The majority of respondents (85%) said digital skills are necessities for their jobs, but only 29% of employees felt their skills are currently strong enough, according to the report. Specifically in the US, only 32% of respondents said their companies give them the opportunities or tools to continue gaining digital skills.
The HoloLens 2 is only being sold to corporations, not to consumers. It’s designed for what Kipman calls “first-line workers,” people in auto shops, factory floors, operating rooms, and out in the field fixing stuff. It’s designed for people who work with their hands and find it difficult to integrate a computer or smartphone into their daily work. Kipman wants to replace the grease-stained Windows 2000 computer sitting in the corner of the workroom. It’s pretty much the same decision Google made for Google Glass.
“If you think about 7 billion people in the world, people like you and I — knowledge workers — are by far the minority,” he replies. To him, the workers who will use this are “maybe people that are fixing our jet propulsion engine. Maybe they are the people that are in some retail space. Maybe they’re the doctors that are operating on you in an operating room.”
He continues, saying it’s for “people that have been, in a sense, neglected or haven’t had access to technology [in their hands-on jobs] because PCs, tablets, phones don’t really lend themselves to those experiences.”
Also see:
Microsoft is making a new HoloLens headset, called HoloLens 2. But, it’s only getting sold to companies, not consumers. Meant for professionals who work with their hands and not on computers, the new HoloLens has an improved field of view and doesn’t clip as much as the original. Dieter Bohn visited Microsoft’s campus to get an early look at the new HoloLens 2 headset.
Microsoft unveiled HoloLens 2, an upgraded version of its mixed-reality headset, on Sunday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The new headset will cost $3500, lower than the cost of the earlier version.
The HoloLens 2 launch comes amid controversy over Microsoft’s $480 million deal to sell 100,000 of its mixed reality headsets to the U.S. Army.
Microsoft unveiled HoloLens 2, an upgraded version of its mixed-reality headset, on Sunday in Barcelona, in a bet that doubles down on the idea that businesses will increasingly use hologram technology in the workplace.
The HoloLens 2 headset will cost $3500 —$1500 less than the commercial price of the first HoloLens device Microsoft released more than four years ago.
CONCLUSION
This paper has outlined the plethora of new credential types, uses, and modes of delivery. It also has highlighted advancements in assessment. In terms of assessment content, the progression of mastery-based assessments is a distinct departure from the traditional knowledge-based assessment approaches. New assessments are likely to enter the market, as companies see the tremendous growth of competency-based assessments that will be critical and necessary in the future ecosystem described.
Assessments are no longer just a source of grades for gradebooks. They have forged two meaningful bypass routes to seat time in higher education. In the first, competency-based education assessments gate the pace of student progress through the curriculum. In the second, certification by an exam delivers not a grade, but a degree-like credential in a relevant occupation, indicating skill and expertise. For some occupations, this exam-as-credential has already been market validated by employers’ willingness to require it, hire by it, and pay a salary premium for it.
All of these innovations are driving towards a common end. The future learning-to employment ecosystem will be heavily reliant on credentials and assessments. We see:
A future in which credentials will no longer be limited to degrees, but will come in varying shapes and sizes, offered by many organizations, training providers, and employers;
A future in which credentials will, however, be able to articulate a set of underlying “know” knowledge and “do” performance skill competencies;
A future in which a credential’s scope will be described by the set of competencies it covers, and measured via assessment;
A future in which a credential’s quality will be indicated by evidence of mastery within each competency before it is awarded;
A future in which quality metrics, such as consumer reviews or employer use of credentials will come into play, bringing the best and most usable credentials and assessments to the forefront.
And, finally, the future ecosystem will depend heavily on online and technology-enabled strategies and solutions. The working learner will turn away from those stringent solutions that require seat time and offer little flexibility. They will drive the market hard for innovations that will lead to consumer-facing marketplaces that allow them a “one-stop shop” approach for working, learning, and living.
The massive market of the working learner/the learning worker is here to stay. The future is that learner. Credentials and assessment will find their own strong footing to help successfully meet both the learners’ needs and the employers’ needs. We applaud this SHIFT. For, it will be an ecosystem that services many more learners than today’s education to employment system serves.
Most coherent report I have read on the erosion of degrees and the rise of assessing-for-work and amassing certifications as the competencies for the modern workplace. Jamai Blivin, ofwww.innovate-educate.org, and Merrilea Mayo, of Mayo Enterprises, have put in one report the history, current trends and the illogic for many people of paying for a retail bachelor’s degree when abundant certifications are beginning to prove themselves. Workforce and community colleges, this is a must-read. Kudos!
From DSC: In a next generation learning system, it would be sharp/beneficial to have a Netflix-like interface to check out potential functionalities that you could turn on and off (at will) — as one component of your learning ecosystem that could feature a setup located in your living room or office.
For example, put a Netflix-like interface to the apps out ateduappcenter.com (i.e., using a rolling interface at first, then going to a static page/listing of apps…again…similar to Netflix).
Some brand new strategies and time-tested traditions dictate the way job seekers will conduct the hunt in 2019.
Excerpt:
In addition to making sure you list at least five skills, Guo suggests adding the field you work in since more than 300,000 people search by industry on LinkedIn each week. And don’t forget to update the city you work in since this can make you up to 23 times more likely to be found in search, according to LinkedIn’s data.
From DSC: This next article is likely somewhat of an ad to take courses out at Lynda.com, but it’s still helpful I think:
These are the 10 most in-demand skills of 2019, according to LinkedIn — from weforum.org by Emma Charlton Excerpt (emphasis DSC): According to analysisfrom networking site LinkedIn, 2019’s employers are looking for a combination of both hard and soft skills, with creativity topping the list of desired attributes. The findings chime with the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report, which concluded that “human” skills like originality, initiative and critical thinking are likely to increase in value as technology and automation advances. “Strengthening a soft skill is one of the best investments you can make in your career, as they never go out of style,”LinkedIn Learning Editor, Paul Petrone wrote in a blog. “Plus, the rise of AI is only making soft skills increasingly important, as they are precisely the type of skills robots can’t automate.”
As the Fourth Industrial Revolution impacts skills, tasks and jobs, there is growing concern that both job displacement and talent shortages will impact business dynamism and societal cohesion. A proactive and strategic effort is needed on the part of all relevant stakeholders to manage reskilling and upskilling to mitigate against both job losses and talent shortages.
Through the Preparing for the Future of Work project, the World Economic Forum provides a platform for designing and implementing intra-industry collaboration on the future of work, working closely with the public sector, unions and educators. The output of the project’s first phase of work, Towards a Reskilling Revolution: A Future of Jobs for All, highlighted an innovative method to identify viable and desirable job transition pathways for disrupted workers. This second report, Towards a Reskilling Revolution: Industry-Led Action for the Future of Work extends our previous research to assess the business case for reskilling and establish its magnitude for different stakeholders. It also outlines a roadmap for selected industries to address specific challenges and opportunities related to the transformation of their workforce.
Amazon’s vice president of Alexa, Steve Rabuchin, has confirmed that yes, there really are 10,000 Amazon employees working on Alexa and the Echo.
Those employees are focused on things like machine learning and making Alexa more knowledgeable.
Some employees are working on giving Alexa a personality, too.
From DSC: How might this trend impact learning spaces? For example, I am interested in using voice to intuitively “drive” smart classroom control systems:
“Alexa, turn on the projector”
“Alexa, dim the lights by 50%”
“Alexa, open Canvas and launch my Constitutional Law I class”
What is 5G? 5G networks are the next generation of mobile internet connectivity, offering faster speeds and more reliable connections on smartphones and other devices than ever before.
Combining cutting-edge network technology and the very latest research, 5G should offer connections that are multitudes faster than current connections, with average download speeds of around 1GBps expected to soon be the norm.
The networks will help power a huge rise in Internet of Things technology, providing the infrastructure needed to carry huge amounts of data, allowing for a smarter and more connected world.
With development well underway, 5G networks are expected to launch across the world by 2020, working alongside existing 3G and 4G technology to provide speedier connections that stay online no matter where you are.
So with only a matter of months to go until 5G networks are set to go live, here’s our run-down of all the latest news and updates.
From DSC: I wonder…
What will Human Computer Interaction (HCI) look like when ~1GBps average download speeds are the norm?
What will the Internet of Things (IoT) turn into (for better or for worse)?
How will Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Communications be impacted?
What will that kind of bandwidth mean for XR-related technologies (AR VR MR)?
The Lesson You Never Got Taught in School: How to Learn! — from bigthink.com by Simon Oxenham (from 2/15/13) Psychological Science in the Public Interest evaluated ten techniques for improving learning, ranging from mnemonics to highlighting and came to some surprising conclusions.
Excerpts:
Practice Testing (Rating = High) This is where things get interesting; testing is often seen as a necessary evil of education. Traditionally, testing consists of rare but massively important ‘high stakes’ assessments. There is however, an extensive literature demonstrating the benefits of testing for learning – but importantly, it does not seem necessary that testing is in the format of ‘high stakes’ assessments. All testing including ‘low stakes’ practice testing seems to result in benefits. Unlike many of the other techniques mentioned, the benefits of practice testing are not modest – studies have found that a practice test can double free recall!
Distributed Practice (Rating = High) Have you ever wondered whether it is best to do your studying in large chunks or divide your studying over a period of time? Research has found that the optimal level of distribution of sessions for learning is 10-20% of the length of time that something needs to be remembered. So if you want to remember something for a year you should study at least every month, if you want to remember something for five years you should space your learning every six to twelve months. If you want to remember something for a week you should space your learning 12-24 hours apart. It does seem however that the distributed-practice effect may work best when processing information deeply – so for best results you might want to try a distributed practice and self-testing combo.
Rereading is a terribly ineffective strategy. The best strategy–by far — is to self-test — which is the 9th most popular strategy out of 11 in this study. Self-testing leads to better memory even compared to concept mapping (Karpicke & Blunt, 2011).
Boser says that the idea that people have different learning styles, such as visual learning or verbal learning, has little scientific evidence to support it.
According to Boser, teachers and parents should praise their kids’ ability and effort, instead of telling them they’re smart. “When we tell people they are smart, we give them… a ‘fixed mindset,’” says Boser.
If you are learning piano – or anything, really – the best way to learn is to practice different composers’ work. “Mixing up your practices is far more effective,” says Boser.
Our recommendations to make cumulative exams more powerful with small tweaks for you and your students:
Cumulative exams are good, but encourage even more spacing and discourage cramming with cumulative mini-quizzes throughout the semester, not just as an end-of-semester exam.
Be sure that cumulative mini-quizzes, activities, and exams include similar concepts that require careful discrimination from students, not simply related topics.
Make sure you are using spacing and interleaving as learning strategies and instructional strategies throughout the semester, not simply as part of assessments and cumulative exams.
Bottom line: Just because an exam is cumulative does not mean it automatically involves spacing or interleaving. Be mindful of relationships across exam content, as well as whether students are spacing their study throughout the semester or simply cramming before an exam – cumulative or otherwise.
That said, I could see how all of that information could/would be overwhelming to some students and/or the more technical terms could bore them or fly over their heads. So perhaps we could boil down the information to feature excerpts from the top sections only that put the concepts into easier to digest words such as:
The number of enterprises implementing artificial intelligence (AI) grew 270 percent in the past four years and tripled in the past year, according to the Gartner, Inc. 2019 CIO Survey. Results showed that organizations across all industries use AI in a variety of applications, but struggle with acute talent shortages.
The deployment of AI has tripled in the past year — rising from 25 percent in 2018 to 37 percent today. The reasons for this big jump is that AI capabilities have matured significantly and thus enterprises are more willing to implement the technology. “We still remain far from general AI that can wholly take over complex tasks, but we have now entered the realm of AI-augmented work and decision science — what we call ‘augmented intelligence,’” Mr. Howard added.
Key Findings from the “2019 CIO Survey: CIOs Have Awoken to the Importance of AI”
The percentage of enterprises deploying artificial intelligence (AI) has tripled in the past year.
CIOs picked AI as the top game-changer technology.
Enterprises use AI in a wide variety of applications.
4 Micro-Learning Trends to Watch in 2019 — from elearninglearning.com by Laura Lynch Micro-learning is no longer a trend—it’s a permanent e-learning development. Here’s how it will change in the year to come.
From DSC: Below is a graphic from an article by Jane Hart that’s entitled, “A seamless working and learning environment“- to me, it’s another good example/graphic of a learning ecosystem. This one happens to belong to an organization, but each of us has our own learning ecosystem as well.
Perhaps as a counter to the panic that artificial intelligence will destroy jobs, consulting firm KPMG published a list (on 1/8/19) of what it predicts will soon become the five most sought-after AI roles. The predictions are based on the company’s own projects and those on which it advises. They are:
AI Architect – Responsible for working out where AI can help a business, measuring performance and—crucially— “sustaining the AI model over time.” Lack of architects “is a big reason why companies cannot successfully sustain AI initiatives,” KMPG notes.
AI Product Manager – Liaises between teams, making sure ideas can be implemented, especially at scale. Works closely with architects, and with human resources departments to make sure humans and machines can all work effectively.
Data Scientist – Manages the huge amounts of available data and designs algorithms to make it meaningful.
AI Technology Software Engineer – “One of the biggest problems facing businesses is getting AI from pilot phase to scalable deployment,” KMPG writes. Software engineers need to be able both to build scalable technology and understand how AI actually works.
AI Ethicist – AI presents a host of ethical challenges which will continue to unfold as the technology develops. Creating guidelines and ensuring they’re upheld will increasingly become a full-time job.
While it’s all very well to list the jobs people should be training and hiring for, it’s another matter to actually create a pipeline of people ready to enter those roles. Brad Fisher, KPMG’s US lead on data and analytics and the lead author of the predictions, tells Quartz there aren’t enough people getting ready for these roles.
Fisher has a steer for those who are eyeing AI jobs but have yet to choose an academic path: business process skills can be “trained,” he said, but “there is no substitute for the deep technical skillsets, such as mathematics, econometrics, or computer science, which would prepare someone to be a data scientist or a big-data software engineer.”
From DSC: I don’t think institutions of higher education (as well as several other types of institutions in our society) are recognizing that the pace of technological change has changed, and that there are significant ramifications to those changes upon society. And if these institutions have picked up on it, you can hardly tell. We simply aren’t used to this pace of change.
Technologies change quickly. People change slowly. And, by the way, that is not a comment on how old someone is…change is hard at almost any age.
