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AI Resources and Teaching [Kent State U] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 04/16/2024, in adjunct faculty, art, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, bots, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, design, digital audio, digital learning, digital storytelling, digital video, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, faculty, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, liberal arts, media/film, Microsoft, multimedia, music, Natural Language Processing (NLP), new media literacies, online media, online tutoring, Open AI, open courseware and systems, pedagogy, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, teaching & learning, tools, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

AI RESOURCES AND TEACHING (Kent State University) — from aiadvisoryboards.wordpress.com

AI Resources and Teaching | Kent State University offers valuable resources for educators interested in incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into their teaching practices. The university recognizes that the rapid emergence of AI tools presents both challenges and opportunities in higher education.

The AI Resources and Teaching page provides educators with information and guidance on various AI tools and their responsible use within and beyond the classroom. The page covers different areas of AI application, including language generation, visuals, videos, music, information extraction, quantitative analysis, and AI syllabus language examples.

A Cautionary AI Tale: Why IBM’s Dazzling Watson Supercomputer Made a Lousy Tutor — from the74million.org by Greg Toppo
With a new race underway to create the next teaching chatbot, IBM’s abandoned 5-year, $100M ed push offers lessons about AI’s promise and its limits.

For all its jaw-dropping power, Watson the computer overlord was a weak teacher. It couldn’t engage or motivate kids, inspire them to reach new heights or even keep them focused on the material — all qualities of the best mentors.

It’s a finding with some resonance to our current moment of AI-inspired doomscrolling about the future of humanity in a world of ascendant machines. “There are some things AI is actually very good for,” Nitta said, “but it’s not great as a replacement for humans.”

His five-year journey to essentially a dead-end could also prove instructive as ChatGPT and other programs like it fuel a renewed, multimillion-dollar experiment to, in essence, prove him wrong.
…

To be sure, AI can do sophisticated things such as generating quizzes from a class reading and editing student writing. But the idea that a machine or a chatbot can actually teach as a human can, he said, represents “a profound misunderstanding of what AI is actually capable of.”

Nitta, who still holds deep respect for the Watson lab, admits, “We missed something important. At the heart of education, at the heart of any learning, is engagement. And that’s kind of the Holy Grail.”

From DSC:
This is why the vision that I’ve been tracking and working on has always said that HUMAN BEINGS will be necessary — they are key to realizing this vision. Along these lines, here’s a relevant quote:

Another crucial component of a new learning theory for the age of AI would be the cultivation of “blended intelligence.” This concept recognizes that the future of learning and work will involve the seamless integration of human and machine capabilities, and that learners must develop the skills and strategies needed to effectively collaborate with AI systems. Rather than viewing AI as a threat to human intelligence, a blended intelligence approach seeks to harness the complementary strengths of humans and machines, creating a symbiotic relationship that enhances the potential of both.

Per Alexander “Sasha” Sidorkin, Head of the National Institute on AI in Society at California State University Sacramento.

Integrating AI into your teaching + numerous other items re: AI in our Learning Ecosystems

On 02/05/2024, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, assessment, CMS/LMS, colleges, community colleges, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, Google, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, liberal arts, lifelong learning, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, society, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, tools, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, writing, by Daniel Christian

Augment teaching with AI – this teacher has it sussed… — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark

Emphasis (emphasis DSC):

You’re a teacher who wants to integrate AI into your teaching. What do you do? I often get asked how should I start with AI in my school or University. This, I think, is one answer.

Continuity with teaching
One school has got this exactly right in my opinion. Meredith Joy Morris has implemented ChatGPT into the teaching process. The teacher does their thing and the chatbot picks up where the teacher stops, augmenting and scaling the teaching and learning process, passing the baton to the learners who carry on. This gives the learner a more personalised experience, encouraging independent learning by using the undoubted engagement that 1:1 dialogue provides.

There’s no way any teacher can provide this carry on support with even a handful of students, never mind a class of 30 or a course with 100. Teaching here is ‘extended’ and ‘scaled’ by AI. The feedback from the students was extremely positive.

Reflections on Teaching in the AI Age — from by Jeffrey Watson

The transition which AI forces me to make is no longer to evaluate writings, but to evaluate writers. I am accustomed to grading essays impersonally with an objective rubric, treating the text as distinct from the author and commenting only on the features of the text. I need to transition to evaluating students a bit more holistically, as philosophers – to follow along with them in the early stages of the writing process, to ask them to present their ideas orally in conversation or in front of their peers, to push them to develop the intellectual virtues that they will need if they are not going to be mastered by the algorithms seeking to manipulate them. That’s the sort of development I’ve meant to encourage all along, not paragraph construction and citation formatting. If my grading practices incentivize outsourcing to a machine intelligence, I need to change my grading practices.

4 AI Imperatives for Higher Education in 2024 — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

[Bryan Alexander] There’s a crying need for faculty and staff professional development about generative AI. The topic is complicated and fast moving. Already the people I know who are seriously offering such support are massively overscheduled. Digital materials are popular. Books are lagging but will gradually surface. I hope we see more academics lead more professional development offerings.

For an academic institution to take emerging AI seriously it might have to set up a new body. Present organizational nodes are not necessarily a good fit.

A Technologist Spent Years Building an AI Chatbot Tutor. He Decided It Can’t Be Done. — from edsurge.com by Jeffrey R. Young
Is there a better metaphor than ‘tutor’ for what generative AI can do to help students and teachers?

When Satya Nitta worked at IBM, he and a team of colleagues took on a bold assignment: Use the latest in artificial intelligence to build a new kind of personal digital tutor.

This was before ChatGPT existed, and fewer people were talking about the wonders of AI. But Nitta was working with what was perhaps the highest-profile AI system at the time, IBM’s Watson. That AI tool had pulled off some big wins, including beating humans on the Jeopardy quiz show in 2011.

Nitta says he was optimistic that Watson could power a generalized tutor, but he knew the task would be extremely difficult. “I remember telling IBM top brass that this is going to be a 25-year journey,” he recently told EdSurge.

Teachers stan AI in education–but need more support — from eschoolnews.com by Laura Ascione

What are the advantages of AI in education?
Canva’s study found 78 percent of teachers are interested in using AI education tools, but their experience with the technology remains limited, with 93 percent indicating they know “a little” or “nothing” about it – though this lack of experience hasn’t stopped teachers quickly discovering and considering its benefits:

60 percent of teachers agree it has given them ideas to boost student productivity
59 percent of teachers agree it has cultivated more ways for their students to be creative
56 percent of teachers agree it has made their lives easier

…

When looking at the ways teachers are already using generative artificial intelligence, the most common uses were:

Creating teaching materials (43 percent)
Collaborative creativity/co-creation (39 percent)
Translating text (36 percent)
Brainstorming and generating ideas (35 percent)

The next grand challenge for AI — from ted.com by Jim Fan

The State of Washington Embraces AI for Public Schools — from synthedia.substack.com by Bret Kinsella; via Tom Barrett
Educational institutions may be warming up to generative AI

Washington state issued new guidelines for K-12 public schools last week based on the principle of “embracing a human-centered approach to AI,” which also embraces the use of AI in the education process. The state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Chris Reykdal, commented in a letter accompanying the new guidelines:

New education features to help teachers save time and support students — from by Shantanu Sinha

Giving educators time back to invest in themselves and their students
Boost productivity and creativity with Duet AI: Educators can get fresh ideas and save time using generative AI across Workspace apps. With Duet AI, they can get help drafting lesson plans in Docs, creating images in Slides, building project plans in Sheets and more — all with control over their data.

Every Major Tech Development From 2023, Open AI updates their prompt engineering section + other AI-in-general items

On 12/19/2023, in Adobe, Amazon, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, Asia, bots, digital audio, digital video, emerging technologies, Facebook / Meta Platforms, Google, IBM, Microsoft, multimedia, music, NVIDIA, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Prompt engineering — from platform.openai.com

This guide shares strategies and tactics for getting better results from large language models (sometimes referred to as GPT models) like GPT-4. The methods described here can sometimes be deployed in combination for greater effect. We encourage experimentation to find the methods that work best for you.

Some of the examples demonstrated here currently work only with our most capable model, gpt-4. In general, if you find that a model fails at a task and a more capable model is available, it’s often worth trying again with the more capable model.

You can also explore example prompts which showcase what our models are capable of…

Preparedness — from openai.com

The study of frontier AI risks has fallen far short of what is possible and where we need to be. To address this gap and systematize our safety thinking, we are adopting the initial version of our Preparedness Framework. It describes OpenAI’s processes to track, evaluate, forecast, and protect against catastrophic risks posed by increasingly powerful models.

Every Major Tech Development From 2023 — from newsletter.thedailybite.co
The yearly tech round-up, Meta’s smart glasses upgrade, and more…

Here’s every major innovation from the last 365 days:

Microsoft: Launched additional OpenAI-powered features, including Copilot for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365, enhancing business functionalities like text summarization, tone adjustment in emails, data insights, and automatic presentation creation.
Google: Introduced Duet, akin to Microsoft’s Copilot, integrating Gen AI across Google Workspace for writing assistance and custom visual creation. Also debuted Generative AI Studio, enabling developers to craft AI apps, and unveiled Gemini & Bard, a new AI technology with impressive features.
Salesforce: …
Adobe: …
Amazon Web Services (AWS): …
IBM: …
Nvidia: …
OpenAI: …
Meta (Facebook): …
Tencent: …
Baidu: …

News in chatbots — from theneurondaily.com by Noah Edelman & Pete Huang

Here’s what’s on the horizon:

Multimodal AI gets huge. Instead of just typing, more people will talk to AI, listen to it, create images, get visual feedback, create graphs, and more.
AI video gets really good. So far, AI videos have been cool-but-not-practical. They’re getting way better and we’re on the verge of seeing 100% AI-generated films, animations, and cartoons.
AI on our phones. Imagine Siri with the brains of ChatGPT-4 and the ambition of Alexa. TBD who pulls this off first!
GPT-5. ‘Nuff said.

20 Best AI Chatbots in 2024 — from eweek.com by Aminu Abdullahi
These leading AI chatbots use generative AI to offer a wide menu of functionality, from personalized customer service to improved information retrieval.

Top 20 Generative AI Chatbot Software: Comparison Chart
We compared the key features of the top generative AI chatbot software to help you determine the best option for your company…

What Google Gemini Teaches Us About Trust and The Future — from aiwithallie.beehiiv.com by Allie K. Miller
The AI demo may have been misleading, but it teaches us two huge lessons.

TL;DR (too long, didn’t read)

We’re moving from ‘knowledge’ to ‘action’.
AI moving into proactive interventions.
We’re getting more efficient.
Assume 2024 brings lower AI OpEx.
It’s multi-modal from here on out.
Assume 2024 is multi-modal.
There’s no one model to rule them all.
Assume 2024 has more multi-model orchestration & delegation.

Stay curious, stay informed,
Allie

Chatbot Power Rankings — from theneurondaily.com by Noah Edelman

Here’s our power rankings of the best chatbots for (non-technical) work:

1: ChatGPT-4—Unquestionably the smartest, with the strongest writing, coding, and reasoning abilities.

T1: Gemini Ultra—In theory as powerful as GPT-4. We won’t know for sure until it’s released in 2024.

2: Claude 2—Top choice for managing lengthy PDFs (handles ~75,000 words), and rarely hallucinates. Can be somewhat stiff.

3: Perplexity—Ideal for real-time information. Upgrading to Pro grants access to both Claude-2 and GPT-4.

T4: Pi—The most “human-like” chatbot, though integrating with business data can be challenging.

T4: Bing Chat—Delivers GPT-4-esque responses, has internet access, and can generate images. Bad UX and doesn’t support PDFs.

T4: Bard—Now powered by Gemini Pro, offers internet access and answer verification. Tends to hallucinate more frequently.

and others…

Midjourney + ChatGPT = Amazing AI Art — from theaigirl.substack.com by Diana Dovgopol and the Pycoach
Turn ChatGPT into a powerful Midjourney prompt machine with basic and advanced formulas.

Make music with AI — from aitestkitchen.withgoogle.com re: Music FX

IBM Commits to Train 2 Million AI Learners for Free by 2026 [Lucariello] + “Teaching with AI is hard.” [Gulya]

On 10/16/2023, in Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, business, corporate / business world, emerging technologies, experimentation, IBM, personalized/customized learning, training / L&D, United States, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

IBM Commits to Train 2 Million AI Learners for Free by 2026 — from campustechnology.com by Kate Lucariello

As part of the 2023 78th General Assembly of the United Nations, IBM announced it will train, for free, 2 million learners in artificial intelligence worldwide within the next three years, building on its existing commitment to skill 30 million learners by 2030.

The free program, called IBM SkillsBuild, will use its career-building platforms to partner with universities around the world to develop and make available new generative AI courses, with a significant focus on adult learners in underrepresented communities.

Goldman Sachs CIO is ‘anxious to see results’ from GenAI, but moving carefully — from venturebeat.com by Sharon Goldman

Consider Marco Argenti, CIO at Goldman Sachs — who told me in a recent interview that the leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm has, nearly a year after ChatGPT was released, put exactly zero generative AI use cases into production. Instead, the company is “deeply into experimentation” and has a “high bar” of expectation before deployment. Certainly this is a highly-regulated company, so careful deployment must always be the norm. But Goldman Sachs is also far from new to implementing AI-driven tools — but is still treading slowly and carefully.

Challenging ‘Bad’ Online Policies and Attitudes — from insidehighered.com by Susan D’Agostino
Academic and industry leaders spoke with conviction at the SXSW EDU conference this week about approaches that impede educational access to motivated, capable learners.

Excerpts:

“It’s driven by artificial intelligence,” Barnes said of IBM’s training and reskilling effort. “It’s a Netflix-like interface that pushes content. Or an employee can select content…
…
The leaders discussed the ways in which colleges, policymakers, and employers might work together to help more Americans find or advance in viable employment, while also addressing the workforce skills gap. But some “bad” policies and attitudes about online learning undermine their efforts to work together, expand access and deliver outcomes to motivated, capable learners.

“Employers were saying, ‘We have job openings we can’t fill, and we want to work with the education system, but it is so unbelievably frustrating because they’re very rigid, and they don’t want to customize to our needs,’” Hansen said. These employers sought workforce training that could produce a pipeline of learners-turned-employees, and Hansen said they told him, “If you can do that, I’ll pay you.”

Digital credentials’ appeal is strong, while corporate upskilling moves at a ‘snail’s pace’ [Ashburn]

On 02/20/2023, in business, career development, colleges, communities of practice, competency-based learning/education, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, IBM, learning ecosystem, Microsoft, skills, staying relevant, student-related, training / L&D, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Digital credentials’ appeal is strong, while corporate upskilling moves at a ‘snail’s pace’ — from by Elyse Ashburn; with thanks to Paul Fain for this resource
Surveys out this week from IBM and LinkedIn take a closer look at the role of digital credentials and other forms upskilling in education and on the job.

Excerpt:

Interest in upskilling and short-term credentials, either as an alternative or an add-on to college, has grown steadily over the past few years. And a couple of surveys out this week take a closer look at the role digital credentials and other forms upskilling can play in bridging the gap between formal education and work.

A major IBM survey fielded in 13 countries, including the United States, found that almost half of students, job seekers, and career changers are interested in jobs in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)—but more than 61% think they aren’t qualified because they lack the right degrees.

75% of respondents thought that digital credentials were a good way to supplement traditional education, but only 47% were actually familiar with such credentialing programs.
Among those who’d earned a digital credential, 86% said that it helped them achieve their career goals.

Eight in 10 people surveyed said they planned to upgrade their skills in the next two years—but time, cost, or simply not knowing how to begin were major barriers. Among both students and job seekers, 40% said that they don’t know where to start in developing new professional or technical skills.

Radar Trends to Watch: December 2022 [Loukides]

On 12/10/2022, in art, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, Blockchain, collaboration, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, copyright/ownership/NFTs, cryptocurrencies, emerging technologies, Facebook / Meta Platforms, IBM, internet, programming, social learning / networks, social media, by Daniel Christian

Radar Trends to Watch: December 2022 — from oreilly.com by Mike Loukides
Developments in Security, Cryptocurrency, Web, and More

Excerpt:

This month’s news has been overshadowed by the implosion of SBF’s TFX and the possible implosion of Elon Musk’s Twitter. All the noise doesn’t mean that important things aren’t happening. Many companies, organizations, and individuals are wrestling with the copyright implications of generative AI. Google is playing a long game: they believe that the goal isn’t to imitate art works, but to build better user interfaces for humans to collaborate with AI so they can create something new. Facebook’s AI for playing Diplomacy is an exciting new development. Diplomacy requires players to negotiate with other players, assess their mental state, and decide whether or not to honor their commitments. None of these are easy tasks for an AI. And IBM now has a 433 Qubit quantum chip–an important step towards making a useful quantum processor.

New Mexico College Publishes Report to Advance a National Learning and Employment Record for Skills-based Credentialing and Hiring — from prnewswire.com by Central New Mexico Community College

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Oct. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — In the current job market, applicants are usually asked to provide a broad résumé that lists the basics of their qualifications including college degrees and past work experience. It’s an outdated and inefficient system and one that Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) is now helping to improve.

Thanks to a grant from Walmart, CNM produced a comprehensive report that researches several independent efforts underway in order to build a model for creating a national Learner and Employment Records (LER) infrastructure. An LER enables the exchange of skills-based digital records that facilitate more efficient pathways from learning to earning.

An LER is more efficient and secure for both employers and job-seekers because it uses blockchain technology to provide security, trust, and transparency.

From DSC:
I still am learning about how secure blockchain-based applications are — or aren’t. But this idea of a Learner and Employment Record — which I’ve referred to on this blog as a “cloud-based learner profile” — seems to hold a lot of potential as we move into the future. Especially when the focus is increasingly on which skills a position needs and which skills an individual has.

I have used the term cloud-based learner profiles instead of LERs but the idea is the same

How Alternative Credentials Can Help You Find Employees — from shrm.org by Kathryn Tyler
Focus on skills, not degrees, to increase your talent pool.

Excerpts:

“Alternative credentials,” such as the ones Brown attained, are increasingly available in the form of micro-credentials, digital badges and industry-recognized certificates. They’re less expensive than a college degree and designed to help prepare workers for better jobs.
…
IBM is ahead of the game in many respects. Six years ago, the tech giant began revising its job descriptions to focus on skills and not just educational attainment. On average, 50 percent of the company’s posted positions in the U.S. don’t require a bachelor’s degree.

“We call these ‘new-collar jobs,’ and they’re aligned to careers that require the right set of skills and a commitment to lifelong learning,” says Tommy Wenzlau, talent leader for new-collar initiatives at IBM, which employs more than 250,000 workers globally. “New-collar roles are in some of technology’s fastest-growing fields, including data science, cloud computing, application development, cybersecurity and digital design.”

Radar trends to watch: May 2022 — from oreilly.com
Developments in Web3, Security, Biology, and More

Excerpt:

April was the month for large language models. There was one announcement after another; most new models were larger than the previous ones, several claimed to be significantly more energy efficient.

Top 10 Healthcare Artificial Intelligence News Of 2021 [Meskó & Dhunnoo]

On 12/16/2021, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, emerging technologies, Google, health, IBM, UK, United States, by Daniel Christian

Top 10 Healthcare Artificial Intelligence News Of 2021 — from medicalfuturist.com by Dr. Bertalan Meskó & Dr. Pranavsingh Dhunnoo

Excerpt:

As 2021 is about to wrap up, we are reflecting on some of the most important news revolving around artificial intelligence (A.I.) in healthcare. These range from the principles laying the groundwork for the safe and effective development of A.I.-powered medical devices to a sober look at the technology’s role in the pandemic. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the top 10 healthcare A.I. news of the year that was.

Will Microcredentials be the Rx Needed to Fix Our Ailing Degree Systems? — from evolllution.com by David Leaser | Senior Program Executive of Innovation and Growth Initiatives, IBM
Amidst the dramatic social and economic upheaval caused by the pandemic, microcredentials are presenting themselves as the viable solution to getting learners prepared quickly and effectively for desperately needed jobs.

Excerpts:

Pace of Change Accelerates Beyond Our Wildest Imagination
But the world of work is changing at a pace that traditional education systems cannot match. Cloud computing, big data and AI technologies are replaced or improved monthly—and often faster than that.
…
The U.S. college system is organized around an all-or-none framework: You only get a credential after completing the entire learning path. But when a large number of students cannot commit to a long-term commitment (the situation we have faced for decades), shouldn’t we break the learning down into credentials along the way?
…
The MicroBachelors: A Major Win for Credential As You Go
Today, most microcredentials provide the opposite of college degrees: high skill-signal strength but low social-signal strength.
…
MicroBachelors programs are a series of college classes that have been customized and grouped together to meet employers’ real-world needs. The programs typically take two to four months to complete and provide credentials and college credits.

Intel expands AI education program to 18 total community colleges — from highereddive.com by Natalie Schwartz

Excerpt:

The technology giant is supplying curriculum and faculty development for participating schools, and is partnering with Dell to provide technical and infrastructure expertise for the program, which can lead to a certificate or associate degree.

The future of AI: Deeper insights, personalization and problem-solving stand to transform how we use AI across devices and industries — from protocol.com by Alex Katouzian

Excerpt:

What comes to mind when you think of AI? In the past, it might have been the Turing test, a sci-fi character or IBM’s Deep Blue-defeating chess champion Garry Kasparov. Today, instead of copying human intelligence, we’re seeing immense progress made in using AI to unobtrusively simplify and enrich our own intelligence and experiences. Natural language processing, modern encrypted security solutions, advanced perception and imaging capabilities, next-generation data management and logistics, and automotive assistance are some of the many ways AI is quietly yet unmistakably driving some of the latest advancements inside our phones, PCs, cars and other crucial 21st century devices. And the combination of 5G and AI is enabling a world with distributed intelligence where AI processing is happening on devices and in the cloud.

Latest Trends in Artificial Intelligence –from newark.com

Excerpt:

Over the past decade, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has meshed into various industries. The era witnessed a dramatic increase in tools, applications, and platforms based on AI and Machine Learning (ML). These technologies have impacted healthcare, manufacturing, law, finance, retail, real estate, accountancy, digital marketing, and several other areas.

Companies are investing in AI research to find out how they can bring AI closer to humans. By 2025 AI software revenues alone will reach above $100 billion globally (Figure 1). This means that we will continue seeing the advancement of AI and Machine Learning (ML)-related technology in foreseeable future. AI changes notably fast, so you’ll need to go out of your way to keep up with the latest trends if you want to stay as informed as possible. Let’s take a look at everything you need to know about the latest AI trends.

Reflections on “Today’s Tech Jobs: Skills More Important Than Knowledge” [Yangame]

On 06/26/2021, in active learning, Daniel S. Christian, IBM, programming, project-based learning, by Daniel Christian

Today’s Tech Jobs: Skills More Important Than Knowledge — from rtinsights.com by Kwame Yangame; with thanks to Ryan Craig for this resource
New tech jobs require workers skilled in the use of technologies and able to handle the complexities and interconnectedness of today’s world.

What then is needed in terms of tech education?
The tech education that is needed, then, is formed on the basis of active learning, project-based learning, and learning by doing: science and researched-backed learning methods, the efficacy of which has been proven, and the result of which is true preparation for work in tech jobs in the 21st century. It’s clear that companies want skills and are moving towards skills-based hiring, so it’s well past time that education moves into real skills-based learning.

The classroom-type learning was designed for high schools and universities dating back to a point in time when the most advanced technology was the printing press – before the steam engine, penicillin, the telephone, the automobile, and the personal computer.

From DSC:
I remember teaching a class called the Foundations of Information Technology. This class filled a requirement for those who didn’t major in Computer Science or some other disciplines. So several students in the class didn’t really want to be there and didn’t like technology at all. I still remember hearing some students say, “After this class, I don’t see using technology again.” Or, “I don’t see technology as being a part of my future. I don’t like it.”

My thought then and now? Good luck with that.

With a thanks to Ryan for the following resource as well:

The high school-college hybrid that jumpstarts careers — from hechingerreport.org by
Ten years on, a network of early college high schools offers industry training, two degrees and a pathway to the middle class. Despite early stumbles, it is thriving

By bridging the gap between what high schools teach and industries need, P-TECH, initially a partnership among IBM, the New York City school system and City Tech, has opened doors for thousands of students in communities with high concentrations of poverty. Its 266 schools now operate in 12 U.S. states and 28 countries…

More Employers Are Awarding Credentials. Is A Parallel Higher Education System Emerging? — from edsurge.com by Sean Gallagher and Holly Zanville

Excerpt:

As the acceptance of new types of credentials grows, a number of employers have become learning providers in their own right, in a way that could shake up the broader higher education landscape.

A growing number of companies have moved beyond training their own employees or providing tuition assistance programs to send staff members to higher education. Many of these employers are also developing their own curricula and rapidly expanding their publicly-facing credential offerings.

But the current boom in employer-issued credentials is different—and potentially transformational. Unlike the traditional IT certifications of decades past, these new credentials are less focused on proprietary technologies related to a given tech vendor, and are instead more focused on broadly applicable tech skill sets such as IT support, cloud computing and digital marketing.

Learning Ecosystems

AI Resources and Teaching [Kent State U] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

Every Major Tech Development From 2023, Open AI updates their prompt engineering section + other AI-in-general items

IBM Commits to Train 2 Million AI Learners for Free by 2026 [Lucariello] + “Teaching with AI is hard.” [Gulya]

Challenging ‘Bad’ Online Policies and Attitudes [D’Agostino]

How Alternative Credentials Can Help You Find Employees [Tyler]

Top 10 Healthcare Artificial Intelligence News Of 2021 [Meskó & Dhunnoo]

Will Microcredentials be the Rx Needed to Fix Our Ailing Degree Systems? [Leaser]

Three items re: AI — trends, insights, collaborations, & more

Reflections on “Today’s Tech Jobs: Skills More Important Than Knowledge” [Yangame]

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