What DICE does in this posting will be available 24x7x365 in the future [Christian]

From DSC:
First of all, when you look at the following posting:


What Top Tech Skills Should You Learn for 2025? — from dice.com by Nick Kolakowski


…you will see that they outline which skills you should consider mastering in 2025 if you want to stay on top of the latest career opportunities. They then list more information about the skills, how you apply the skills, and WHERE to get those skills.

I assert that in the future, people will be able to see this information on a 24x7x365 basis.

  • Which jobs are in demand?
  • What skills do I need to do those jobs?
  • WHERE do I get/develop those skills?


And that last part (about the WHERE do I develop those skills) will pull from many different institutions, people, companies, etc.

BUT PEOPLE are the key! Oftentimes, we need to — and prefer to — learn with others!


 

Integrating Active Learning in Large STEM Lectures — from scholarlyteacher.com by Gabriele Pinto

Key Statement: Implementing elements of active learning into a large course may seem daunting task, but think-pair-share aided by quizzing and clickers can be done in any size classroom.

Many teachers do not realize how seamless it can be to shift their lectures towards a more active learning environment. In this article, we looked at how think-pair-share (TPS) is a simple activity that can be easily introduced and integrated within a lecture framework. We also explored how clickers and quizzing may fit into course design to provide greater tools of participation for the students and enrich their classroom experience and study patterns. These implementations, which do not involve drastic and daunting changes to lecturing, will improve student engagement and learning, and will allow the instructor to better gauge the state of the class, evaluate and adjust content pacing accordingly, and enrich his own teaching experience, as well as the students’ education.

 

“The Value of Doing Things: What AI Agents Mean for Teachers” — from nickpotkalitsky.substack.com by guest author Jason Gulya, Professor of English and Applied Media at Berkeley College in New York City

AI Agents make me nervous. Really nervous.

I wish they didn’t.

I wish I could write that the last two years have made me more confident, more self-assured that AI is here to augment workers rather than replace them.

But I can’t.

I wish I could write that I know where schools and colleges will end up. I wish I could say that AI Agents will help us get where we need to be.

But I can’t.

At this point, today, I’m at a loss. I’m not sure where the rise of AI agents will take us, in terms of how we work and learn. I’m in the question-asking part of my journey. I have few answers.

So, let’s talk about where (I think) AI Agents will take education. And who knows? Maybe as I write I’ll come up with something more concrete.

It’s worth a shot, right?

From DSC: 
I completely agree with Jason’s following assertion:

A good portion of AI advancement will come down to employee replacement. And AI Agents push companies towards that. 

THAT’s where/what the ROI will be for corporations. They will make their investments up in the headcount area, and likely in other areas as well (product design, marketing campaigns, engineering-related items, and more). But how much time it takes to get there is a big question mark.

One last quote here…it’s too good not to include:

Behind these questions lies a more abstract, more philosophical one: what is the relationship between thinking and doing in a world of AI Agents and other kinds of automation?


How Good are Claude, ChatGPT & Gemini at Instructional Design? — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
A test of AI’s Instruction Design skills in theory & in practice

By examining models across three AI families—Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini—I’ve started to identify each model’s strengths, limitations, and typical pitfalls.

Spoiler: my findings underscore that until we have specialised, fine-tuned AI copilots for instructional design, we should be cautious about relying on general-purpose models and ensure expert oversight in all ID tasks.


From DSC — I’m going to (have Nick) say this again:
I simply asked my students to use AI to brainstorm their own learning objectives. No restrictions. No predetermined pathways. Just pure exploration. The results? Astonishing.

Students began mapping out research directions I’d never considered. They created dialogue spaces with AI that looked more like intellectual partnerships than simple query-response patterns. 


The Digital Literacy Quest: Become an AI Hero — from gamma.app

From DSC:
I have not gone through all of these online-based materials, but I like what they are trying to get at:

  • Confidence with AI
    Students gain practical skills and confidence in using AI tools effectively.
  • Ethical Navigation
    Learn to navigate the ethical landscape of AI with integrity and responsibility. Make informed decisions about AI usage.
  • Mastering Essential Skills
    Develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills in the context of AI.

 


Expanding access to the Gemini app for teen students in education — from workspaceupdates.googleblog.com

Google Workspace for Education admins can now turn on the Gemini app with added data protection as an additional service for their teen users (ages 13+ or the applicable age in your country) in the following languages and countries. With added data protection, chats are not reviewed by human reviewers or otherwise used to improve AI models. The Gemini app will be a core service in the coming weeks for Education Standard and Plus users, including teens,


5 Essential Questions Educators Have About AI  — from edsurge.com by Annie Ning

Recently, I spoke with several teachers regarding their primary questions and reflections on using AI in teaching and learning. Their thought-provoking responses challenge us to consider not only what AI can do but what it means for meaningful and equitable learning environments. Keeping in mind these reflections, we can better understand how we move forward toward meaningful AI integration in education.


FrontierMath: A Benchmark for Evaluating Advanced Mathematical Reasoning in AI — from epoch.ai
FrontierMath presents hundreds of unpublished, expert-level mathematics problems that specialists spend days solving. It offers an ongoing measure of AI complex mathematical reasoning progress.

We’re introducing FrontierMath, a benchmark of hundreds of original, expert-crafted mathematics problems designed to evaluate advanced reasoning capabilities in AI systems. These problems span major branches of modern mathematics—from computational number theory to abstract algebraic geometry—and typically require hours or days for expert mathematicians to solve.


Rising demand for AI courses in UK universities shows 453% growth as students adapt to an AI-driven job market — from edtechinnovationhub.com

The demand for artificial intelligence courses in UK universities has surged dramatically over the past five years, with enrollments increasing by 453%, according to a recent study by Currys, a UK tech retailer.

The study, which analyzed UK university admissions data and surveyed current students and recent graduates, reveals how the growing influence of AI is shaping students’ educational choices and career paths.

This growth reflects the broader trend of AI integration across industries, creating new opportunities while transforming traditional roles. With AI’s influence on career prospects rising, students and graduates are increasingly drawn to AI-related courses to stay competitive in a rapidly changing job market.

 

Boosting Student Engagement with Interactive and Practical Teaching Methods — from campustechnology.com by Dr. Lucas Long

One of my biggest goals as an educator is to show students how the material they learn in class can be applied to real-world situations. In my finance courses, this often means taking what we’re learning about financial calculations and connecting it to decisions they’ll have to make as adults. For example, I’ve used real-life scenarios like buying a car with a loan, paying off student debt, saving for a wedding, or calculating mortgage payments for a future home purchase. I even use salary data to show students what they could realistically afford given average salaries after graduation, helping them relate to the financial decisions they will face after college.

These practical examples don’t just keep students engaged; they also demonstrate the immediate value of learning financial principles. I often hear students express frustration when they feel like they’re learning concepts that won’t apply to their lives. But when I use real scenarios and provide tools like financial calculators to show them exactly how they’ll use this knowledge in their future, their attitude changes. They become more motivated to engage with the material because they see its relevance beyond the classroom.

 

AI Tutors Double Rates of Learning in Less Learning Time — by drphilippahardman.substack.com Dr. Philippa Hardman
Inside Harvard’s new groundbreaking study

Conclusion
This Harvard study provides robust evidence that AI tutoring, when thoughtfully designed, can significantly enhance learning outcomes. The combination of doubled learning gains, increased engagement, and reduced time to competency suggests we’re seeing just the beginning of AI’s potential in education and that its potential is significant.

If this data is anything to go by, and if we – as humans – are open and willing to acting on it, it’s possible AI will have a significant and for some deeply positive impact on how we design and deliver learning experiences.

That said, as we look forward, the question shouldn’t just be, “how AI can enhance current educational methods?”, but also “how it might AI transform the very nature of learning itself?”. With continued research and careful implementation, we could be moving toward an era of education that’s more effective but also more accessible than ever before.


Three Quick Examples of Teaching with and about Generative AI — from derekbruff.org Derek Bruff

  • Text-to-Podcast.
  • Assigning Students to Groups.
  • AI Acceptable Use Scale.

Also from Derek’s blog, see:


From Mike Sharples on LinkedIn: 


ChatGPT’s free voice wizard — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Caplan
How and why to try the new Advanced Voice Mode

7 surprisingly practical ways to use voice AI
Opening up ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode (AVM) is like conjuring a tutor eager to help with whatever simple — or crazy — query you throw at it. Talking is more fluid and engaging than typing, especially if you’re out and about. It’s not a substitute for human expertise, but AVM provides valuable machine intelligence.

  • Get a virtual museum tour. …
  • Chat with historical figures….
  • Practice languages. …
  • Explore books. …
  • Others…


Though not AI-related, this is along the lines of edtech:


…which links to:

 

The Uberfication of Higher Ed — from evolllution.com by Robert Ubell | Vice Dean Emeritus of Online Learning in the School of Engineering, New York University
As the world of work increasingly relies on the gig economy, higher ed is no different. Many institutions seek to drive down labor costs by hiring contingent works, thereby leaving many faculty in a precarious position and driving down the quality of education.

While some of us are aware that higher ed has been steadily moving away from employing mostly full-time, tenured and tenure-track faculty, replacing them with a part-time, contingent academic workforce, the latest AAUP report issued this summer shows the trend is accelerating. Precarious college teachers have increased by nearly 300,000 over the last decade, as conventional faculty employment stays pretty much flat. It’s part of a national trend in the wider economy that replaces permanent workers with lower paid, contingent staff—members of what we now call the gig economy.

The wide disparity is among the most glaring dysfunctions—along with vast student debt, falling enrollment, rising tuition and other dangers afflicting higher education—but it’s the least acknowledged. Rarely, if ever, does it take its place among the most troubling ails of academic life. It’s a silent disease, its symptoms largely ignored for over half a century.

Do families who send their kids to college, paying increasingly stiff tuition, realize that most of the faculty at our universities are as precarious as Uber drivers?

Everyone at the table was taken aback, totally surprised, a sign—even if anecdotal—that this dirty secret is pretty safe. Mass participation of contingent faculty at our universities remains largely obscure, wrapped in a climate of silence, with adjunct faculty perpetuating the quiet by leaving their students mostly uninformed about their working conditions.  

 


Are ChatGPT, Claude & NotebookLM *Really* Disrupting Education? — from drphilippahardman.substack.com
Evaluating Gen AI’s *real* impact on human learning

The TLDR here is that, as useful as popular AI tools are for learners, as things stand they only enable us to take the very first steps on what is a long and complex journey of learning.

AI tools like ChatGPT 4o, Claude 3.5 & NotebookLM can help to give us access to information but (for now at least) the real work of learning remains in our – the humans’ – hands.


To which Anna Mills had a solid comment:

It might make a lot of sense to regulate generated audio to require some kind of watermark and/or metadata. Instructors who teach online and assign voice recordings, we need to recognize that these are now very easy and free to auto-generate. In some cases we are assigning this to discourage students from using AI to just autogenerate text responses, but audio is not immune.




 


Articulate AI & the “Buttonification” of Instructional Design — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
A new trend in AI-UX, and its implications for Instructional Design

1. Using AI to Scale Exceptional Instructional Design Practice
Imagine a bonification system that doesn’t just automate tasks, but scales best practices in instructional design:

  • Evidence-Based Design Button…
  • Learner-Centered Objectives Generator…
    Engagement Optimiser…

2. Surfacing AI’s Instructional Design Thinking
Instead of hiding AI’s decision-making process, what if we built an AI system which invites instructional designers to probe, question, and learn from an expert trained AI?

  • Explain This Design…
  • Show Me Alternatives…
  • Challenge My Assumptions…
  • Learning Science Insights…

By reimagining the role of AI in this way, we would…


Recapping OpenAI’s Education Forum — from marcwatkins.substack.com by Marc Watkins

OpenAI’s Education Forum was eye-opening for a number of reasons, but the one that stood out the most was Leah Belsky acknowledging what many of us in education had known for nearly two years—the majority of the active weekly users of ChatGPT are students. OpenAI has internal analytics that track upticks in usage during the fall and then drops off in the spring. Later that evening, OpenAI’s new CFO, Sarah Friar, further drove the point home with an anecdote about usage in the Philippines jumping nearly 90% at the start of the school year.

I had hoped to gain greater insight into OpenAI’s business model and how it related to education, but the Forum left me with more questions than answers. What app has the majority of users active 8 to 9 months out of the year and dormant for the holidays and summer breaks? What business model gives away free access and only converts 1 out of every 20-25 users to paid users? These were the initial thoughts that I hoped the Forum would address. But those questions, along with some deeper and arguably more critical ones, were skimmed over to drive home the main message of the Forum—Universities have to rapidly adopt AI and become AI-enabled institutions.


Off-Loading in the Age of Generative AI — from insidehighered.com by James DeVaney

As we embrace these technologies, we must also consider the experiences we need to discover and maintain our connections—and our humanity. In a world increasingly shaped by AI, I find myself asking: What are the experiences that define us, and how do they influence the relationships we build, both professionally and personally?

This concept of “off-loading” has become central to my thinking. In simple terms, off-loading is the act of delegating tasks to AI that we would otherwise do ourselves. As AI systems advance, we’re increasingly confronted with a question: Which tasks should we off-load to AI?

 

S&P: Community colleges lifted by improved enrollment and finances — from highereddive.com by Ben Unglesbee

Dive Brief:

  • With enrollment trends improving and state appropriations increasing, the community college sector has reason for “optimism,” according to a recent report from S&P Global Ratings.
  • For 2023, median full-time equivalent enrollment, at 5,439 students, was down just 0.3% from 2021 and up nearly 8.1% from the previous year, S&P found among the roughly 200 community colleges it rates. That comes after enrollment in the sector fell 7.7% year over year in 2022,.
  • Meanwhile, median state appropriations per FTE student for the sector increased 19.1% to $4,930 between 2021 and 2023, analysts found.

College competition and operational pain are the ‘new normal,’ S&P says — from highereddive.com by Ben Unglesbee-
Margins are down, costs are up and tuition revenue is constrained after the pandemic exacerbated existing challenges, according to a recent report.

Dive Brief:

  • U.S. colleges face a “new normal” and accelerated existing challenges in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, including constrained operations and heavy competition, a recent report from S&P Global Ratings found.
  • Between 2018 and 2023, operating margin rates fell from 0.8% to -0.1% amid rising costs to colleges, according to S&P. Meanwhile, median tuition discount rates at private colleges rose by more than 5 percentage points, to 44.4%, in that period, putting pressure on college revenues.
  • From 2019 through the second quarter of 2024, the ratings agency issued 126 credit downgrades for the higher ed sector, compared to 62 upgrades, per the report.

5 ways colleges can improve outreach to rural students — from highereddive.com by Laura Spitalniak
Students from small towns help strengthen campus communities, said panelists at the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s conference.

We cannot just swoop in and take the best and brightest and just say, ‘Oh, good job us.’ We want this to be a two-way highway, not a one-way brain drain. 

Marjorie Betley
Deputy director of admissions at the University of Chicago


A Trauma-Informed Teaching Framework for Stewards — from scholarlyteacher.com by Jeannette Baca, New Mexico Highlands University; Debbie Gonzalez, California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt; Jamie Langlois, Grand Valley State University; and Mary Kirk, Winona State University

Using the Trauma-Informed Community of Inquiry (T-I CoI) framework as a pedagogical design helped us address students’ emotional stress and facilitated cognitive growth and connection to the learning process. It also provided an opportunity to create a sense of community within an online learning environment. When we returned to in-person instruction, the model continued to be beneficial.

 

Average Student Loan Debt — from educationdata.org by Melanie Hanson; last updated August 16, 2024

Report Highlights. 

  • The total average student loan debt (including private loan debt) may be as high as $40,681.
  • The average federal student loan debt is $37,853 per borrower.
  • Outstanding private student loan debt totals $128.8 billion.
  • The average student borrows over $30,000 to pursue a bachelor’s degree.
  • A total of 42.8 million borrowers have federal student loan debt.
  • It may take borrowers close to 20 years to pay off their student loans.

From DSC:
In other words, we are approaching the end of the line in terms of following the status quo within higher education. Institutions of traditional higher education can no longer increase their cost of tuition by significantly more than the rate of inflation. Increasingly, K-12 students (and families) are looking for other pathways and alternatives. Higher ed better stop trying to change around the edges…they need new, more cost-effective business models as well as being able to be much more responsive in terms of their curricula.

 

Helping Neurodiverse Students Learn Through New Classroom Design — from insidehighered.com by Michael Tyre
Michael Tyre offers some insights into how architects and administrators can work together to create better learning environments for everyone.

We emerged with two guiding principles. First, we had learned that certain environments—in particular, those that cause sensory distraction—can more significantly impact neurodivergent users. Therefore, our design should diminish distractions by mitigating, when possible, noise, visual contrast, reflective surfaces and crowds. Second, we understood that we needed a design that gave neurodivergent users the agency of choice.

The importance of those two factors—a dearth of distraction and an abundance of choice—was bolstered in early workshops with the classroom committee and other stakeholders, which occurred at the same time we were conducting our research. Some things didn’t come up in our research but were made quite clear in our conversations with faculty members, students from the neurodivergent community and other stakeholders. That feedback greatly influenced the design of the Young Classroom.

We ended up blending the two concepts. The main academic space utilizes traditional tables and chairs, albeit in a variety of heights and sizes, while the peripheral classroom spaces use an array of less traditional seating and table configurations, similar to the radical approach.


On a somewhat related note, also see:

Unpacking Fingerprint Culture — from marymyatt.substack.com by Mary Myatt

This post summarises a fascinating webinar I had with Rachel Higginson discussing the elements of building belonging in our settings.

We know that belonging is important and one of the ways to make this explicit in our settings is to consider what it takes to cultivate an inclusive environment where each individual feels valued and understood.

Rachel has spent several years working with young people, particularly those on the periphery of education to help them back into mainstream education and participating in class, along with their peers.

Rachel’s work helping young people to integrate back into education resulted in schools requesting support and resources to embed inclusion within their settings. As a result, Finding My Voice has evolved into a broader curriculum development framework.

 

Democrats and Republicans Agree Teacher Prep Needs to Change. But How? — from edweek.org by Libby Stanford
The programs have been designed “essentially to mass-produce identical educators,” a teachers college dean told lawmakers

The core problem, witnesses at the hearing said, is that teacher-preparation programs treat all teachers—and, by extension, students—the same, asking teachers to be “everything to everybody.”

“The current model of teaching where one teacher works individually with a group of learners in a classroom—or a small box inside of a larger box that we call school—promotes unrealistic expectations by assuming individual teachers working in isolation can meet the needs of all students,” said Greg Mendez, the principal of Skyline High School in Mesa, Ariz.

From DSC:
I’ve long thought teacher education programs could and should evolve (that’s why I have a “student teacher/teacher education” category on this blog). For example, they should inform their future teachers about the science of learning and how to leverage edtech/emerging technologies into their teaching methods.

But regardless of what happens in our teacher prep programs, the issues about the current PreK-12 learning ecosystem remain — and THOSE things are what we need to address. Or we will continue to see teachers leave the profession.

  • Are we straight-jacketing our teachers and administrators by having them give so many standardized tests and then having to teach to those tests? (We should require our legislators to teach in a classroom before they can draft any kind of legislation.)
  • Do teachers have the joy they used to have? The flexibility they used to have? Do students?
  • Do students have choice and voice?
  • etc.

Also, I highlighted the above excerpt because we can’t expect a teacher to do it all. They can’t be everything to everybody. It’s a recipe for burnout and depression. There are too many agendas coming at them.

We need to empower our current teachers and listen very carefully to the changes that they recommend. We should also listen very carefully to what our STUDENTS are recommending as well!

 

FlexOS’ Stay Ahead Edition #43 — from flexos.work

People started discussing what they could do with Notebook LM after Google launched the audio overview, where you can listen to 2 hosts talking in-depth about the documents you upload. Here are what it can do:

  • Summarization: Automatically generate summaries of uploaded documents, highlighting key topics and suggesting relevant questions.
  • Question Answering: Users can ask NotebookLM questions about their uploaded documents, and answers will be provided based on the information contained within them.
  • Idea Generation: NotebookLM can assist with brainstorming and developing new ideas.
  • Source Grounding: A big plus against AI chatbot hallucination, NotebookLM allows users to ground the responses in specific documents they choose.
  • …plus several other items

The posting also lists several ideas to try with NotebookLM such as:

Idea 2: Study Companion

  • Upload all your course materials and ask NotebookLM to turn them into Question-and-Answer format, a glossary, or a study guide.
  • Get a breakdown of the course materials to understand them better.

Google’s NotebookLM: A Game-Changer for Education and Beyond — from ai-supremacy.com by Michael Spencer and Nick Potkalitsky
AI Tools: Breaking down Google’s latest AI tool and its implications for education.

“Google’s AI note-taking app NotebookLM can now explain complex topics to you out loud”

With more immersive text-to-video and audio products soon available and the rise of apps like Suno AI, how we “experience” Generative AI is also changing from a chatbot of 2 years ago, to a more multi-modal educational journey. The AI tools on the research and curation side are also starting to reflect these advancements.


Meet Google NotebookLM: 10 things to know for educators — from ditchthattextbook.com by Matt Miller

1. Upload a variety of sources for NotebookLM to use. 
You can use …

  • websites
  • PDF files
  • links to websites
  • any text you’ve copied
  • Google Docs and Slides
  • even Markdown

You can’t link it to YouTube videos, but you can copy/paste the transcript (and maybe type a little context about the YouTube video before pasting the transcript).

2. Ask it to create resources.
3. Create an audio summary.
4. Chat with your sources.
5. Save (almost) everything. 


NotebookLM summarizes my dissertation — from darcynorman.net by D’Arcy Norman, PhD

I finally tried out Google’s newly-announced NotebookLM generative AI application. It provides a set of LLM-powered tools to summarize documents. I fed it my dissertation, and am surprised at how useful the output would be.

The most impressive tool creates a podcast episode, complete with dual hosts in conversation about the document. First – these are AI-generated hosts. Synthetic voices, speaking for synthetic hosts. And holy moly is it effective. Second – although I’d initially thought the conversational summary would be a dumb gimmick, it is surprisingly powerful.


4 Tips for Designing AI-Resistant Assessments — from techlearning.com by Steve Baule and Erin Carter
As AI continues to evolve, instructors must modify their approach by designing meaningful, rigorous assessments.

As instructors work through revising assessments to be resistant to generation by AI tools with little student input, they should consider the following principles:

  • Incorporate personal experiences and local content into assignments
  • Ask students for multi-modal deliverables
  • Assess the developmental benchmarks for assignments and transition assignments further up Bloom’s Taxonomy
  • Consider real-time and oral assignments

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announces $120M fund for global AI education — from techcrunch.com by Anthony Ha

He added that he wants to avoid a global “AI divide” and that Google is creating a $120 million Global AI Opportunity Fund through which it will “make AI education and training available in communities around the world” in partnership with local nonprofits and NGOs.


Educators discuss the state of creativity in an AI world — from gettingsmart.com by Joe & Kristin Merrill, LaKeshia Brooks, Dominique’ Harbour, Erika Sandstrom

Key Points

  • AI allows for a more personalized learning experience, enabling students to explore creative ideas without traditional classroom limitations.
  • The focus of technology integration should be on how the tool is used within lessons, not just the tool itself

Addendum on 9/27/24:

Google’s NotebookLM enhances AI note-taking with YouTube, audio file sources, sharable audio discussions — from techcrunch.com by Jagmeet Singh

Google on Thursday announced new updates to its AI note-taking and research assistant, NotebookLM, allowing users to get summaries of YouTube videos and audio files and even create sharable AI-generated audio discussions

NotebookLM adds audio and YouTube support, plus easier sharing of Audio Overviews — from blog.google

 

10 Ways I Use LLMs like ChatGPT as a Professor — from automatedteach.com by Graham Clay
ChatGPT-4o, Gemini 1.5 Pro, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, custom GPTs – you name it, I use it. Here’s how…

Excerpt:

  1. To plan lessons (especially activities)
  2. To create course content (especially quizzes)
  3. To tutor my students
  4. To grade faster and give better feedback
  5. To draft grant applications
  6. Plus 5 other items

From Caution to Calcification to Creativity: Reanimating Education with AI’s Frankenstein Potential — from nickpotkalitsky.substack.com by Nick Potkalitsky
A Critical Analysis of AI-Assisted Lesson Planning: Evaluating Efficacy and Pedagogical Implications

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

As we navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence in education, a troubling trend has emerged. What began as cautious skepticism has calcified into rigid opposition. The discourse surrounding AI in classrooms has shifted from empirical critique to categorical rejection, creating a chasm between the potential of AI and its practical implementation in education.

This hardening of attitudes comes at a significant cost. While educators and policymakers debate, students find themselves caught in the crossfire. They lack safe, guided access to AI tools that are increasingly ubiquitous in the world beyond school walls. In the absence of formal instruction, many are teaching themselves to use these tools, often in less than productive ways. Others live in a state of constant anxiety, fearing accusations of AI reliance in their work. These are just a few symptoms of an overarching educational culture that has become resistant to change, even as the world around it transforms at an unprecedented pace.

Yet, as this calcification sets in, I find myself in a curious position: the more I thoughtfully integrate AI into my teaching practice, the more I witness its potential to enhance and transform education


NotebookLM and Google’s Multimodal Vision for AI-Powered Learning Tools — from marcwatkins.substack.com by Marc Watkins

A Variety of Use Cases

  • Create an Interactive Syllabus
  • Presentation Deep Dive: Upload Your Slides
  • Note Taking: Turn Your Chalkboard into a Digital Canvas
  • Explore a Reading or Series of Readings
  • Help Navigating Feedback
  • Portfolio Building Blocks

Must-Have Competencies and Skills in Our New AI World: A Synthesis for Educational Reform — from er.educause.edu by Fawzi BenMessaoud
The transformative impact of artificial intelligence on educational systems calls for a comprehensive reform to prepare future generations for an AI-integrated world.

The urgency to integrate AI competencies into education is about preparing students not just to adapt to inevitable changes but to lead the charge in shaping an AI-augmented world. It’s about equipping them to ask the right questions, innovate responsibly, and navigate the ethical quandaries that come with such power.

AI in education should augment and complement their aptitude and expertise, to personalize and optimize the learning experience, and to support lifelong learning and development. AI in education should be a national priority and a collaborative effort among all stakeholders, to ensure that AI is designed and deployed in an ethical, equitable, and inclusive way that respects the diversity and dignity of all learners and educators and that promotes the common good and social justice. AI in education should be about the production of AI, not just the consumption of AI, meaning that learners and educators should have the opportunity to learn about AI, to participate in its creation and evaluation, and to shape its impact and direction.

 

Top Software Engineering Newsletters in 2024 — from ai-supremacy.com by Michael Spencer
Including a very select few ML, AI and product Newsletters into the mix for Software Engineers.

This is an article specifically for the software engineers and developers among you.

In the past year (2023-2024) professionals are finding more value in Newsletters than ever before (especially on Substack).

As working from home took off, the nature of mentorship and skill acquisition has also evolved and shifted. Newsletters with pragmatic advice on our careers it turns out, are super valuable. This article is a resource list. Are you a software developer, work with one or know someone who is or wants to be?

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian