharged version of watercooler conversation, enabling people to trade information and chat informally with colleagues. And it might just be a game changer for online education.

On Slack there are flexible public channels, along with small private groups for exchanges between just a few people. Media companies including the New York Times are using it as a content management system, and corporations from Walmart to Blue Bottle Coffee rely on it to keep globally distributed teams in sync.

 

At +Acumen we were intrigued when marketing guru Seth Godin used Slack for an experiment in online learning. In 2014 he started altMBA, an online leadership workshop, and hosted it in Slack.

 

 

Also see:

 

Slack2-March2016

Slack-March2016

 

 

Microsoft Surface Hub is now shipping – – from avinteractive.com

Excerpt:

Surface Hub is… “a new category of device that will transform the way companies work by delivering a new kind of productivity experience made for group collaboration. It was designed from the ground up for ink and touch, and harnesses the best collaboration and security features of Windows 10, Skype for Business, Office, OneNote and Universal Windows apps.”

 

 

Microsoft Surface Hub finally starts shipping — from informationweek.com by Nathan Eddy
Microsoft’s Surface Hub promises to revolutionize the way companies collaborate and communicate, but are businesses ready to pay a hefty price to do so? The giant, Windows 10-based device starts at $9,000.

 

 

Also see:

 

MicrosoftSurfaceHubNowShipping-3-31-16

MicrosoftSurfaceHub2-NowShipping-3-31-16

 

You can choose between 55” HD and 84” 4K options.
Start meetings on time with a tap of the screen.
End your session with an option to save & send meeting content to the group for later use.

 

 

From DSC:
Though this hardware is targeted towards the corporate space, I can’t help but think of the applications to higher education as well.  This is yet another tool that could facilitate active learning & stronger collaboration — whether that be in classrooms or in conference rooms.  Note how these solutions are often able to bring in remote learners/employees into the discussions.  In several of these kinds of solutions, the remote learners/employees can see and interact with the same content…such as in Bluescape.

 

Bluescape-3-31-16

 

 

 

 

From DSC:
Reading the first item from today’s Learning TRENDS — from Elliott Masie — it appears that employees’ learning ecosystems are morphing…big time. More and more, employees are producing content and/or finding it outside the internal Learning & Development groups.

Having worked in Fortune 500 companies for 15 years, I experienced first hand the need to keep growing and learning — and that the employee ultimately needs to own their own learning.  It’s in the organizations’ and employees’ best interests to have employees tap into multiple streams of content in order to keep learning and growing. The L&D Groups are still very important, but given the pace of change — and disruption — one simply can’t afford to have someone else be in charge of one’s learning.


 

Excerpt from Learning TRENDS  #911 (emphasis DSC)

Learner as Content Producer? More of the learning consumed by learners has been created, compiled or produced by sources other than internal Learning & Development groups. We have been surveying a significant shift in the origin of content used by employees of our organizations. Increasingly, we are seeing these as the source of content:

  • Search Found Content.
  • Public Content Collections – TED Talks, YouTube, Others.
  • Peer Created Content or Collaborations.
  • Curated Content by Learners.
  • 3rd Party Content from External Providers.

The “meta” trend is that organization is building less and less of the content in a formal designer mode. In fact, the Learner is often becoming a “Learning Producer”, through their own assembly and selection of content from a wider and wider set of resources. It will be interesting to track how learners expand and hone their skills of being their own “Producers” – and how learning functions leverage this to help curate a more effective and efficient set of learning choices for the rest of the enterprise.

 

 

StreamsOfContent-DSC

 

 

 

 

Steelcase Education’s Second Annual Active Learning Center Grant Program provides schools & universities new classrooms — from prnewswire.com
Thirteen schools and universities across North America receive Learning Space Innovator Awards

Excerpt:

The 2016 grant recipients are:

  • Boyce Middle School, Pittsburgh, PA
  • College of Lake County, Grayslake, IL
  • Furman University, Greenville, SC
  • LaSalle College, Montréal Campus, Montreal, Canada
  • Lipman Middle School, Brisbane, CA
  • Northwest Suburban Special Education Organization, Timber Ridge School, Mt. Prospect, IL
  • Shorecrest Preparatory School, St. Petersburg, FL
  • St. Edward’s University, Austin, TX
  • St. Elizabeth High School, Wilmington, DE
  • Tennessee Tech University, Cookeville, TN
  • Turner/Bartels K-8, Tampa, FL
  • University of Saint Mary, Leavenworth, KS
  • Upper Arlington High School, Upper Arlington, OH
 

We can do nothing to change the past, but we have enormous power to shape the future. Once we grasp that essential insight, we recognize our responsibility and capability for building our dreams of tomorrow and avoiding our nightmares.

–Edward Cornish


From DSC:
This posting represents Part IV in a series of such postings that illustrate how quickly things are moving (Part I, Part II, Part III) and to ask:

  • How do we collectively start talking about the future that we want?
  • Then, how do we go about creating our dreams, not our nightmares?
  • Most certainly, governments will be involved….but who else should be involved?

 

The biggest mystery in AI right now is the ethics board that Google set up after buying DeepMind — from businessinsider.com by Sam Shead

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) ethics board, established when Google acquired London AI startup DeepMind in 2014, remains one of the biggest mysteries in tech, with both Google and DeepMind refusing to reveal who sits on it.

Google set up the board at DeepMind’s request after the cofounders of the £400 million research-intensive AI lab said they would only agree to the acquisition if Google promised to look into the ethics of the technology it was buying into.

A number of AI experts told Business Insider that it’s important to have an open debate about the ethics of AI given the potential impact it’s going to have on all of our lives.

 

 

 

Algorithms may save us from information overload, but are they the curators we want? — from newstatesman.com by Barbara Speed
Instagram is joining the legions of social networks which use algorithms to dictate what we see, and when we see it.

Excerpt:

We’ve entered the age of the algorithm.

In a way, it was inevitable: thanks to the rise of smartphones and social media, we’re surrounded by vast, unfiltered streams of information, dripped to us via “feeds” on sites like Facebook and Twitter. As a result, we needed something to tame all that information, because an unfiltered stream is about as useful as no information at all. So we turned to a type of algorithm which could help separate the signal from the noise: basically, a set of steps which would calculate which information should be prioritised, and which should be hidden.

It’s impossible to say that algorithms are “good” or “bad”, just as humanity isn’t overridingly either. Algorithms are designed by humans, and therefore carry forward whatever prejudice or bias they’re programmed to perform.

 

 

 

Internet of Things to be used as spy tool by governments: US intel chief  — from arstechnica.com by David Kravets
Clapper says spy agencies “might” use IoT for surveillance, location tracking.

Excerpt:

James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, told lawmakers Tuesday that governments across the globe are likely to employ the Internet of Things as a spy tool, which will add to global instability already being caused by infectious disease, hunger, climate change, and artificial intelligence.

Clapper addressed two different committees on Tuesday—the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee—and for the first time suggested that the Internet of Things could be weaponized by governments. He did not name any countries or agencies in regard to the IoT, but a recent Harvard study suggested US authorities could harvest the IoT for spying purposes.

 

 

 

“GoPro” Anthropology — paying THEM to learn from US? — from Jason Ohler’s Big Ideas Series

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

What’s the big idea?
Consumer research and individual learning assessment techniques will merge, using wearable technology that observes and records life from the wearer’s point of view. The recording technology will be invisible to the consumer and student, as well as to the public. Video feeds will be beamed to analysts, real time. Recordings will be analyzed and extrapolated by powerful big data driven analytics. For both consumers and students, research will be conducted for the same purpose: to provide highly individualized approaches to learning and sales. Mass customized learning and consumerism will take a huge step forward. So will being embedded in the surveillance culture.

Why would we submit to this? Because we are paid to? Perhaps.  But we may well pay them to watch us, to tell us about ourselves, to help us and our children learn better and faster in a high stakes testing culture, and to help us make smarter choices as consumers. Call it “keeping up with data-enhanced neighbors.” Numerous issues of privacy and security will be weighed against personal opportunity, as learners, consumers and citizens.

 

 

 

10 promising technologies assisting the future of medicine and healthcare — by Bertalan Meskó, MD, PhD

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Technology will not solve the problems that healthcare faces globally today. And the human touch alone is not enough any more, therefore a new balance is needed between using disruptive innovations but still keeping the human interaction between patients and caregivers. Here are 10 technologies and trends that could enable this.

I see enormous technological changes heading our way. If they hit us unprepared, which we are now, they will wash away the medical system we know and leave it a purely technology–based service without personal interaction. Such a complicated system should not be washed away. Rather, it should be consciously and purposefully redesigned piece by piece. If we are unprepared for the future, then we lose this opportunity. I think we are still in time and it is still possible.

The advances of technology do not have to mean the end of the human touch. Instead, the beginning of a new era when both are crucial.

 

 

 

Inside the Artificial Intelligence Revolution: A Special Report, Pt. 1 — from rollingstone.com by Jeff Goodell
We may be on the verge of creating a new life form, one that could mark not only an evolutionary breakthrough, but a potential threat to our survival as a species

Inside the Artificial Intelligence Revolution: A Special Report, Pt. 2 — from rollingstone.com by Jeff Goodell
Self-driving cars, war outsourced to robots, surgery by autonomous machines – this is only the beginning

 

 

Laser weapons ready for use today, Lockheed executives say — from defensenews.com by Aaron Mehta
The time has finally come where those weapons are capable of being fielded, according to a trio of Lockheed Martin executives who work on the development of the company’s laser arsenal.

 

 

 

Delivery Robot – Fresh Pizza With DRU From Domino. — from wtvox.com

From DSC:
How many jobs will be displaced here? How many college students — amongst many others — are going to be impacted here, as they try to make their way through (paying for) college? But don’t assume that it’s just lower level jobs that will be done away with…for example, see the next entry re: the legal profession.

 

 

New Report Predicts Over 100,000 Legal Jobs Will Be Lost To Automation — from futurism.com by
An extensive new analysis by Deloitte estimates that over 100,000 jobs will be lost to technological automation within the next two decades. Increasing technological advances have helped replace menial roles in the office and do repetitive tasks.

Excerpt:

A new analysis from Deloitte Insight states that within the next two decades, an estimated 114,000 jobs in the legal sector will have a high chance of having been replaced with automated machines and algorithms. The report predicts “profound reforms” across the legal profession with the 114,000 jobs representing over 39% of jobs in the legal sector.

These radical changes are spurred by the rapid pace of technological progress and the need to offer clients more value for their money. Automation and the increasing rise of millennials in the legal workplace also alter the nature of talent needed by law firms in the future.

 

 

 

Raffaello D’Andrea: Meet the dazzling flying machines of the future — from ted.com

Description:

When you hear the word “drone,” you probably think of something either very useful or very scary. But could they have aesthetic value? Autonomous systems expert Raffaello D’Andrea develops flying machines, and his latest projects are pushing the boundaries of autonomous flight — from a flying wing that can hover and recover from disturbance to an eight-propeller craft that’s ambivalent to orientation … to a swarm of tiny coordinated micro-quadcopters.

 

 

 

Addendum on 4/4/16:

The Scarlett Johansson Bot is the robotic future of objectifying women — from wired.com by April Glaser (From DSC: I’m not advocating this objectification of woman *at all*; rather I post this addendum  here because this is the kind of thing that we need to be aware of and talking about, or the future won’t be a dream…it will be a nightmare)

Excerpt:

The question, however, is one of precedent. If a man can’t earn the attention of the woman he longs for, is it plausible for that man to build a robot that looks exactly like his love interest instead? Is there any legal recourse to prevent someone from building a ScarJo bot, or Beyonce bot, or a bot of you? Sure, people make doll and wax replicas of famous people all the time. But the difference here is that Mark 1 moves, smiles, and winks.

 

 

8ninths Develops “Holographic Workstation”™ for Citi Traders using Microsoft HoloLens — from 8ninths.com

Excerpt:

San Francisco – March 30, 2016 – 8ninths was named today by Microsoft Corporation as one of seven companies chosen for the Microsoft HoloLens Agency Readiness Program, and will showcase their “Holographic Workstation”™ prototype, designed and engineered for Citi, this week at Microsoft Build 2016. The Holographic Workstation™ increases efficiency by using the Microsoft HoloLens platform to create 3D holograms of real-time financial data. A three-tiered system of dynamically updated and interactive information enables traders to view, process, and interact with large amounts of abstract data in a combined 3D and 2D environment. The physical workstation integrates tablet screen space, 3D holographic docking space, keyboard, mouse, gaze, gesture, voice input, and existing Citi devices and workflows.

 

Hololens-VR-Workstation-March2016

 

8ninths-march2016-main

 

8ninths-march2016

 

 

HoloLens could get into finance with this VR workstation — from mashable.com by Lance Ulanoff

Excerpt:

8Ninths Cofounder and CEO Adam Sheppard told me they looked at the pain points of existing workstations and then drew inspiration from how, for example, they’d seen Microsoft and NASA solve 3D problems by embedding information in 2D and real environments.

The result is 8ninths’ Holographic Workstation, which was announced Wednesday at Microsoft’s Build 2016 developers conference. It’s a true blend of the real world (a physical day trader desk with a pair of real screens and a Surface Pro 4 in the middle) and a host of live, financial visualizations spread above the physical desk, including a cloud-like work area floating above the top shelf.

 

Also see the Vimeo video on this:

 

8ninths-march2016-vimeo

 

 

Microsoft HoloLens used as the basis for a cool holographic stock trading workstation — from windowscentral.com by John Callaham

 

 

\

 

The future of wearable technology is bright, here are some reasons why — from Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers

Excerpt:

For years now, wearable devices have promised to help us lead healthier lives, experience life in new ways, and become less dependent on our smartphones. 2015 was a very important year for wearables as the market took several important steps towards delivering on these promises. Apple released their much anticipated Apple Watch. GoPro launched a host of new action camera products. FitBit went public with a market cap of over $6B. And Oculus and Microsoft solidified their plans for Rift and Hololens, respectively.

Despite the positive momentum, the expectations of the market have not yet been met, as many of these wearable devices will be found tucked away in a drawer or a nightstand after only a few weeks of use. Fortunately, technology can and will solve the majority of shortcomings associated with wearables today. To use a baseball analogy, we are only in the third inning, and there is still a lot of ballgame to be played. Several of us got together in the podcast studio at KPCB to discuss our thoughts on the future of wearable technology – above is our discussion some of our takeaways.

 

 

Also see:

 

 

 

Now anyone can use Google’s deep learning techniques — from futurism.com by Sarah Marquart

In Brief:

Google announced a new machine learning platform for developers. The company is also open-sourcing tools such as Tensorflow to allow the community to take its internal tools, adapt them for their own uses, and improve them.

Google has announced a new machine learning platform for developers at its NEXT Google Cloud Platform user conference. Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, explained that Google believes machine learning is “what’s next.”

 

GoogleNEXT16

 

 

Using artificial intelligence in the classroom — from educationdive.com by Erin McIntyre

Dive Brief:

  • After Google’s artificially intelligent (AI) computer system beat world champion “Go” player Lee Sedol of South Korea, some are wondering if man-made neural networks can be applied in educational settings to benefit learning.
  • Companies like Pearson have begun to examine the subject; the company recently released a pamphlet called Intelligence Unleashed: An argument for AI in Education that argues software may soon be able to provide instant and deeper feedback regarding student progress, eliminating traditional standardized testing.
  • Pearson also conceptualized something called a “lifelong learning companion” for students, which essentially could be seen as an interactive cloud that asked questions, provided encouragement, offered suggestions and connected learners to resources.

 

 

AI-in-Education--2016

Excerpts:

ALGORITHM
A defined list of steps for solving a problem. A computer program can be viewed as an elaborate algorithm. In AI, an algorithm is usually a small procedure that solves a recurrent problem.

MACHINE LEARNING
Computer systems that learn from data, enabling them to make increasingly better predictions.

DECISION THEORY
The mathematical study of strategies for optimal decision-making between options involving different risks or expectations of gain or loss depending on the outcome.

 

It can be difficult to define artificial intelligence (AI), even for experts. One reason is that what AI includes is constantly shifting. As Nick Bostrom, a leading AI expert from Oxford University, explains: “[a] lot of cutting edge AI has filtered into general applications, often without being called AI because once something becomes useful enough and common enough it is not labeled AI anymore.” Instead, it is considered a computer program, or an algorithm, or an app, but not AI.

Another reason for the difficulty in defining AI is the interdisciplinary nature of the field. Anthropologists, biologists, computer scientists, linguists, philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists all contribute to the field of AI, and each group brings their own perspective and terminology.

For our purposes, we define AI as computer systems that have been designed to interact with the world through capabilities (for example, visual perception and speech recognition) and intelligent behaviours (for example, assessing the available information and then taking the most sensible action to achieve a stated goal) that we would think of as essentially human.

 

 

IBM’s Rometty wants you to know they’re a ‘cognitive solutions cloud platform company’ — from barrons.com by Tiernan Ray

Excerpt:

Rometty says she is the first IBM chief to ever offer a keynote at the show [CES]. Her framework for everything this evening is that the “future is cognitive,” and we’re headed to a “cognitive IoT.”

What happens when everyone becomes digital, she asks. What will differentiate people is understanding all that data. That is the “cognitive era.” “Cognitive is an era of business and an era of technology,” she says. 80% of data out here is “black, invisible,” and “that’s what’s changing,” she says.

Rometty clarifies cognitive is not synonymous with A.I. It is not about systems you program. It is about systems that learn.

Her point is that all that “vast IoT data is going to do nothing for you unless you can bring cognitive to it.”

Her big point: “IBM is no longer a hardware, software company,” but a “cognitive solutions cloud platform company.”

 

 

 

SoftBank’s Pepper robot to get even brainier with IBM’s Watson technology — from thenextweb.com by Natt Garun

Excerpt:

When it launched last year, SoftBank’s emotion-reading robot Pepper sold out in just one minute despite its limited utility. Now, Pepper’s about to get smarter thanks to a partnership with IBM to integrate Watson cognitive system into its brains.

With Watson, developers hope to help Pepper understand human emotions more thoroughly to appropriately respond and engage with its users. IBM and SoftBank say the collaboration will also allow Pepper to gather new information from social media to learn how people interact with brands so it knows how to personally reach out to people.

 

 

 
 

Microsoft starts shipping HoloLens and announces a big Windows 10 update — from money.cnn.com by Heather Kelly
Microsoft’s take on virtual reality is one step closer to becoming a real product.

Excerpt:

The developer version of the HoloLens augmented reality headset starts shipping today, Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) announced at its developers’ conference in San Francisco.

The company also unveiled a Windows 10 update that includes new powers for virtual assistant Cortana, expanded security features, and new support for styluses.

 

 

11 incredible headsets that are making the virtual a reality — from digitaltrends.com by Simon Hill
The latest VR headsets offer more than a mere doorway into wire-frame worlds. We are finally about to lay our hands on the decent VR headset we’ve all be waiting for. Here are the top contenders, from Oculus to PlayStation VR, vying for the title.

Along these lines, also see:

 

 

“My name is Sidra”: how virtual reality could combat compassion fatigue — from newstatesman.com by
We look away from the suffering in humanitarian crises because it’s so vast. Virtual reality invites us to look at individuals’ experiences again.

Excerpt:

The aim of these films is to make us care about these crises on a deep, personal level. We know instinctively that it’s easier to emote with a single person than a faceless crowd of thousands, and this tactic takes that idea to its extreme: VR places you next to the person you could help with your donations, and allows you to directly engage by “walking” around the film yourself. The near-banality of Sidra’s film is its strength: the balance of dark and light in her life is easier to understand than a montage of outright misery, because it more closely mirrors our own.

 

 

 

CancerSurgery-VR-March2016


UK cancer surgery to be live-streamed via virtual reality technology
— from theguardian.com by Ben Quinn

Excerpt:

An operation on a British cancer patient is to be live-streamed around the world using virtual reality technology designed to make viewers feel as if they are in the operating theatre.

It will be performed by Shafi Ahmed, a London surgeon who has been at the forefront of pioneering virtual reality technology in surgery, and who described next month’s operation as a gamechanger for healthcare innovation and education.

 

 

Addendums:

 

Nokia-OZO-March2016

 

4 ed-tech ideas face The Chronicle’s version of ‘Shark Tank’ — from chronicle.com by Goldie Blumenstyk

Excerpt:

Four innovators with four very different ideas for improving higher education brought their pitches to The Chronicle’s second-annual Shark Tank: Edu Edition during the South by Southwest Edu conference in March.

They included a professor with technology that turns students into moving elements of classroom visualizations, an entrepreneur whose company aims to ease the process of hiring adjunct instructors, a nonprofit organization supporting working-adult students as they pursue competency-based degrees, and a consulting organization proposing the establishment of a new kind of educational advisers, supported with federal dollars, to help students navigate an increasingly “unbundled” education system.

 

Also see:

What Compels People to Pursue Radical Innovations in Education — from etale.org by Bernard Bull

Excerpt:

What compels people to pursue more radical innovations in education? It has now been almost two decades since I started to more seriously and systematically study innovations in education and innovative learning organizations. Many of the musings about that show up in the chapters of my book on Missional Moonshots (not to mention the many articles on this blog), but since my exploration started, I can’t think of a single day that has passed without some thought experiment or reflection about educational innovation. In that sense, it has become a consuming passion for me because I see educational innovation as an important social good, and I have immense respect for those who tap into the courage, creativity and hard work necessary to pursue revolutionary or radical innovations in education.

As such, I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about what compels people to pursue such innovations. What is it that happens inside or outside of people that draws, drives or inspires them to get off the paved roads of legacy education models and frameworks and do the hard work of helping to create completely new roadways? Under what conditions is this more likely to happen for a person? While some of this has to do with how people are wired (both genetically wired and wired through a longstanding set of life experiences), there are other aspects at work as well. That is what leads me to start to put into words some of what I’ve seen. Amid many observations, conversations, formal and informal interviews, and my study of educational innovators and entrepreneurs, the following six consistently show up as conditions that often catapult people into trying something more radical in the education space.

 

From Wikipedia’s page on “Prison Education” (emphasis DSC):

Reductions in recidivism
Recent research on prison education programs presents discouraging statistics on the current recidivism rate. The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) reported in 2011 that nearly 7 in 10 people who had been incarcerated will commit a new crime, and half will end up back in prison within three years. Given that about 95 out of every 100 incarcerated people eventually rejoin society, it is crucial that there are educational programs in the prison system.[16] Not only is it important to develop programs in prison that are educational but if recidivism is a goal then there also needs to be support programs in the community to support the reentry population where they can either continue their education or get assistance in finding a sustainable job.[17]

Skeptics claim that, in many cases, prison education produces nothing more than “better educated criminals”.[18] However, many studies have shown significant decreases in recidivism. “The more educational programs successfully completed for each six months confined the lower the recidivism rate” according to Harer (1994), in his Federal Bureau of Prisons Office of Research & Evaluation report.[19][20]


Personal development
To those afforded the opportunity to further their education, it “may be the first glimmer of hope that [they] can escape the cycles of poverty and violence that have dominated their lives”.[21] Pursuing an education can also undo some of the damage accrued during their stay in prison; it can awaken senses numbed and release creativity that is both therapeutic and rehabilitative.[22]

With good skills and an education, released prisoners have a better chance at moving on with their lives despite their criminal record. 75% of college-educated ex-prisoners are able to find stable employment.[23] Employment helps ex-prisoners stay out of prison, despite the formidable obstacles, including the social stigma of being an ex-con and state laws that bar them from professions requiring licensure. They will be dealing with these obstacles for the rest of their lives.

 

A College Education for Prisoners — from/by the Editorial Board of the New York Times

Excerpt:

States are finally backing away from the draconian sentencing policies that swept the country at the end of the last century, driving up prison costs and sending too many people to jail for too long, often for nonviolent offenses. Many are now trying to turn around the prison juggernaut by steering drug addicts into treatment instead of jail and retooling parole systems that once sent people back to prison for technical violations.

But the most effective way to keep people out of prison once they leave is to give them jobs skills that make them marketable employees. That, in turn, means restarting prison education programs that were shuttered beginning in the 1990s, when federal and state legislators cut funding to show how tough they were on crime.

 

 

a16z Podcast: Your worst deeds don’t define you — life and redemption in prison — this podcast is produced by Andreessen Horowitz (aka “a16z”), a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm

Description:

Men and women who have spent decades in prison are being released into an iPhone-enabled world that they hardly recognize. Shaka Senghor is one of those people, imprisoned at age 19 for second-degree murder and released almost two decades later in 2010. “It was like Fred Flintstone walking into an episode of the Jetsons,” he tells Ben Horowitz in a conversation about his book, Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison.

Today, Senghor is an activist, advocate, and mentor for young men and women who find themselves on the same troubled path he took. This episode of the a16z Podcast covers Ben and Shaka’s conversation about healing, humanity, and redemption — especially if you believe that it’s how you finish, not just how you start, that matters.

 

WritingMyWrongsMarch2016

 

 

Prison ministry degree program reflects restorative justice — from calvin.edu by Jon Gorter; from 2/26/15

Excerpt:

At Handlon Correctional Facility in Ionia, MI, select inmates will  have the opportunity to earn an AA or BA degree in Ministry Leadership through Calvin College this fall.

The Ministry Leadership program, initiated by the Calvin Theological Seminary (CTS) in partnership with Calvin College, has gained the interest of the college; and though it is still waiting for final accreditation, was approved by faculty senate at the beginning of this month.

Each year, around 18 to 20 selected inmates will be transferred from various Michigan prisons to the Handlon Correctional Facility to take courses in required core disciplines and in Ministry Leadership.

After completing at least 124 semester hours over a period of 5 years, students will receive a BA degree, which will enable them to lead worship, disciple fellow inmates, and mentor short-term prisoners.

 

Related:
Calvin programs designed to educate inmates — from calvin.edu by Anneke Kapteyn

 

 

Also relevant/see:

  • Traveling the World in Search of a New Vision of Justice — from takepart.com by Rebecca McCray
    Baz Dreisinger traverses the continents in her new book, visiting prisons worldwide and bringing their lessons back to the U.S.
    Excerpt:
    As a longtime teacher in U.S. prisons, journalist, and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Baz Dreisinger has spent many hours considering incarceration in the United States. In her new book, Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World, she takes her expertise and looks out to the rest of the world. Traveling from South Africa, to Uganda, to Brazil, to Thailand, and Australia, Dreisinger takes her teaching skills into far-flung modern prison complexes and gives her readers a glimpse into the lives of the men and women incarcerated there.TakePart talked to Dreisinger about what she learned while working on the book and how it changed the way she thinks about justice in the U.S. (The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
    .
  • The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI)
    The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) creates the opportunity for incarcerated men and women to earn a Bard College degree while serving their sentences. The academic standards and workload are rigorous, based on an unusual mix of attention to developmental skills and ambitious college study. The rate of post-release employment among the program’s participants is high and recidivism is stunningly low. By challenging incarcerated men and women with a liberal education, BPI works to redefine the relationship between educational opportunity and criminal justice.
    .
  • Divine Hope Seminary
    Excerpts from website:
    Divine Hope Reformed Bible Seminary is a dedicated prison seminary  that operates within the Danville Correctional Center (Illinois) and the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, the Westville (Indiana) Correctional Center and the Rockville (Indiana) Correctional Center.

    The school is called Divine Hope Reformed Bible Seminary because it provides an opportunity for hope-giving and life-changing studies that prepare our students for useful service within and outside of prison.

 

 

Addendums on 4/4/16:

Hebrews 13:3 New International Version (NIV)

Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.

 

Why Tribeca Film Institute is doing screenings in prison — from fastcompany.com by David Zax
The Community Screening Series helps prisoners connect to each other, the world outside, and new educational opportunities.

Excerpt:

The evening’s screening—Tribeca does two every month—would also serve as an on-ramp to other educational initiatives in the prison; several men in the audience had come to early screenings where they learned about a higher education program in the prison offered through John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

But Bravo had a longstanding interest in mass incarceration and prison education. Growing up in Far Rockaway, Queens, people in his community kept getting locked up, so often on simple drug possession. “I realized there was a direct relationship between the prison industrial complex and poor communities of color,” he recalls today. In the ’90s, he became a hip-hop journalist, editing a column for a magazine about prisons, and he began to visit them. Meanwhile, the U.S. prison population soared (it now stands at 2.4 million, giving the U.S. one of the highest incarceration rates in the world).

Bravo kept wanting to work to connect prisoners to the outside world. When he started making documentaries for PBS, he made sure to screen them in prison. When he worked for the famed documentarian Albert Maysles, he did the same. “I thought of prison audiences as a vital stakeholder group in the community,” he recalls.

At Otisville, the screening winds to its conclusion. Ransom, White, and Rodriguez break the men into three groups, leading them in discussion. In Rodriguez’s group, conversation about the film turns heady immediately, as the men pick apart Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” laws, which so wildly lower the bar for self-defense claims. “Citizens are killing people because they thought he had a gun? That has to be addressed,” says one. “My mother told me you have to teach young black males how to deal with police authority,” says another. “These are not things young white men have to learn…”

As the evening unfolds, the conversation winds more generally to the topic of justice.

“What does it take to have justice?” White asks the men, as Bravo looks on.

One of the incarcerated men responds immediately: “Education.”

 

 

MicrosoftHoloportationGoesLive-March2016

Description:

Holoportation is a new type of 3D capture technology that allows high-quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed, compressed and transmitted anywhere in the world in real time. When combined with mixed reality displays such as HoloLens, this technology allows users to see, hear, and interact with remote participants in 3D as if they are actually present in the same physical space. Communicating and interacting with remote users becomes as natural as face-to-face communication.

Team webpage:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/i3d/

Video:
http://youtu.be/7d59O6cfaM0

 

 

holoportation is a new type of 3D capture technology that allows high quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed, compressed, and transmitted anywhere in the world in real-time. When combined with mixed reality displays such as HoloLens, this technology allows users to see and interact with remote participants in 3D as if they are actually present in their physical space. Communicating and interacting with remote users becomes as natural as face to face communication.

 

MicrosoftHoloportationGoesLive-March2016-2

 

Some other items on this:

 

 

Addendum:

 

HeIsRisen

 

To those who celebrate it, Happy Easter to you!
Glory to God in the Highest!

 

 

 

Around 2,000 years ago, this was not a Good Friday for the LORD.  But for us, looking back on His resurrection, it is a Good Friday — as He paid the price for our sins.

 

JesusChristontheCross

 

As it is written in Isaiah Chapter 53:

Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

———————-

Isaiah Chapter 53 (NIV version) in its entirety reads:

53 Who has believed our message
    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted,
    yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
By oppression[a] and judgment he was taken away.
    Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
    for the transgression of my people he was punished.[b]
He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
    and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
    nor was any deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
    and though the Lord makes[c] his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
    and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
11 After he has suffered,
    he will see the light of life[d] and be satisfied[e];
by his knowledge[f] my righteous servant will justify many,
    and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,[g]
    and he will divide the spoils with the strong,[h]
because he poured out his life unto death,
    and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
    and made intercession for the transgressors.

 
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