From DSC:
Notebook LM continues to make waves…
On 11/21/2024,
in 21st century, adult learning, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, health, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, Learning Experience Design, tools, training / L&D, UK, United States, universities, vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, XR - extended reality,
by Daniel Christian
VR training aims to help doctors avoid bias — from inavateonthenet.net
A new virtual reality training programme aims to tackle biases in healthcare settings, aimed at improving recognition, understanding, and addressing implicit bias towards black mothers.
Participants in the program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign underwent a series of three modules, with the first module focusing on implicit bias and how it can negatively affect a patient at a doctor’s appointment.
On 11/20/2024,
in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, changing business models, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, distance education, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, liberal arts, library / librarians, lifelong learning, MBA, microlearning, multimedia, Natural Language Processing (NLP), neurodivergent/special needs, new business models, online learning, online media, online tutoring, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, remote teaching and learning, skills, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, training / L&D, universities, vendors, videoconferencing, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, vocational / trades, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, web-based collaboration, Web3, webinars, workplace,
by Daniel 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!
On 11/19/2024,
in active learning, adjunct faculty, colleges, community colleges, faculty/staff, higher education, ideas, instructional design, Learning Experience Design, pedagogy, teaching & learning, United States,
by Daniel Christian
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.
On 11/13/2024,
in bots, business, career development, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, ideas, immersion, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, interaction design, interactivity, leadership, organizational change, personalized/customized learning, training / L&D, wearables,
by Daniel Christian
A Code-Red Leadership Crisis: A Wake-Up Call for Talent Development — from learningguild.com by Dr. Arika Pierce Williams
This company’s experience offers three crucial lessons for other organizational leaders who may be contemplating cutting or reducing talent development investments in their 2025 budgets to focus on “growth.”
- Leadership development isn’t a luxury – it’s a strategic imperative…
- Succession planning must be an ongoing process, not a reactive measure…
- The cost of developing leaders is far less than the cost of not having them when you need them most…
Also from The Learning Guild, see:
5 Key EdTech Innovations to Watch — from learningguild.com by Paige Yousey
- AI-driven course design
- Hyper-personalized content curation
- Immersive scenario-based training
- Smart chatbots
- Wearable devices
On 11/13/2024,
in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Canvas - and other Instructure-related items, change, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, ethics, experimentation, faculty/staff, formal learning, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, informal learning, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning spaces, liberal arts, mathematics, morals/values, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, skills, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, UK, United States, universities, vendors, youth,
by Daniel Christian
“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.
On 11/07/2024,
in assessment, education, education technology, Emotion, instructional design, K-12 related, languages and translation, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, mathematics, pedagogy, productivity / tips and tricks, quality, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, tools, United States,
by Daniel Christian
Below are several items from edutopia.org:
Doing the Best You Can With the Time You Have — by Jay Schauer
These strategies can help overwhelmed teachers prioritize tasks and find a balance between perfectionism and efficiency.
.
How to Support Teachers’ Emotional Health — by Hedreich Nichols
Emotional well-being plays a major role in teachers’ job satisfaction, and it’s essential that they have effective resources for support.
Teachers cannot be expected to teach SEL effectively without first being intentional about their own emotional health. If we want educators to guide students through emotional regulation, they must have the time, space, and support to do that work themselves. This goes beyond surface-level wellness initiatives—teachers need opportunities to reflect on their emotional triggers, manage their own stresses, and receive genuine support from their schools. Only when teachers are empowered to process their own emotional challenges can they truly foster a healthy social and emotional environment for their students.
In Praise of the Humble Document Camera — by Emily Rankin
Revisiting a simple edtech tool can help you introduce rigor and engage students more deeply in their lessons.
4 Ways to Use a Document Camera in Your Classroom— by Emily Rankin
If a document camera is gathering dust in a classroom, its lack of impact is probably linked to the user, not what the gadget is capable of. Case in point, I wasn’t using mine regularly because I didn’t know the value it could add to my teaching and learning. Here are some of the practices I now know are possible:
- Guided practice. …
- Assessment for learning. …
- Sharing materials. …
- Expanding teaching and learning possibilities.
Weighing Inquiry-Based Learning and Direct Instruction in Elementary Math — by Vivian Quan
Teachers can ask themselves three key questions in order to choose the most effective instructional approach to a topic.
One factor to consider is the subject. In math, students need opportunities to work on rich tasks and solve problems in ways that make sense to them. However, that doesn’t mean direct instruction is totally absent from math time. The questions below can guide you in deciding whether to use direct instruction, when it would be appropriate, and who else in the classroom you might involve.
Increasing Talk Time in World Language Classes — by Kate Good
Teachers can experiment with a variety of strategies to build and assess students’ ability to converse in the target language.
To capitalize on my students’ (seemingly inexhaustible) desire to chat, I work to increase student talk time in our Spanish immersion classes. I use several strategies to build and assess students’ oral language.
On 11/07/2024,
in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, colleges, community colleges, education technology, emerging technologies, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Open AI, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, teaching & learning, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, trends, UK, United States, universities, vendors,
by Daniel Christian
Is Generative AI and ChatGPT healthy for Students? — from ai-supremacy.com by Michael Spencer and Nick Potkalitsky
Beyond Text Generation: How AI Ignites Student Discovery and Deep Thinking, according to firsthand experiences of Teachers and AI researchers like Nick Potkalitsky.
After two years of intensive experimentation with AI in education, I am witnessing something amazing unfolding before my eyes. While much of the world fixates on AI’s generative capabilities—its ability to create essays, stories, and code—my students have discovered something far more powerful: exploratory AI, a dynamic partner in investigation and critique that’s transforming how they think.
…
They’ve moved beyond the initial fascination with AI-generated content to something far more sophisticated: using AI as an exploratory tool for investigation, interrogation, and intellectual discovery.
…
Instead of the much-feared “shutdown” of critical thinking, we’re witnessing something extraordinary: the emergence of what I call “generative thinking”—a dynamic process where students learn to expand, reshape, and evolve their ideas through meaningful exploration with AI tools. Here I consciously reposition the term “generative” as a process of human origination, although one ultimately spurred on by machine input.
A Road Map for Leveraging AI at a Smaller Institution — from er.educause.edu by Dave Weil and Jill Forrester
Smaller institutions and others may not have the staffing and resources needed to explore and take advantage of developments in artificial intelligence (AI) on their campuses. This article provides a roadmap to help institutions with more limited resources advance AI use on their campuses.
The following activities can help smaller institutions better understand AI and lay a solid foundation that will allow them to benefit from it.
- Understand the impact…
- Understand the different types of AI tools…
- Focus on institutional data and knowledge repositories…
Smaller institutions do not need to fear being left behind in the wake of rapid advancements in AI technologies and tools. By thinking intentionally about how AI will impact the institution, becoming familiar with the different types of AI tools, and establishing a strong data and analytics infrastructure, institutions can establish the groundwork for AI success. The five fundamental activities of coordinating, learning, planning and governing, implementing, and reviewing and refining can help smaller institutions make progress on their journey to use AI tools to gain efficiencies and improve students’ experiences and outcomes while keeping true to their institutional missions and values.
Also from Educause, see:
- From Hype to Help: Making GenAI Useful for Enterprise Reporting and Data Analytics — from er.educause.edu by Craig Rudick
AI school opens – learners are not good or bad but fast and slow — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark
That is what they are doing here. Lesson plans focus on learners rather than the traditional teacher-centric model. Assessing prior strengths and weaknesses, personalising to focus more on weaknesses and less on things known or mastered. It’s adaptive, personalised learning. The idea that everyone should learn at the exactly same pace, within the same timescale is slightly ridiculous, ruled by the need for timetabling a one to many, classroom model.
For the first time in the history of our species we have technology that performs some of the tasks of teaching. We have reached a pivot point where this can be tried and tested. My feeling is that we’ll see a lot more of this, as parents and general teachers can delegate a lot of the exposition and teaching of the subject to the technology. We may just see a breakthrough that transforms education.
Agentic AI Named Top Tech Trend for 2025 — from campustechnology.com by David Ramel
Agentic AI will be the top tech trend for 2025, according to research firm Gartner. The term describes autonomous machine “agents” that move beyond query-and-response generative chatbots to do enterprise-related tasks without human guidance.
…
More realistic challenges that the firm has listed elsewhere include:
-
- Agentic AI proliferating without governance or tracking;
- Agentic AI making decisions that are not trustworthy;
- Agentic AI relying on low-quality data;
- Employee resistance; and
- Agentic-AI-driven cyberattacks enabling “smart malware.”
Also from campustechnology.com, see:
- New OpenAI Swarm Framework Offers Experimental Tool for Multi-Agent AI Networks — by John K. Waters
OpenAI has introduced a new open source framework designed to simplify the development and management of multi-agent AI systems that can collaborate autonomously to perform tasks.
Three items from edcircuit.com:
- The Top 10 AI Tools for Enhancing Learning
- Revolutionizing Lesson Planning: How AI Teaching Assistants Bring Creativity and Efficiency to the Classroom
- Maximizing Student Success: How Artificial Intelligence is Revolutionizing K12 Coaching
All or nothing at Educause24 — from onedtech.philhillaa.com by Kevin Kelly
Looking for specific solutions at the conference exhibit hall, with an educator focus
Here are some notable trends:
- Alignment with campus policies: …
- Choose your own AI adventure: …
- Integrate AI throughout a workflow: …
- Moving from prompt engineering to bot building: …
- More complex problem-solving: …
…
Not all AI news is good news. In particular, AI has exacerbated the problem of fraudulent enrollment–i.e., rogue actors who use fake or stolen identities with the intent of stealing financial aid funding with no intention of completing coursework.
…
The consequences are very real, including financial aid funding going to criminal enterprises, enrollment estimates getting dramatically skewed, and legitimate students being blocked from registering for classes that appear “full” due to large numbers of fraudulent enrollments.
On 11/01/2024,
in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, CMS/LMS, colleges, community colleges, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, liberal arts, platforms, podcasting, United States, universities, vendors,
by Daniel Christian
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:
- Three Recent Studies on Student Learning with Generative AI
- How Do We Define Quality Student Work in an Age of AI?
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:
- MoodleMoot Global 24 Conference Notes — from onedtech.philhillaa.com by Glenda Morgan
A first look at Moodle under new leadership
Here’s the link to access it: https://t.co/kHq0S2r4aD
It’s only available in the US at the moment, but it works with a VPN.
Truly the best tool for learning a new subject I’ve tried so far.
— Paul Couvert (@itsPaulAi) October 31, 2024
…which links to:
