Introducing: ChatGPT Edu-Mega-Prompts — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman; with thanks to Ray Schroeder out on LinkedIn for this resource
How to combine the power of AI + learning science to improve your efficiency & effectiveness as an educator

From DSC:
Before relaying some excerpts, I want to say that I get the gist of what Dr. Hardman is saying re: quizzes. But I’m surprised to hear she had so many pedagogical concerns with quizzes. I, too, would like to see quizzes used as an instrument of learning and to practice recall — and not just for assessment. But I would give quizzes a higher thumbs up than what she did. I think she was also trying to say that quizzes don’t always identify misconceptions or inaccurate foundational information. 

Excerpts:

The Bad News: Most AI technologies that have been built specifically for educators in the last few years and months imitate and threaten to spread the use of broken instructional practices (i.e. content + quiz).

The Good News: Armed with prompts which are carefully crafted to ask the right thing in the right way, educators can use AI like GPT3 to improve the effectiveness of their instructional practices.

As is always the case, ChatGPT is your assistant. If you’re not happy with the result, you can edit and refine it using your expertise, either alone or through further conversation with ChatGPT.

For example, once the first response is generated, you can ask ChatGPT to make the activity more or less complex, to change the scenario and/or suggest more or different resources – the options are endless.

Philippa recommended checking out Rob Lennon’s streams of content. Here’s an example from his Twitter account:


Also relevant/see:

3 trends that may unlock AI's potential for Learning and Development in 2023

3 Trends That May Unlock AI’s Potential for L&D in 2023 — from learningguild.com by Juan Naranjo

Excerpts:

AI-assisted design and development work
This is the trend most likely to have a dramatic evolution this year.

Solutions like large language models, speech generators, content generators, image generators, translation tools, transcription tools, and video generators, among many others, will transform the way IDs create the learning experiences our organizations use. Two examples are:

1. IDs will be doing more curation and less creation:

  • Many IDs will start pulling raw material from content generators (built using natural language processing platforms like Open AI’s GPT-3, Microsoft’s LUIS, IBM’s Watson, Google’s BERT, etc.) to obtain ideas and drafts that they can then clean up and add to the assets they are assembling. As technology advances, the output from these platforms will be more suitable to become final drafts, and the curation and clean-up tasks will be faster and easier.
  • Then, the designer can leverage a solution like DALL-E 2 (or a product developed based on it) to obtain visuals that can (or not) be modified with programs like Illustrator or Photoshop (see image below for Dall-E’s “Cubist interpretation of AI and brain science.”

2. IDs will spend less, and in some cases no time at all, creating learning pathways

AI engines contained in LXPs and other platforms will select the right courses for employees and guide these learners from their current level of knowledge and skill to their goal state with substantially less human intervention.

 


The Creator of ChatGPT Thinks AI Should Be Regulated — from time.com by John Simons

Excerpts:

Somehow, Mira Murati can forthrightly discuss the dangers of AI while making you feel like it’s all going to be OK.

A growing number of leaders in the field are warning of the dangers of AI. Do you have any misgivings about the technology?

This is a unique moment in time where we do have agency in how it shapes society. And it goes both ways: the technology shapes us and we shape it. There are a lot of hard problems to figure out. How do you get the model to do the thing that you want it to do, and how you make sure it’s aligned with human intention and ultimately in service of humanity? There are also a ton of questions around societal impact, and there are a lot of ethical and philosophical questions that we need to consider. And it’s important that we bring in different voices, like philosophers, social scientists, artists, and people from the humanities.


Whispers of A.I.’s Modular Future — from newyorker.com by James Somers; via Sam DeBrule

Excerpts:

Gerganov adapted it from a program called Whisper, released in September by OpenAI, the same organization behind ChatGPTand dall-e. Whisper transcribes speech in more than ninety languages. In some of them, the software is capable of superhuman performance—that is, it can actually parse what somebody’s saying better than a human can.

Until recently, world-beating A.I.s like Whisper were the exclusive province of the big tech firms that developed them.

Ever since I’ve had tape to type up—lectures to transcribe, interviews to write down—I’ve dreamed of a program that would do it for me. The transcription process took so long, requiring so many small rewindings, that my hands and back would cramp. As a journalist, knowing what awaited me probably warped my reporting: instead of meeting someone in person with a tape recorder, it often seemed easier just to talk on the phone, typing up the good parts in the moment.

From DSC:
Journalism majors — and even seasoned journalists — should keep an eye on this type of application, as it will save them a significant amount of time and/or money.

Microsoft Teams Premium: Cut costs and add AI-powered productivity — from microsoft.com by Nicole Herskowitz

Excerpt:

Built on the familiar, all-in-one collaborative experience of Microsoft Teams, Teams Premium brings the latest technologies, including Large Language Models powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, to make meetings more intelligent, personalized, and protected—whether it’s one-on-one, large meetings, virtual appointments, or webinars.


 

Stop the Presses | Journalism Employment and the Economic Value of 850 Journalism and Communication Programs — from cew.georgetown.edu

Summary

The number of journalism jobs has been declining for decades and will continue to fall over the next decade. Projected job losses for journalists are primarily due to newspaper downsizing and closures. Stop the Presses: Journalism Employment and the Economic Value of 850 Journalism and Communication Programs explores the transformation of the journalism profession and ranks journalism and communication programs at 850 institutions by their payoff for graduates in the labor market. The report finds that only about 15 percent of journalism majors become editors or news analysts, reporters, and correspondents early in their careers.

 

The incredible shrinking future of college — from vox.com by Kevin Carey

Excerpt:

The future looks very different in some parts of the country than in others, and will also vary among national four-year universities, regional universities like Ship, and community colleges. Grawe projects that, despite the overall demographic decline, demand for national four-year universities on the West Coast will increase by more than 7.5 percent between now and the mid-2030s. But in states like New York, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Louisiana, it will decline by 15 percent or more.

Higher ed’s eight-decade run of unbroken good fortune may be about to end.

Demand for regional four-year universities, per Grawe, will drop by at least 7.5 percent across New England, the mid-Atlantic, and Southern states other than Florida and Texas, with smaller declines in the Great Plains. Community colleges will be hit hard in most places other than Florida, which has a robust two-year system with a large Latino population.

The next generation of higher education leaders will take scarcity as a given and “return on investment” as both sales pitch and state of mind.

The decline of American higher education — from youtube.com by Bryan Alexander and Kevin Carey

 

Most Colleges Omit or Understate Net Costs in Financial-Aid Offers, Federal Watchdog Finds — from chronicle.com by Eric Hoover

Excerpt:

Nine out of 10 colleges either exclude or understate the net cost of attendance in their financial-aid offers to students, according to estimates published in a new report by the Government Accountability Office. The watchdog agency recommended that Congress consider legislation that would require institutions to provide “clear and standard information.”

The lack of clarity makes it hard for students to decide where to enroll and how much to borrow.

The report, published on Monday, paints a troubling picture of an industry that makes it difficult for consumers to understand the bottom line by presenting insufficient if not downright misleading information. Federal law does not require colleges to present financial-aid offers in a clear, consistent way to all students.

Higher ed faces ‘deteriorating’ outlook in 2023, Fitch says — from highereddive.com by Rick Seltzer

Dive Brief (excerpt):

  • U.S. higher education faces a stable but deteriorating credit outlook in 2023, Fitch Ratings said Thursday, taking a more pessimistic view of the sector’s future than it had at the same time last year.
  • Operating performance at colleges and universities will be pressured by enrollment, labor and wage challenges, according to the bond ratings agency. Colleges have been able to raise tuition slightly because of inflation, but additional revenue they generate generally isn’t expected to be enough to offset rising costs.

Merger Watch: Don’t wait too long to find a merger partner. Closure does not benefit anybody. — from highereddive.com by Ricardo Azziz
Leaders fail students, employees and communities when they embrace a strategy of hope in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Excerpt:

While not all institutions can (or should be) saved, most institutional closures reflect the failure of past governing boards to face the fiscal reality of their institution — and to plan accordingly and in a timely manner. Leaders should always consider and, if necessary, pursue potential partnerships, mergers, or consolidations before a school has exhausted its financial and political capital. The inability or unwillingness of many leaders to take such action is reflected in the fact that the number of institutional closures in higher education far outweighs the number of successful mergers.

In fact, the risk of closure can be predicted. In a prior analysis several coauthors and I reported on a number of risk factors predictive of closure, noting that most schools at risk for closure are small and financially fragile, with declining enrollment and limited resources to mount significant online programs. While there are many clear signs that a school is at risk for closure, the major challenge to mounting a response seems to be the unwillingness of institutional leaders to understand, face and act on these signs.

What can colleges learn from degrees awarded in the fast-shrinking journalism field? — from highereddive.com by Lilah Burke
Bachelor’s degrees offer solid payoffs, while grad programs post mixed returns, researchers find. But many students don’t go on to work in the field.

Excerpt:

Journalism jobs are hard to find. But it’s nice work when you can get it.

That’s the takeaway from a new report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce on the payoff of journalism programs. An analysis of federal education and labor data reveals that journalism and communication bachelor’s degrees offer moderate payoff to their graduates, but only 15% of majors end up working in the field early in their careers. Newsroom employment has declined 26% since 2008, and researchers predict it will fall 3% over the next nine years.


Addendum on 12/10/22:

A Sectorwide Approach to Higher Ed’s Future — from insidehighered.com by Sylvia M. Burwell
Institutions must seek ways to differentiate themselves even as they work together to address common challenges facing all of higher education, writes Sylvia M. Burwell.

We have to think differently about the future of higher education. And rather than limit our work to what one type of institution or program can achieve, we should look across the entire higher education sector.

A sectorwide [insert DSC: system-wide] approach is needed because the economics of higher education are not going to hold.

To evolve our thinking on these questions, we should focus on the value proposition of higher education and market differentiation.

 

Future Today Institute's 2022 Tech and Science Trends Report is now available

The Future Today Institute’s 15th Anniversary Tech Trends Report

Excerpt:

Future Today Institute’s 2022 Tech and Science Trends Report is now available. Downloaded more than 1 million times each year, FTI’s annual Tech Trends Report is a must-read for every industry. Learn the key trends impacting finance, insurance, transportation, healthcare, sports, logistics, telecom, work, government and policy, security, privacy, education, agriculture, entertainment, music, CPG, hospitality and dining, ESGs, climate, space and more. Discover critical insights. See what strategic action you can take on the futures, today.

 

Diving into Drones – How your journalism program can use DJI drones to enhance your visuals — from jeadigitalmedia.org by Spencer O’Daniel

Excerpt:

Here’s our journey to getting started in the drone world and how our visuals took off (no pun intended) when we listened to the students and began actively using the drones in the field to cover stories in our surrounding community. Buckle up-I’m not an expert on drones by any means but here’s some information to get you started in the drone world.

 

Best Sites and Apps for Digital Storytelling — from techlearning.com by Diana Restifo
Digital storytelling can help boost communication and presentation skills

Excerpt:

…storytelling is a great way for kids to learn to love reading and writing. But almost any school subject can be considered through a dramatic frame, from history to geography to science. Even math can be taught through narrative (word problems, anyone?). Most importantly, storytelling gives kids the opportunity to be inventive with language, graphics, and design, and to share their creations with others.

The following sites and apps for storytelling range from basic to advanced. Many are designed for educators or include guides for use in education. And while most are paid products, the prices are generally reasonable and nearly every platform offers a free trial or free basic account.

6 best classroom noise meters for teachers — from educatorstechnology.com by Med Kharbach

Excerpt:

One of the effective ways to monitor and reduce noise levels in classrooms is by making noise visible. Enabling students to visualize their noise raises awareness to their sound levels and makes them noise conscious. There are several noise meter tools and apps to use in your classroom to bring down students noise and therefore help in creating optimal learning experiences. Below is a collection of some of the best noise meters for classroom use.  They are simple, easy to use, and cost-effective.

Digital age classroom projects — from thetechedvocate.org by Matthew Lynch

Excerpt:

Classroom learning today has left the era of flipping through textbooks trying to be on the same page with the teacher, though not for every class lesson. Educators today are seizing the opportunities of digital devices and media to expand learning opportunities beyond pencil and paper homework. Also, assessment is not just a multiple-choice test.

Consider trying one of these projects:

The Education of Incarcerated Youth with Disabilities Ep.14 — from edcircuit.com

Excerpt:

The School Justice Project (SJP) champions an extremely vulnerable population: incarcerated youth with disabilities. The SJP’s mission is to ensure every learner, in or out of prison facilities, receives the education they were promised and deserve. Their current class action lawsuit against the DC prison system underscores the impact of their efforts. Featured guest, Claire Blumenson, pulls no punches as she forces us to look, and not to look away, in this pivotal moment.

We are educators, parents, siblings, and friends who aren’t satisfied with the quality of the content our students are exposed to. We know they deserve better, and are committed to bringing authentic, engaging, diverse and accessible content to all learners.

Business Leaders Say Computer Science Needs to Be A Core Subject — from edsurge.com by Daniel Mollenkamp

Excerpt:

[On July 12], a collection of more than 500 prominent business, education and nonprofit leaders called on states to update their K-12 curriculum to make computer science a core subject.

In a letter sent to governors from all fifty states, they write, “computer science provides an essential foundation—not only for careers in technology, but for every career in today’s world,” and call upon state leaders to update curriculum to ensure that all students have an opportunity to learn computer science in school.

What is Microsoft Sway and How Can it Be Used to Teach? Tips & Tricks — from techlearning.com by Luke Edwards
Microsoft Sway is a presentation tool that works really well for teaching

Excerpt:

Microsoft Sway is the company’s alternative to PowerPoint as a presentation tool that embraces collaborative working. As such, this is a powerful system for teachers and students to use in the classroom and beyond.

The idea behind Sway is to offer a super simple setup that allows anybody to create presentation slideshows. This makes it good for both younger students and teachers for in-class or online-based presenting.


For a somewhat related item, see:

Exploring some different instructional strategies and discovering how to incorporate them into the classroom process can rekindle a love affair with teaching. Finding the right instructional strategy to fit your classroom can make a world of difference to your students by allowing them to make meaningful connections with what they are learning. Take a look at a few different strategies, and see which one might suit your students this academic year.


 

Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s newest exhibit teaches community about media literacy — from mmlive.com by Gabi Broekema along with one of our sisters Sue Ellen Christian

Excerpt:

The 14-element interactive exhibit is scattered across two floors of the museum and invites visitors to learn about media literacy through fun games and stories.

This project is the brainchild of presidential innovation professor in communication at Western Michigan University, Sue Ellen Christian. A few years back, Christian wrote the book, “Everyday Media Literacy: An Analog Guide for Your Digital Life,” to teach media literacy to the classes she taught full of students from different majors across the university.

 

WayRay’s AR Car Display Could Change Driving Forever — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick

How One Hospital Is Using An AR Bear To Calm Young Patients — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick

Excerpt:

Children’s Health of Orange County (CHOCK), a children’s hospital located in Orange County, California, has transformed its lovable mascot ‘Choco’ into an AR (augmented reality) experience that walks children through the steps of a standard MRI scan. The idea is that by familiarizing younger patients with the process, they’ll feel more comfortable during the actual procedure.

Arizona State Launching New VR/AR Classes, Nonny De La Peña To Helm — by Darragh Dandurand

Excerpt:

The Center for Narrative and Emerging Media (NEM) will be housed in Downtown Los Angeles in the Herald Examiner Building, newly renovated to welcome faculty, staff, and students. NEM’s goal is to teach and support students, from reporters to artists to entrepreneurs and engineers, who are pursuing careers across the burgeoning creative technology sector.

Why Meta decided against an open VR app store — from protocol.com by Janko Roettgers and Nick Statt

 

Taking Aim at Disinformation — from encorekalamazoo.com with the work of one of our sisters, Sue Ellen Christian, highlighted in it
Southwest Michigan’s Magazine: WMU Professor Sue Ellen Christian and the Kalamazoo Valley Museum team up to teach media literacy…


From the Editor of Encore Magazine


 

Howard University to digitize its archive of thousands of Black newspapers — from nbcnews.com by Curtis Bunn
A $2 million grant will be used to digitize Howard’s Black Press Archives, the largest collection of newspapers from the U.S., Africa and the African diaspora.

Excerpt:

Now, with the help of a $2 million grant announced Monday, Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center will make available countless articles that captured in real-time the impact of historical events on Black people that have long been difficult, if not impossible, to access. By digitizing its extensive Black Press Archives, anyone will be able to access Howard’s collection of more than 2,000 newspapers from the United States, Africa and the African diaspora online.

 

Inside Higher Ed Acquired by Times Higher Education — from insidehighered.com by Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman
Our editors Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman explain how this combination of publishing companies will improve global coverage of postsecondary education and better serve the higher ed community.

Excerpt:

As journalists, we often say that we want to report the news, not be the news. We are making an exception [on 1/10/22] to announce that Inside Higher Ed has been acquired by Times Higher Education (THE), the world’s leading provider of higher education news, data and insights.

 

The Associated Press is starting its own NFT marketplace for photojournalism — from theverge.com by Mitchell Clark
It’s offering collectors ‘exclusive, historic, and stunning visual content’

Excerpt:

The Associated Press, or AP, has announced that it’s starting a marketplace to sell NFTs of its photojournalists’ work in collaboration with a company called Xooa. It’s billing its foray into NFTs as a way for collectors to “purchase the news agency’s award-winning contemporary and historic photojournalism” and says that the virtual tokens will be released at “broad and inclusive price points” (though it’s hard to tell what types of prices resellers will want on the AP marketplace).

Also see:

Why Samsung built an NFT aggregator into its new TVs — from digitaltrends.com by Phil Nickinson

Excerpt:

Or, perhaps, it’s the idea of an “NFT aggregation platform” being built into the television. It sounds insane — baking something that most people don’t understand, let alone engage in — into a TV. Most of us can’t even describe what a non-fungible token is, let alone tell someone how to go get one. It’s a multi-layered process that’s far more difficult than taking a screenshot of something you saw on Instagram and then sticking it up on your TV.

But that’s also not the point.

“In 2022, Samsung is introducing the world’s first TV screen-based NFT explorer and marketplace aggregator,” reads the press release, “a groundbreaking platform that lets you browse, purchase, and display your favorite art — all in one place.”

 

Journalism program sees positive changes in move from traditional Journalistic Writing courses to Multimedia Communication Model — from jeadigitalmedia.org by Jason Block

Excerpt:

Change is hard.

Change after 15 years? Now that can be downright painful.

Yet that was the exact situation I was in when my district in suburban Chicago decided that we were doing away with our traditional Journalistic Writing courses and shifting to a Multimedia Communication model. This was a part of our larger mission to create a “career pathway” for prospective journalists in our building and district, and while I was excited about that possibility, it made me itchy to remove both the words “journalism” and “writing” from my course titles.

Without getting into the logistics of the shift — that should definitely not be the purpose of this post, unless my purpose is to put you all to sleep — I can tell you definitively and without hesitation that this has been a blessing in disguise, a journalistic silver lining that has not only invigorating me, but also my program as a whole.

The most notable change has been in my enrollment numbers. Whereas I used to struggle to fill one section of “J1,” I now for the first time in my 18 years at Prospect have two full sections of the Introduction to Multimedia Comm course. With all of us fighting the constant recruiting battle to keep our numbers up, having a broader base of students to appeal to has made that job infinitely easier.

 

EduMAX 2021 recap: Together for student success around the globe — from blog.adobe.com by Sebastian Distefano

Excerpt:

University CIOs, deans, provosts, faculty and staff from more than 100 institutions convened online for the Adobe EduMAX 2021 conference, where academic leaders shared how they are transforming teaching and learning practices across their campuses. Key discussion points included:

  • How digital literacy increases engagement to bring faculty and students together, whether they are in-person, online or in a hybrid environment.
  • How digital literacy closes the skills gap in higher education and industry by fostering critical essential skills that employers value.
  • How faculty can integrate digital literacy across the curriculum for all students.
 

 
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