leadership

Reflections on “Best Online Bachelor’s Programs for 2016” [U.S. News & World Report]

On 01/13/2016, in 21st century, adjunct faculty, colleges, community colleges, Daniel S. Christian, faculty/staff, higher education, K-12 related, leadership, learning ecosystem, online learning, strategy, universities, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Excerpt:

U.S. News assessed schools based on four general categories. Here is a look at each category and its weight in the current rankings formula. All weights are unchanged from 2015.

Student engagement (40 percent): Quality bachelor’s degree programs promote participation in courses, allowing students opportunities to readily interact with their instructors and classmates, as is possible in a campus-based setting. In turn, instructors not only are accessible and responsive, but they also are tasked with helping to create an experience rewarding enough that students stay enrolled and complete their degrees in a reasonable amount of time.
Faculty credentials and training (20 percent): Strong online programs employ instructors with academic credentials that mirror those of instructors for campus-based programs, and they have the resources to train these instructors on how to teach distance learners.
Student services and technology (20 percent): Programs that incorporate diverse online learning technologies allow greater flexibility for students to take classes from a distance. Outside of classes, strong support structures provide learning assistance, career guidance and financial aid resources commensurate with quality campus-based programs.
Peer reputation (20 percent): A survey of high-ranking academic officials helps account for intangible factors affecting program quality that are not captured by statistics. Also, degrees from programs that are well respected by academics may be held in higher regard among employers.

From DSC:
I’m not a huge fan of college/university ranking systems and programs. However, I post this in order to say “Congratulations!” to these programs on the work they have been doing — the faculty, staff, administration, and students. Nice work to you all!

These programs most certainly are helping students prepare for the future that these students will be inheriting. Students will need to be able to learn online — that will be a key ingredient/component in their learning ecosystems. In fact, it should be a requirement for every single college graduate in this country to take at least 1 course online. Many states are already doing this type of thing with high school graduation requirements — requiring students to take at least 1 online course in order to graduate from high school. If we truly cared about our students and their futures, this would be a requirement within higher education as well.

U.S. Department of Education Releases 2016 National Education Technology Plan [ed.gov]

On 12/20/2015, in assessment, education, education reform, education technology, K-12 related, leadership, legislatures / government / legal, open courseware and systems, student teaching/teacher education, teachers, United States, by Daniel Christian

U.S. Department of Education Releases 2016 National Education Technology Plan — from ed.gov

Excerpts:

The U.S. Department of Education announced [on 12/10/15] the release of the 2016 National Education Technology Plan and new commitments to support personalized professional learning for district leaders across the country working to improve teaching and student achievement through the effective use of technology.

Updated every five years, the plan is the flagship educational technology policy document for the United States. The 2016 plan outlines a vision of equity, active use, and collaborative leadership to make everywhere, all-the-time learning possible. While acknowledging the continuing need to provide greater equity of access to technology itself, the plan goes further to call upon all involved in American education to ensure equity of access to transformational learning experiences enabled by technology.

“Technology has the potential to bring remarkable new possibilities to teaching and learning by providing teachers with opportunities to share best practices, and offer parents platforms for engaging more deeply and immediately in their children’s learning,” said U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. “It can change the experiences of students in the most challenging circumstances by helping educators to personalize the learning experience based on students’ needs and interests—meeting our students where they are and challenging them to reach even higher. This year’s update to the National Education Technology Plan includes a strong focus on equity because every student deserves an equal chance to engage in educational experiences powered by technology that can support and accelerate learning.”

The plan calls for schools and districts to:

Redesign teacher preparation programs to shift from a single technology course to thoughtful use of technology throughout a teacher’s preparation and minimum standards for higher education instructors’ tech proficiency.
Set an expectation of equitable access to technology and connectivity inside and outside of school regardless of students’ backgrounds.
Adopt high-quality openly licensed educational materials in place of staid, traditional textbooks.
Implement universal design principles for accessibility across all educational institutions and include these principles within teacher preparation programs.
Improve technology-based assessments to allow for embedded delivery within instruction and making near real-time feedback for educators possible.
Establish a robust technology infrastructure that meets current connectivity goals and can be augmented to meet future demand.

From DSC:
Below are some further items that discuss the need for some frameworks, policies, institutes, research, etc. that deal with a variety of game-changing technologies that are quickly coming down the pike (if they aren’t already upon on). We need such things to help us create a positive future.

Also see Part I of this thread of thinking entitled, “The need for ethics, morals, policies, & serious reflection about what kind of future we want has never been greater!“ There have been so many other items that came out since that posting, I felt like I needed to add another one here.

What kind of future do we want? How are we going to insure that we get there?

As the saying goes…”Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should.” Or another saying comes to my mind…”What could possibly go wrong with this? It’s a done deal.”

While some of the items below should have very positive impacts on society, I do wonder how long it will take the hackers — the ones who are bent on wreaking havoc — to mess up some of these types of applications…with potentially deadly consequences? Security-related concerns must be dealt with here.

5 amazing and alarming things that may be done with your DNA — from washingtonpost.com by Matt McFarland

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Venter is leading efforts to use digital technology to analyze humans in ways we never have before, and the results will have huge implications for society. The latest findings he described are currently being written up for scientific publications. Venter didn’t want to usurp the publications, so he wouldn’t dive into extensive detail of how his team has made these breakthroughs. But what he did share offers an exciting and concerning overview of what lies ahead for humanity. There are social, legal and ethical implications to start considering. Here are five examples of how digitizing DNA will change the human experience:

These are the decisions the Pentagon wants to leave to robots — from defenseone.com by Patrick Tucker
The U.S. military believes its battlefield edge will increasingly depend on automation and artificial intelligence.

Excerpt:

Conducting cyber defensive operations, electronic warfare, and over-the-horizon targeting. “You cannot have a human operator operating at human speed fighting back at determined cyber tech,” Work said. “You are going to need have a learning machine that does that.” He did not say whether the Pentagon is pursuing the autonomous or automatic deployment of offensive cyber capabilities, a controversial idea to be sure. He also highlighted a number of ways that artificial intelligence could help identify new waveforms to improve electronic warfare.

Britain should lead way on genetically engineered babies, says Chief Scientific Adviser — from.telegraph.co.uk by Sarah Knapton
Sir Mark Walport, who advises the government on scientific matters, said it could be acceptable to genetically edit human embryos

Excerpt:

Last week more than 150 scientists and campaigners called for a worldwide ban on the practice, claiming it could ‘irrevocably alter the human species’ and lead to a world where inequality and discrimination were ‘inscribed onto the human genome.’

But at a conference in London [on 12/8/15], Sir Mark Walport, who advises the government on scientific matters, said he believed there were ‘circumstances’ in which the genetic editing of human embyros could be ‘acceptable’.

Cyborg Future: Engineers Build a Chip That Is Part Biological and Part Synthetic — from futurism.com

Excerpt:

Engineers have succeeded in combining an integrated chip with an artificial lipid bilayer membrane containing ATP-powered ion pumps, paving the way for more such artificial systems that combine the biological with the mechanical down the road.

Robots expected to run half of Japan by 2035 — from engadget.com by Andrew Tarantola
Something-something ‘robot overlords’.

Excerpt:

Data analysts Nomura Research Institute (NRI), led by researcher Yumi Wakao, figure that within the next 20 years, nearly half of all jobs in Japan could be accomplished by robots. Working with Professor Michael Osborne from Oxford University, who had previously investigated the same matter in both the US and UK, the NRI team examined more than 600 jobs and found that “up to 49 percent of jobs could be replaced by computer systems,” according to Wakao.

Cambridge University is opening a £10 million centre to study the impact of AI on humanity — from businessinsider.com by Sam Shead

Excerpt:

Cambridge University announced on [12/3/15] that it is opening a new £10 million research centre to study the impact of artificial intelligence on humanity.

The 806-year-old university said the centre, being funded with a grant from non-profit foundation The Leverhulme Trust, will explore the opportunities and challenges facing humanity as a result of further developments in artificial intelligence.

Tech leaders launch nonprofit to save the world from killer robots — from csmonitor.com by Jessica Mendoza
Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and other tech titans have invested $1 billion in a nonprofit that would help direct artificial intelligence technology toward positive human impact.

2016 will be a pivotal year for social robots — from therobotreport.com by Frank Tobe
1,000 Peppers are selling each month from a big-dollar venture between SoftBank, Alibaba and Foxconn; Jibo just raised another $16 million as it prepares to deliver 7,500+ units in Mar/Apr of 2016; and Buddy, Rokid, Sota and many others are poised to deliver similar forms of social robots.

Excerpt:

These new robots, and the proliferation of mobile robot butlers, guides and kiosks, promise to recognize your voice and face and help you plan your calendar, provide reminders, take pictures of special moments, text, call and videoconference, order fast food, keep watch on your house or office, read recipes, play games, read emotions and interact accordingly, and the list goes on. They are attempting to be analogous to a sharp administrative assistant that knows your schedule, contacts and interests and engages with you about them, helping you stay informed, connected and active.

IBM opens its artificial mind to the world — from fastcompany.com by Sean Captain
IBM is letting companies plug into its Watson artificial intelligence engine to make sense of speech, text, photos, videos, and sensor data.

Excerpt:

Artificial intelligence is the big, oft-misconstrued catchphrase of the day, making headlines recently with the launch of the new OpenAI organization, backed by Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other tech luminaries. AI is neither a synonym for killer robots nor a technology of the future, but one that is already finding new signals in the vast noise of collected data, ranging from weather reports to social media chatter to temperature sensor readings. Today IBM has opened up new access to its AI system, called Watson, with a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow other companies and organizations to feed their data into IBM’s big brain for analysis.

GE wants to give industrial machines their own social network with Predix Cloud — from fastcompany.com by Sean Captain
GE is selling a new service that promises to predict when a machine will break down…so technicians can preemptively fix it.

Foresight 2020: The future is filled with 50 billion connected devices — from ibmbigdatahub.com by Erin Monday

Excerpt:

By 2020, there will be over 50 billion connected devices generating continuous data.

This figure is staggering, but is it really a surprise? The world has come a long way from 1992, when the number of computers was roughly equivalent to the population of San Jose. Today, in 2015, there are more connected devices out there than there are human beings. Ubiquitous connectivity is very nearly a reality. Every day, we get a little closer to a time where businesses, governments and consumers are connected by a fluid stream of data and analytics. But what’s driving all this growth?

Designing robots that learn as effortlessly as babies — from singularityhub.com by Shelly Fan

Excerpt:

A wide-eyed, rosy-cheeked, babbling human baby hardly looks like the ultimate learning machine.

But under the hood, an 18-month-old can outlearn any state-of-the-art artificial intelligence algorithm.

Their secret sauce?

They watch; they imitate; and they extrapolate.

Artificial intelligence researchers have begun to take notice. This week, two separate teams dipped their toes into cognitive psychology and developed new algorithms that teach machines to learn like babies. One instructs computers to imitate; the other, to extrapolate.

Researchers have found a new way to get machines to learn faster — from fortune.com by Hilary Brueck

Excerpt:

An international team of data scientists is proud to announce the very latest in machine learning: they’ve built a program that learns… programs. That may not sound impressive at first blush, but making a machine that can learn based on a single example is something that’s been extremely hard to do in the world of artificial intelligence. Machines don’t learn like humans—not as fast, and not as well. And even with this research, they still can’t.

Team showcase how good Watson is at learning — from adigaskell.org

Excerpt:

Artificial intelligence has undoubtedly come a long way in the last few years, but there is still much to be done to make it intuitive to use. IBM’s Watson has been one of the most well known exponents during this time, but despite it’s initial success, there are issues to overcome with it.

A team led by Georgia Tech are attempting to do just that. They’re looking to train Watson to get better at returning answers to specific queries.

Why The Internet of Things will drive a Knowledge Revolution. — from linkedin.com by David Evans

Excerpt:

As these machines inevitably connect to the Internet, they will ultimately connect to each other so they can share, and collaborate on their own findings. In fact, in 2014 machines got their own ”World Wide Web” called RoboEarth, in which to share knowledge with one another. …
The implications of all of this are at minimum twofold:

The way we generate knowledge is going to change dramatically in the coming years.
Knowledge is about to increase at an exponential rate.

What we choose to do with this newfound knowledge is of course up to us. We are about to face some significant challenges at scales we have yet to experience.

Drone squad to be launched by Tokyo police — from bbc.com

Excerpt:

A drone squad, designed to locate and – if necessary – capture nuisance drones flown by members of the public, is to be launched by police in Tokyo.

An advance in artificial intelligence rivals human abilities — from todayonline.com by John Markoff

Excerpt:

NEW YORK — Computer researchers reported artificial-intelligence advances [on Dec 10] that surpassed human capabilities for a narrow set of vision-related tasks.

The improvements are noteworthy because so-called machine-vision systems are becoming commonplace in many aspects of life, including car-safety systems that detect pedestrians and bicyclists, as well as in video game controls, Internet search and factory robots.

Somewhat related:

Novo Nordisk, IBM Watson Health to create ‘virtual doctor’ — from wsj.com by Denise Roland
Software could dispense treatment advice for diabetes patients

Excerpt:

Novo Nordisk A/S is teaming up with IBM Watson Health, a division of International Business Machines Corp., to create a “virtual doctor” for diabetes patients that could dispense treatment advice such as insulin dosage.

The Danish diabetes specialist hopes to use IBM’s supercomputer platform, Watson, to analyze health data from diabetes patients to help them manage their disease.

Why Google’s new quantum computer could launch an artificial intelligence arms race — from washingtonpost.com

8 industries robots will completely transform by 2025 — from techinsider.io

Addendums on 12/17/15:

Russia and China are building highly autonomous killer robots — from businessinsider.com.au by Danielle Muoi

Excerpt:

Russia and China are creating highly autonomous weapons, more commonly referred to as killer robots, and it’s putting pressure on the Pentagon to keep up, according to US Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work. During a national-security forum on Monday, Work said that China and Russia are heavily investing in a roboticized army, according to a report from Defense One.

Your Algorithmic Self Meets Super-Intelligent AI — from techcrunch.com by Jarno M. Koponen

Excerpt:

At the same time, your data and personalized experiences are used to develop and train the machine learning systems that are powering the Siris, Watsons, Ms and Cortanas. Be it a speech recognition solution or a recommendation algorithm, your actions and personal data affect how these sophisticated systems learn more about you and the world around you.

The less explicit fact is that your diverse interactions — your likes, photos, locations, tags, videos, comments, route selections, recommendations and ratings — feed learning systems that could someday transform into super–intelligent AIs with unpredictable consequences.

As of today, you can’t directly affect how your personal data is used in these systems

Addendum on 12/20/15:

Humans Are Slamming Into Driverless Cars and Exposing a Key Flaw — from bloomberg.com by Keith Naughton

Addendum on 12/21/15:

Facewatch ‘thief recognition’ CCTV on trial in UK stores — from bbc.com
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
Face-recognition camera systems should be used by police, he tells me. “The technology’s here, and we need to think about what is a proportionate response that respects people’s privacy,” he says.
…
“The public need to ask themselves: do they want six million cameras painted red at head height looking at them?

Addendum on 1/13/16:

The Algorithms Are Taking Over: Who Controls Our Online Future? — from forbes.com by Kalev Leetaru

How education will be smarter, less intrusive, and able to respond to how you feel [Kumar]

On 12/04/2015, in assessment, blended learning, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, hybrid learning, innovation, K-12 related, leadership, learning ecosystem, legislatures / government / legal, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
When done well, blended/hybrid learning can be very powerful, offering students the best of both worlds:

Let's take the best of both worlds -- online learning and face-to-face learning

Numerous technologies involved with education continue to get better. Still, students don’t always have the discipline to be totally on their own…and I often read that learners desire someone to help them navigate through the content. (This can be done online as well, I realize.) Those things said, the article below caught my eye.

How education will be smarter, less intrusive, and able to respond to how you feel — from techcrunch.com by Amar Kumar

Excerpts:

We are on the verge of a tide of smarter innovation that, if allowed to spread, will turbocharge the learning experience for students. Here are four areas worth watching:

Using technology to learn from learners
Using technology to adapt to how students feel
Building invisible assessments that are less intrusive
Keeping pace with technology in the classroom

…

Take SimCityEdu: Pollution Challenge – developed by GlassLab Games – where students learn how city-planning is impacted by environmental issues. As they play the game, the system is capturing their actions – such as the sequence of what they do or requests for help – and interprets patterns in data to assess how well the player understands important concepts. This helps teachers better evaluate how a student solves problems, rather than just the final product of their work.

In time, learning games like this should decrease reliance on stop-and-test exams and provide more real-time and actionable information to teachers.

Also related/see:

Search for Quick, Rigorous Ed-Tech Evaluations Underway –– from blogs.edweek.org by Michele Molnar
Excerpt:
Work began [in October 2015] on a federally-funded project designed to quickly determine “what works” with educational technology, so that schools and districts can make faster decisions about it.Mathematica Policy Research won the $3.67 million contract to devise tools for rapid—and rigorous—evaluation of ed-tech products. The goal is to come up with a platform where educators can choose a test that will help them determine—within one to three months—how effective a particular ed-tech product is in their schools. SRI International is a partner on the project.The idea is that the platform will have tools to walk a practitioner, school leader, researcher or app developer through the process of figuring out which research design makes the most sense, and it will ask them questions to help them set it up, said Katrina Stevens, a senior advisor at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology, which is funding the so-called “rapid-cycle tech evaluation” project.
Public-university group expands ‘personalized learning’ efforts — from chronicle.com by Ellen Wexler
Excerpt:

The Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities is expanding its support of “personalized learning” with the help of a new $4.6-million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Personalized learning” means different things to different people. It’s a buzzword, and it can be difficult to get past the hype. Depending on whom you ask, it can mean such things as data analytics, video games, or artificial-intelligence research.

In teaching, “You can’t do the Bloom stuff until you take care of the Maslow stuff.” [Beck]

On 11/23/2015, in global / globalization, higher education, ideas, K-12 related, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, learning theories, legislatures / government / legal, relationships, society, student-related, teachers, UK, vision/possibilities, youth, by Daniel Christian

It’s so important the reason we teach! It’s not just about filling their heads for the test! pic.twitter.com/kaPhWwjHET

— carl jarvis (@carljarvis_eos) November 22, 2015

The need for ethics, morals, policies, & serious reflection about what kind of future we want has never been greater!

On 11/19/2015, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, Augmented Reality (AR), Australia, business, Canada, change, communities of practice, computer science, Daniel S. Christian, ethics, Europe, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, hearts -- matters of the heart, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, India, leadership, legislatures / government / legal, machine-to-machine communications, morals/values, Near Field Communication (NFC), pace of change, policy, political science, programming, psychology, real-world assignments, relationships, robotics, society, sociology, strategy, surviving, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, trends, UK, United States, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, workplace, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
This posting is meant to surface the need for debates/discussions, new policy decisions, and for taking the time to seriously reflect upon what type of future that we want. Given the pace of technological change, we need to be constantly asking ourselves what kind of future we want and then to be actively creating that future — instead of just letting things happen because they can happen. (i.e., just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done.)

Gerd Leonhard’s work is relevant here. In the resource immediately below, Gerd asserts:

I believe we urgently need to start debating and crafting a global Digital Ethics Treaty. This would delineate what is and is not acceptable under different circumstances and conditions, and specify who would be in charge of monitoring digressions and aberrations.

I am also including some other relevant items here that bear witness to the increasingly rapid speed at which we’re moving now.

Redefining the relationship of man and machine: here is my narrated chapter from the ‘The Future of Business’ book (video, audio and pdf) — from futuristgerd.com by Gerd Leonhard

.

Robot revolution: rise of ‘thinking’ machines could exacerbate inequality — from theguardian.com by Heather Stewart
Global economy will be transformed over next 20 years at risk of growing inequality, say analysts

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

A “robot revolution” will transform the global economy over the next 20 years, cutting the costs of doing business but exacerbating social inequality, as machines take over everything from caring for the elderly to flipping burgers, according to a new study.

As well as robots performing manual jobs, such as hoovering the living room or assembling machine parts, the development of artificial intelligence means computers are increasingly able to “think”, performing analytical tasks once seen as requiring human judgment.

In a 300-page report, revealed exclusively to the Guardian, analysts from investment bank Bank of America Merrill Lynch draw on the latest research to outline the impact of what they regard as a fourth industrial revolution, after steam, mass production and electronics.

“We are facing a paradigm shift which will change the way we live and work,” the authors say. “The pace of disruptive technological innovation has gone from linear to parabolic in recent years. Penetration of robots and artificial intelligence has hit every industry sector, and has become an integral part of our daily lives.”

First genetically modified humans could exist within two years — from telegraph.co.uk by Sarah Knapton
Biotech company Editas Medicine is planning to start human trials to genetically edit genes and reverse blindness

Excerpt:

Humans who have had their DNA genetically modified could exist within two years after a private biotech company announced plans to start the first trials into a ground-breaking new technique.

Editas Medicine, which is based in the US, said it plans to become the first lab in the world to ‘genetically edit’ the DNA of patients suffering from a genetic condition – in this case the blinding disorder ‘leber congenital amaurosis’.

Gartner predicts our digital future — from gartner.com by Heather Levy
Gartner’s Top 10 Predictions herald what it means to be human in a digital world.

Excerpt:

Here’s a scene from our digital future: You sit down to dinner at a restaurant where your server was selected by a “robo-boss” based on an optimized match of personality and interaction profile, and the angle at which he presents your plate, or how quickly he smiles can be evaluated for further review. Or, perhaps you walk into a store to try on clothes and ask the digital customer assistant embedded in the mirror to recommend an outfit in your size, in stock and on sale. Afterwards, you simply tell it to bill you from your mobile and skip the checkout line.

These scenarios describe two predictions in what will be an algorithmic and smart machine driven world where people and machines must define harmonious relationships. In his session at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2016 in Orlando, Daryl Plummer, vice president, distinguished analyst and Gartner Fellow, discussed how Gartner’s Top Predictions begin to separate us from the mere notion of technology adoption and draw us more deeply into issues surrounding what it means to be human in a digital world.

Univ. of Washington faculty study legal, social complexities of augmented reality — from phys.org

Excerpt:

But augmented reality will also bring challenges for law, public policy and privacy, especially pertaining to how information is collected and displayed. Issues regarding surveillance and privacy, free speech, safety, intellectual property and distraction—as well as potential discrimination—are bound to follow.

The Tech Policy Lab brings together faculty and students from the School of Law, Information School and Computer Science & Engineering Department and other campus units to think through issues of technology policy. “Augmented Reality: A Technology and Policy Primer” is the lab’s first official white paper aimed at a policy audience. The paper is based in part on research presented at the 2015 International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, or UbiComp conference.

Along these same lines, also see:

Augmented Reality: Figuring Out Where the Law Fits — from rdmag.com by Greg Watry
Excerpt:
With AR comes potential issues the authors divide into two categories. “The first is collection, referring to the capacity of AR to record, or at least register, the people and places around the user. Collection raises obvious issues of privacy but also less obvious issues of free speech and accountability,” the researchers write. The second issue is display, which “raises a variety of complex issues ranging from possible tort liability should the introduction or withdrawal of information lead to injury, to issues surrounding employment discrimination or racial profiling.”Current privacy law in the U.S. allows video and audio recording in areas that “do not attract an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy,” says Newell. Further, many uses of AR would be covered under the First Amendment right to record audio and video, especially in public spaces. However, as AR increasingly becomes more mobile, “it has the potential to record inconspicuously in a variety of private or more intimate settings, and I think these possibilities are already straining current privacy law in the U.S.,” says Newell.

Stuart Russell on Why Moral Philosophy Will Be Big Business in Tech — from kqed.org by Queena Kim

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Our first Big Think comes from Stuart Russell. He’s a computer science professor at UC Berkeley and a world-renowned expert in artificial intelligence. His Big Think?

“In the future, moral philosophy will be a key industry sector,” says Russell.

Translation? In the future, the nature of human values and the process by which we make moral decisions will be big business in tech.

Life, enhanced: UW professors study legal, social complexities of an augmented reality future — from washington.edu by Peter Kelley

Excerpt:

But augmented reality will also bring challenges for law, public policy and privacy, especially pertaining to how information is collected and displayed. Issues regarding surveillance and privacy, free speech, safety, intellectual property and distraction — as well as potential discrimination — are bound to follow.

An excerpt from:

THREE: CHALLENGES FOR LAW AND POLICY
AR systems change human experience and, consequently, stand to challenge certain assumptions of law and policy. The issues AR systems raise may be divided into roughly two categories. The first is collection, referring to the capacity of AR devices to record, or at least register, the people and places around the user. Collection raises obvious issues of privacy but also less obvious issues of free speech and accountability. The second rough category is display, referring to the capacity of AR to overlay information over people and places in something like real-time. Display raises a variety of complex issues ranging from
possible tort liability should the introduction or withdrawal of information lead to injury, to issues surrounding employment discrimination or racial profiling. Policymakers and stakeholders interested in AR should consider what these issues mean for them. Issues related to the collection of information include…

HR tech is getting weird, and here’s why — from hrmorning.com by guest poster Julia Scavicchio

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Technology has progressed to the point where it’s possible for HR to learn almost everything there is to know about employees — from what they’re doing moment-to-moment at work to what they’re doing on their off hours. Guest poster Julia Scavicchio takes a long hard look at the legal and ethical implications of these new investigative tools.

Why on Earth does HR need all this data? The answer is simple — HR is not on Earth, it’s in the cloud.

The department transcends traditional roles when data enters the picture.

Many ethical questions posed through technology easily come and go because they seem out of this world.

18 AI researchers reveal the most impressive thing they’ve ever seen — from businessinsider.com by Guia Marie Del Prado,

Excerpt:

Where will these technologies take us next? Well to know that we should determine what’s the best of the best now. Tech Insider talked to 18 AI researchers, roboticists, and computer scientists to see what real-life AI impresses them the most.
…

“The DeepMind system starts completely from scratch, so it is essentially just waking up, seeing the screen of a video game and then it works out how to play the video game to a superhuman level, and it does that for about 30 different video games. That’s both impressive and scary in the sense that if a human baby was born and by the evening of its first day was already beating human beings at video games, you’d be terrified.”

Algorithmic Economy: Powering the Machine-to-Machine Age Economic Revolution — from formtek.com by Dick Weisinger

Excerpts:

As technology advances, we are becoming increasingly dependent on algorithms for everything in our lives. Algorithms that can solve our daily problems and tasks will do things like drive vehicles, control drone flight, and order supplies when they run low. Algorithms are defining the future of business and even our everyday lives.
…
Sondergaard said that “in 2020, consumers won’t be using apps on their devices; in fact, they will have forgotten about apps. They will rely on virtual assistants in the cloud, things they trust. The post-app era is coming. The algorithmic economy will power the next economic revolution in the machine-to-machine age. Organizations will be valued, not just on their big data, but on the algorithms that turn that data into actions that ultimately impact customers.”

Related items:

Toyota, Tesla or Google: who’s spending the most on artificial intelligence in the car industry? — from techworld.com by Margi Murphy
Which businesses are investing in artificial intelligence? Read how artificial intelligence will change the car industry, and other sectors, as we know it.
Toyota Invests $1 Billion In Artificial Intelligence In US — from wtvox.com / Associated Press
Top 10 Emerging Technologies That Could Transform Our Future — from wtvox.com by E Aston
What Technology Will Look Like In Five Years — from techcrunch.com by Diomedes Kastanis
Welcome To Brain Science’s Next Frontier: Virtual Reality — from fastcompany.com by Tina Amirtha
Amy Robinson, executive director at the startup EyeWire, is making neuroscience into a playground for the hot tech du jour.

Addendums:

ABI Research Shows Augmented Reality on the Rise with Total Market Worth to Reach $100 Billion by 2020 — from abiresearch.com
‘Self-Driving Cars Will Dominate the Roads by 2030,’ Says Internet of Things Visionary — from coinspeaker.com by Eugenia Romanenko
Robots are learning to say “no” to human orders — from quartz.com by Kit Eaton
Excerpt:
It may seem an obvious idea that a robot should do precisely what a human orders it to do at all times. But researchers in Massachusetts are trying something that many a science fiction movie has already anticipated: They’re teaching robots to say “no” to some instructions. For robots wielding potentially dangerous-to-humans tools on a car production line, it’s pretty clear that the robot should always precisely follow its programming. But we’re building more-clever robots every day and we’re giving them the power to decide what to do all by themselves. This leads to a tricky issue: How exactly do you program a robot to think through its orders and overrule them if it decides they’re wrong or dangerous to either a human or itself? This is what researchers at Tufts University’s Human-Robot Interaction Lab are tackling, and they’ve come up with at least one strategy for intelligently rejecting human orders.

Addendum on 12/14/15:

Algorithms rule our lives, so who should rule them? — from qz.com by Dries Buytaert
As technology advances and more everyday objects are driven almost entirely by software, it’s become clear that we need a better way to catch cheating software and keep people safe.

K-5 principal uses iBeacons in order to track his visits to classrooms, to insure equality

On 11/12/2015, in education technology, K-12 related, leadership, machine-to-machine communications, Near Field Communication (NFC), by Daniel Christian

Tech solutions to principals’ overloaded schedules — from edweek.org by Tim Lauer

Excerpt:

Recently, I placed an iBeacon in my office. Using an iOS app called Proximity Log, I started having Proximity Log track my time spent in my office based on proximity to the beacon. Whenever I enter my office, Proximity Log connects with the beacon, and notes the time I am near that beacon, and thus in my office. Proximity Log keeps track of the number of visits and the duration of each of those visits. The data are exportable and can be used in programs such as Excel or Google Sheets.

While this one beacon gave me a good understanding of the amount of time I was spending in my office, it did not tell me where I was when I wasn’t in my office. So, after my experimentation with the iBeacon in my office, I decided to place others in classrooms. Subsequently, I have placed iBeacons in all of my classrooms and set up the Proximity Log app to interact with these specific classroom beacons. Now, as I move in and out of classrooms, Proximity Log notes when I enter the room, and how long I stay. I have been able to analyze this ambient logging to make sure I am visiting all classrooms on a regular basis.

One of my chief professional goals is to spend extended periods of time in classrooms, providing feedback and support. With the use of iBeacons to track my movements in the school building, I am able to do a better job keeping track of these visits and make sure I am not shortchanging any classroom.

Addendum on 11/13/15:

The Connected School: How IoT Could Impact Education — from huffingtonpost.com by Jeanette Cajide
Excerpt:
But how soon before our children or we attend a smart school? How will the Internet of Things eventually impact education in the USA?
…
This means in all likelihood, for the education system in the USA to make the leap to a connected school, school districts and state education agencies will need to drive the digital strategy and appropriately budget and allocate funding to create these products and related “smart schools.”
Smart technology will impact education in the following two ways:
- Students will learn faster.
- Teachers will be able to do their job more efficiently.

RIP Jay Cross — and thank you for all of your contributions.

On 11/09/2015, in adult learning, career development, collaboration, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, formal learning, informal learning, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, training / L&D, using teams, web-based collaboration, workplace, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
The world of learning lost a great contributor last Friday when Jay Cross passed away.

To me, Jay modeled lifelong learning — not only helping others to learn and to grow, but also seeking to do those very things himself. For example, he was constantly trying out new tools, experimenting with them, learning about them, and then taking what works and discarding the rest. He’d pick up a new web-based collaboration tool, make a recording, and then move onto something else.

He was a founding member of a great, collaborative team in the Internet Time Alliance, where members included Jay, Jane Hart, Harold Jarche, Charles Jennings, Clark Quinn, and Paul Simbeck-Hampson.

One area of all of our learning ecosystems involves informal learning, something that Jay stressed and had a tremendous influence on. More recently, he tackled the The Real Learning Project which “aims to help millions of people learn to learn, increase their intelligence, and realize their life goals.”

There are many postings out there re: Jay, so I’ll point to Jane Hart’s compilation/tributes to Jay to steer you towards some of them.

Two days before passing, Jay posted an item entitled Real Learning: Micro and Macro on his Internet Time Blog:

Quoting from that posting, Jay says:

Setting goals, reflecting daily, taking risks, and doing experiments
prime the brain for spotting opportunities and working smarter.

So you can see that up to his dying day, Jay was about helping people learn and grow.

Thanks Jay for your work and your very important contributions.

RIP Jay.

Daniel

The 50 Most Popular MOOCs of All Time — from onlinecoursereport.com, via Jordan Hall

Excerpt:

MOOCs – or Massive Open Online Courses – are picking up momentum in popularity – at least in terms of initial enrollment.

Unlike regular college/ university courses, MOOCs can attract many thousands of enrollees around the world. They can come in the form of active course sessions with participant interaction, or as archived content for self-paced study. MOOCs can be free, or there can be a charge – either on a subscription basis or a one-time charge. Free MOOCs sometimes have a paid “verified certificate” option. There are now thousands of MOOCs available worldwide from several hundred colleges, universities and other institutions of higher learning. For your convenience, we’ve compiled a list of 50 of the most popular MOOCs, based on enrollment figures for all sessions of a course. The ranking is based on filtering enrollment data for 185 free MOOCs on various elearning platforms.

Enhancing the student digital experience: a strategic approach — from jisc.ac.uk
Supporting institutions to develop digital environments which meet students’ expectations and help them to progress to higher study and employment

Excerpts:

How are you responding to the changing digital needs and expectations of your students and staff?
Do the experiences and the digital environment you offer to your students adequately prepare them to flourish in a society that relies heavily on digital technologies?
What are you doing to engage students in dialogue about digital issues and to work collaboratively with them to enhance their digital learning experience?
How well is the digital vision for your establishment embedded in institutional policies and strategies?

Contents

Context

Deliver a relevant digital curriculum

Deliver a relevant digital curriculum: make a difference in your organisation
Further resources for delivering a relevant digital curriculum

Deliver an inclusive digital student experience

Inclusive digital experience: make a difference in your organisation
Further resources for inclusive digital experience delivery

Deliver a robust, flexible, digital environment

Robust digital environment: make a difference in your organisation
Further resources for delivering a robust digital environment

Engage in dialogue with students about their digital experience and empower them to develop their digital environment

Students’ digital environment development: make a difference in your organisation
Further resources for students’ digital environment development

Develop coherent ‘bring your own’ policies

‘Bring your own’ policies: make a difference in your organisation
Further resources for ‘bring your own’ policies development

Support students and staff to work successfully with digital technologies

Digital technologies support: make a difference in your organisation
Further resources for supporting staff and students with digital technologies

Take a strategic approach to developing the student digital experience

A strategic approach to student digital experience: make a difference in your organisation
Further resources for taking a strategic approach to student digital experience development

Summary

With so many competing pressures educational leaders do not always recognise the strategic and operational importance of digital technology or realise the potential transformative effect this could have on their institutions, the wider sector, employers and society.

The Messy Human Core of Reinventing Higher Education Institutions [LeBlanc]

On 09/16/2015, in 21st century, change, colleges, community colleges, higher education, leadership, organizational change, reinvent, staying relevant, strategy, surviving, universities, by Daniel Christian

The Messy Human Core of Reinventing Higher Education Institutions — from educause.edu by Paul LeBlanc

Excerpts:

Discussions of business model reengineering and innovation in higher education tend to focus on program design, technology, data, and marketing challenges and on delivery, organizational, revenue, and outsourcing models—along with the myriad other moving parts of the modern organization. Even though traditionalists and romantics would rather not think about these questions, which they view as a neoliberal “corporatization” of the academy, getting the organizational questions wrong can imperil the academic mission for which all colleges and universities exist—especially in these turbulent times for higher education. Still, for those of us who are thinking hard about innovation and new business models, two critical components are too often missing from our discussions: people and culture.

…

But here’s the thing: the very best organizational models are doomed to failure if staff talent is not good and if the culture is poor, whereas high performers and the right culture can produce amazing results even with a poor organizational model.

The Free Two-Year College Movement — A Special/Mini Feature from evoLLLution.com (where the LLL stands for lifelong learning)

Excerpt:

Given the importance of postsecondary credentials to succeeding in today’s labor market, access to and completion of two- and four-year degrees has become a high priority for higher education leaders, government officials and employers. In 2014, Tennessee launched the Tennessee Promise, which granted Tennesseans tuition-free access to two-year colleges in the state. Oregon, in 2015, passed a similar piece of legislation and President Obama made America’s College Promise—a national roll-out of this style of program—a hallmark of his State of the Union address.

While the program goes to great lengths to create unprecedented levels of access to higher education, the focus must turn to how colleges will manage life in this new reality and how the higher education marketplace will have to shift to adjust to this new level of access. This Feature focuses on those elements of the free two-year college movement.

From DSC:
From the original Kalamazoo Promise (which was generously/graciously put forth by a group of anonymous donors), many such “promise” programs have been developed — affecting programs all the way up to President Obama’s development of America’s College Promise.

Colleges and universities would be wise to keep this potential trend on their radars, while preparing plans for what they would do if this trend picks up steam.

Reflections on “Can we interest you in teaching?” [Bruni] & “Teacher shortages spur a nationwide hiring scramble (credentials optional)” [Rich]

On 08/13/2015, in 21st century, Daniel S. Christian, education, education reform, future, K-12 related, leadership, strategy, teachers, teaching & learning, United States, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Can we interest you in teaching? — from nytimes.com by Frank Bruni; with thanks to Jim Lerman for his Scoop on this

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Teaching can’t compete.

When the economy improves and job prospects multiply, college students turn their attention elsewhere, to professions that promise more money, more independence, more respect.

That was one takeaway from a widely discussed story in The Times on Sunday by Motoko Rich, who charted teacher shortages so severe in certain areas of the country that teachers are being rushed into classrooms with dubious qualifications and before they’ve earned their teaching credentials.

It’s a sad, alarming state of affairs, and it proves that for all our lip service about improving the education of America’s children, we’ve failed to make teaching the draw that it should be, the honor that it must be. Nationally, enrollment in teacher preparation programs dropped by 30 percent between 2010 and 2014, as Rich reported.

To make matters worse, more than 40 percent of the people who do go into teaching exit the profession within five years.

Also see:

Teacher shortages spur a nationwide hiring scramble (credentials optional) — from nytimes.com by Motoko Rich
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
ROHNERT PARK, Calif. — In a stark about-face from just a few years ago, school districts have gone from handing out pink slips to scrambling to hire teachers. Across the country, districts are struggling with shortages of teachers, particularly in math, science and special education — a result of the layoffs of the recession years combined with an improving economy in which fewer people are training to be teachers. At the same time, a growing number of English-language learners are entering public schools, yet it is increasingly difficult to find bilingual teachers. So schools are looking for applicants everywhere they can — whether out of state or out of country — and wooing candidates earlier and quicker.
…
In California, the number of people entering teacher preparation programs dropped by more than 55 percent from 2008 to 2012, according to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Nationally, the drop was 30 percent from 2010 to 2014, according to federal data. Alternative programs like Teach for America, which will place about 4,000 teachers in schools across the country this fall, have also experienced recruitment problems.

From DSC:
Teaching is very difficult. If you doubt that statement, you probably haven’t taught in a while (or ever). Finding ways to engage 25-35+ students at once — while trying to provide a personalized, customized learning experience for each learner — is no small task.

I’m grateful for the solid teachers I had growing up. We need solid teachers. This is our future – no matter what nation that we’re talking about. Yet, as the article mentions for those of us in the United States, “It’s a sad, alarming state of affairs, and it proves that for all our lip service about improving the education of America’s children, we’ve failed to make teaching the draw that it should be, the honor that it must be.”

This is a major shot across the bow. We need action. We need to listen to the teachers/administrators/reformers out there now, and we need to listen to — and address in concrete fashions — the former teachers who have left the profession. Why did they leave? What would they recommend changing? After listening, we need to take action.

But even as I write this, I get a glimpse of the immensity and difficulty of the task. For example, who has solid ideas? What are solid ideas? Which direction should we go in? How will we get enough people on board with the proposed changes?

I’m grateful for all of those folks out there who are working to address this situation. Who work day after day to implement positive reforms and address these concerns — who are helping prepare our students for the future they will inherit. To those folks, I say thank you and may you come across reasons to be encouraged today.

“The whole point of things like curricula and classroom instruction, for example, is to prepare students for what they need to know tomorrow, not what yesterday’s students needed to know today.”

Source

White House: Innovation in Higher Education — from elearnspace.org by George Siemens

Excerpt from George’s posting (emphasis DSC):

A few weeks ago, I received an invitation to the White House. The invitation was somewhat cryptic, but basically stated that the focus on the meeting was on quality and innovation.
…
2. Higher education generally has no clue about what’s brewing in the marketplace as a whole. The change pressures that exist now are not ones that the existing higher education model can ignore. The trends – competency-based learning, unbundling, startups & capital inflow, new pedagogical models, technology, etc – will change higher education dramatically.

3. No one knows what HE is becoming. Forget the think tanks and the consultants and the keynote speakers. No one knows how these trends will track or what the university will look like in the future. This unknowability stems from HE being a complex systems with many interacting elements. We can’t yet see how these will connect and inter-relate going forward. The best strategy in a time of uncertainty is not to seek or force the way forward, but to enter a cycle of experimentation. The Cynefin Framework provides the best guidance that I’ve seen on how to function in our current context.
…
7. Expect a future of far greater corporate involvement in HE. VC funds are flowing aggressively and these funders are also targeting policy change at local, state, and national levels. We aren’t used to this level of lobbying and faculty is unprepared to respond to this. Expect it. Your next faculty meeting will involve a new student success system, a personalized learning system, an analytics system, a new integrated bootcamp model, new competency software, new cloud-based computing systems, and so on. Expect it. It’s coming.

8. Expect M & A activities in higher education. I fully anticipate some combination of partnering with companies like General Assembly, creation of in-house bootcamps, or outright acquisitions by innovative universities.

Higher Education is moving from a 4 year relationship to students to a 40 year relationship.

From DSC:

[First of all, if you read this George, thanks for sharing your experiences, reflections, and recommendations from your recent trip to the White House. I/we appreciate it.]

I can’t agree with — and emphasize — George’s second point (above) strongly enough. Too often, I think we have our heads and eyes pointed downward, busy in our work; we fail to look up and see what’s happening all around us. We neglect to see the trends that are occurring and that will likely have an impact on us. If we were doing this, as we should be doing, several of our priorities would instantly change and there would be a much stronger sense of urgency in identifying some new directions/strategic initiatives/experiments within institutions of traditional higher education.

I don’t see our institutions competing with our typical/normal peer groups of the past. More and more, I think that we are competing with the new models, startups, and alternatives to traditional higher education. Yes, traditional institutions of higher education can respond and change — some have been doing so already. But how many of our institutions within the overall learning ecosystems are not experimenting? How many of our institutions have their heads buried in the sand, waiting for the good old days to return? Those days are not going to return. They’re gone. That ride is over. We need to wake up and adapt before the alternatives gain momentum (perhaps even borrowing some strategies from the alternatives, hmm?).

This is why I’m big on experimentation and the implementation of TrimTab Groups within higher education.

Finally, you may not like the word “disruption” and you may think it’s overused. But I don’t think we’ve seen anything yet.

As George warns in his posting, there are dramatic changes to higher education coming down the pike. George is not one to hype things up — he is a level-headed deep thinker. I’d suggest that we listen to what he’s saying to us via his experiences and reflections from participating in his recent meetings/conversations held at the White House.

RealEstate-HigherEd-DanielSChristian11-1-13

TheTrimtabInHigherEducation-DanielChristian

Are these some of the phenomenon that will sink higher education if we don’t address them? [Christian]

On 07/16/2015, in business, business side of he, change, changing business models, colleges, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, experimentation, higher education, leadership, new business models, reinvent, staying relevant, strategy, surviving, universities, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
The phenomenon I’m thinking about are:

We in higher education are so peer-oriented that we don’t lead. That is, if our peers would do X, then we could do X. But if they aren’t doing it, we can’t or shouldn’t do it either. As Barnds says in his article below, “We continue to play a game of chicken as we wait for a so-called peer to do what we need to do.”
We are so peer-oriented that we don’t see that if we don’t lead and care far less about what our peers are doing, we risk being in a situation where we’re simply shifting chairs around, and doing so aboard the Titanic.
Why do I say Titanic? Because if we don’t address the growing chasm between what the corporate world wants/expects and what learners/families expect, we risk creating a void that WILL BE filled by another completely new system or systems. There WILL BE disruption if we don’t address the gaps. People will find other routes.
Folks in leadership positions within higher education have no choice but to deal with risk. If you don’t do anything, you are courting an enormous amount of risk. You are running a very dangerous experiment and your institution will likely be a shadow of what it once was (if it’s even able to remain open at all in the future). But if you change something — such as lowering the price of obtaining a degree — you also face risk. So risk comes with the job; there’s no escaping it. But just don’t make the mistake of thinking there’s no risk in pursuing the status quo.

The Best Pricing Model: Transparency — from insidehighered.com by W. Kent Barnds

Excerpts:

The current funding model for higher education is broken and we can only blame ourselves for creating a norm of bargain basement pricing for those families in the know, opaque business models and unexplained annual increases based more on competitors’ current price tag rather than our actual campus needs. We continue to play a game of chicken as we wait for a so-called peer to do what we need to do.
…
There are significant risks involved in changing how we discuss pricing, cost and value. Private colleges, as tuition-dependent institutions, are hesitant to try something new, especially if all of our peers stick with the currently murky language and approaches to cost and price.
…
As an industry, we need to work at getting it right for our students, which includes lowering actual costs for students and maintaining sufficient revenue to deliver on our mission.
…
Further, colleges need to clearly describe their business model to their campus constituents, students and parents of current students and delineate how the annual operation is funded. Finally, leaders need to acknowledge that percentage increases in tuition costs cannot continue in perpetuity. At some point we will price ourselves out of the market and into bankruptcy.
…
Seldom is there a clear statement that all students will pay at least $XXXX less to attend the next year. I realize this is pretty tricky — saying that the education offered is less expensive than the previous year — but this is exactly what’s missing and why many of the efforts so far seem to miss the mark.

Learning Ecosystems

RIP Jay Cross — and thank you for all of your contributions.

The Messy Human Core of Reinventing Higher Education Institutions [LeBlanc]

Reflections on George Siemens’ posting: “White House: Innovation in Higher Education”

Are these some of the phenomenon that will sink higher education if we don’t address them? [Christian]

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