Amazon Gift Signals Confidence in Community Colleges — from insidehighered.com by Suzanne Smalley
The company is giving $3 million to kick-start a computer science bachelor’s degree program at community and technical colleges throughout Washington State.
Excerpt:
Amazon is funding a pilot that will support the launch of new computer science bachelor’s degree programs at community and technical colleges in Seattle and across Washington State, an investment meant to address a workforce shortage plaguing the e-commerce giant and other employers who can’t find qualified candidates for unfilled computer science positions.
Why the Science of Teaching Is Often Ignored — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie
There’s a whole literature on what works. But it’s not making its way into the classroom.
Excerpts:
Yet, teaching reformers argue, the dangers of ignoring the expanding body of knowledge about teaching and learning are ever more apparent. Traditional teaching may have sufficed when college campuses were more ivory tower than lifeboat, educating future generations of scholars and other elites rather than trying to lift up a diverse group of students and prepare them for an increasingly complex world.
Studies have also shown that faculty members are more likely to try evidence-based teaching practices if they feel they have supportive colleagues and departments. Faculty learning communities can be particularly helpful, teaching experts say, because instructors meet regularly over a series of months to tackle complex challenges, often by exploring the research and experimenting with small changes to their teaching.
Reforming teaching evaluations so that they reflect the hard work of reading and reflecting on teaching scholarship is also a critical lever for change.
Web 3.0 vs Metaverse: What’s the difference? — from homo-digitalis.net by Fabian Schmidt
Excerpt:
So what is Web 3.0?
On Twitter, a user asked if someone could explain the term in baby talk. I thought one answer was good:
This is a sufficient simplification to gain an initial understanding. Yet a bit more information is still important.
Let’s get one thing straight right away. As with all things in the making, there is not yet a clear-cut definition of Web 3.0. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the classic web, thinks of the semantic web as the next big step.
…
Since 2020/2021, there is another idea of Web3, and it is inspired by a new form of technology: Blockchains. At its core is a new wave of decentralization.
Besides decentralization, other key topics related to Web 3.0 include Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO), Non-fungible-tokens (NFT), and Decentralized Finance (DeFi).
The metaverse is a digital world that is meant to feel as real as possible and can represent all concerns of human existence. From leisure to work.
Fabian Schmidt, Homo Digitalis, 2021
Bill Gates: Most Work Meetings Will Happen In The Metaverse In 3 Years — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick
Excerpt:
“Within the next two or three years, I predict most virtual meetings will move from 2D camera image grids—which I call the Hollywood Squares model, although I know that probably dates me—to the metaverse, a 3D space with digital avatars,” said Gates in the post. “Both Facebook and Microsoft recently unveiled their visions for this, which gave most people their first view of what it will look like”.
Adidas to enter the metaverse with first NFT products — from dezeen.com by Rima Sabina Aouf
Excerpt:
Adidas has announced its next collection will be a mix of digital and physical items, and will be sold as NFTs produced with collaborators such as Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Titled Into the Metaverse, the collection will comprise virtual wearables that buyers can use in online platforms, but also the physical clothing to match.
It is Adidas’ first collection of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens – essentially, digital collectibles with proven authenticity. NFTs act as a blockchain-based certificate of ownership, allowing pieces to be authenticated, bought and collected.
How Coinbase thinks about the Metaverse — from blog.coinbase.com by Brian Armstrong & Alex Reeve
Excerpt:
Primitive Metaverse platforms are selling virtual land for millions of dollars. Billions more are being invested in Metaverse startups. And Mark Zuckerberg recently renamed his entire company to reflect a focus on building the Metaverse.
…
Recently, our team put together an internal presentation about the Metaverse, who’s working on it, and how crypto will help make it real. I thought the presentation was well done, so I’m sharing most of the slides here.
…
Like Matt[hew Ball], we define the Metaverse as:
The future of the internet: A massively-scaled, persistent, interactive, and interoperable real-time platform comprised of interconnected virtual worlds where people can socialize, work, transact, play, and create.
…
The Metaverse is the distant evolution of Web3. In its most complete form, it will be a series of decentralized, interconnected virtual worlds with a fully functioning economy where people can do just about anything they can do in the physical world.
3 major trends affecting ed tech companies — from highereddive.com by Natalie Schwartz
We reviewed what executives said during their latest earnings calls to better understand patterns in the growing sector.
Excerpts:
Earlier on the call, he said Coursera’s entry-level certificates — which are developed by the likes of Facebook, Google, IBM, Intuit and Salesforce — attracted more than 2 million student enrollments since 2018.
“New entrants to the sector, such as corporations and online education companies, will offer genuine competition to traditional colleges, especially as pricing becomes more of a focus,” analysts wrote in the report.
Several ed tech companies are seeing returns from efforts to work with companies to train their employees.
Officials at Udemy, a major MOOC platform that went public in October, said during a call with analysts in early December that their work with companies now accounts for 39% of their revenue – up from 23% a year ago.
From DSC:
The following items are from a recent presentation by Zach Abramowitz entitled “Legal Disruption: Key Trends to Watch in 2022.” By the way, you can sign up for Zach’s legal newsletter at zachabramowitz.substack.com/
Darrow raises $20 million to uncover corporate legal violations and bring justice to all — from calcalistech.com by Meir Orbach
The Israeli startup is focused on locating violations that have caused damage to millions of people on average – the threshold for a potential class-action lawsuit
Excerpt:
Darrow has developed a machine learning-based platform which discovers legal violations by some of the biggest corporations in the world. Operating chiefly in the U.S., the company is focused on locating violations that have caused damage to millions of people on average – the threshold for a potential class-action lawsuit.
450+ University Partnerships in the first three quarters of 2021 — from holoniq.com
Presidents, Vice Chancellors, Provosts and Deans around the world are increasingly opting for partnerships to accelerate progress towards their institutional objectives.
Excerpts:
International Education is ramping back up, potentially bigger than ever. Bootcamps are booming and the OPM model is evolving further and expanding globally. Behind this growth are University administrators with less funding, more competition and a ‘mid’ COVID student cohort who demand world class flexible learning with competitive job prospects. Partnerships are increasingly part of the strategic solution.
Also see:
The State of Student Success & Engagement in Higher Education — from instructure.com (authors of the Canvas LMS)
Our 2021 Global Student engagement and success study uncovers vital stats and key trends to help education institutions thrive through today’s education challenges.
Excerpt:
50 digital team-building games (for students of all ages)
Excerpt:
At TeachThought, we believe that learning is inherently social, and we see a virtual or online learning structure as an opportunity to stretch ourselves and try new strategies. We’ve curated 50 of the most fun, engaging, and easy-to-implement digital team-building games for students of all ages, arranged by category.
#GSWhatIf students, not just law students, could pursue their passion for change in a way that led to more people, in more places, having access to justice?#A2J #justice #lawschools #legaleducation #innovation https://t.co/vly9TSWa8U
W/ thanks to @fpi_pennlaw for the resource
— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) November 11, 2021
EPISODE 91: THE INNOVATION4JUSTICE LAB – CREATING CHANGE THROUGH LEGAL EDUCATION AND MULTIDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION — from https://www.cli.collaw.com/
We often think about legal innovation and legal education as being separate and distinct but, what if they weren’t? What if students, not just law students, could pursue their passion for change in a way that led to more people, in more places, having access to justice?
That’s the question that the Innovation4Justice (I4J) Lab asked and is answering today.
How to Support Students and Families through Technology and Innovation — from thejournal.com by Jeremy Davis
Excerpt:
Here are just a few district-wide innovations that resulted from the pandemic:
DC: Which reminds me of this idea/graphic:
